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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
December 9, 2004

The Capital Research Center at 20

Defunding progressive organizations and scrutinizing the funders that sustain them drives DC-based institute

In April, Foundation Watch, one of the flagship publications of the Capital Research Center (website), managed to stir up a minor election-year controversy by raising questions about the philanthropy of Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic Party presidential candidate Senator John Kerry. In a report entitled "The Heinz Foundations and the Kerry campaign – One Has Money, the Other Needs Money", Ron Arnold – one of the godfathers of America's "Wise Use Movement" – examined the relationship between the "foundation's charitable gifts to environmental groups and environmentalist supporters of the Senator's presidential campaign." Arnold raised a red flag over the possible influence environmental organizations might exert should the Senator win the presidency.

In mid-October, the Center's president, Terence Scanlon, launched a pre-emptive strike against ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and its voter registration efforts. Scanlon cast a shadow over ACORN's reports that it had registered over one million new voters. He charged that because of irregularities, the organization was coming under scrutiny by lawmakers "in state after state [where] allegations are surfacing that ACORN activists are padding the registration books."

As a non-profit community-based organizing group, ACORN has been in CRC's radar for several years. According to Scanlon, ACORN, with some 150,000 dues-paying members organized into 65 city chapters, "is better known for public disruption." Its so-called community organizing "has relied on in-your-face confrontation," including a 1995 demonstration targeting then House Speaker Newt Gingrich. "In 2002 it burst into the Heritage Foundation to harangue welfare reform expert Robert Rector. Dozen of city councils and state legislatures have had to face angry ACORN protesters demanding higher minimum wages and more welfare entitlements. Banks have been pressured to change their lending practices or face ACORN charges of discrimination before regulators."

In the constellation that comprises the growing sector of right wing think tanks and policy institutes, the Capital Research Center (CRC) isn't the best funded, the most noteworthy, or the most influential. It doesn't have the largest staff, or the biggest building. Unlike its well-known sister institutions -- the Heritage Foundation (website), the American Enterprise Institute (website) and the Hoover Institution (website) – the Capital Research Center mostly slogs away in relative anonymity.

Don't be fooled by the CRC general lack of buzz-generating activities: For over 20 years, the CRC has been hell-bent on carrying out its mission – defunding and disempowering the progressive non-profit sector and casting a wary eye on the foundations that fund them.

Most of time, however, CRC staffers are busy doing the nuts and bolts of the Center – analyzing how tax-exempt, tax-deductible organizations combine advocacy and "direct action" to promote their vision of the public interest. And it examines how closely individuals in the corporate and foundation sectors are sticking to the "donor intent" of the founders of these corporations and foundations. CRC's staff gets most infuriated when they discover that foundations that were originally established by free-market entrepreneurs that accumulated enormous wealth based on distinctly anti-environmental activities, provide significant funding support for environmental groups.

During a late-May, 2000, hearing before the House Resources Committee on the role of the Pew Charitable Trusts played as part of a project called the Heritage Forests Campaign, CRC's executive vice-president Robert Huberty's testimony spoke to what he viewed as a disconnect between the founders original intent and how business was currently being handled: "The source of wealth for the Pew Trusts comes from energy exploration and development," but the original intent of the founders of the foundation was to "acquaint the American people [with] the evils of bureaucracy, the values of a free market and the paralyzing effects of government controls on the lives and activities of people." He rhetorically asked, "How do the Pew Trusts honor the intentions of their donor by supporting a campaign to permanently end logging in a large portion of the national forests?"

Founded in 1984 by Willa Johnson, a former Senior Vice President of the Heritage Foundation who worked as Deputy Director of the Office of Presidential Personnel in the first Reagan administration, the Capital Research Center (CRC) was established "to study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism."

In the CRC's 1991 annual report Johnson warned that "a unified, sophisticated and well-funded philanthropic elite is dedicated to imposing on us the doctrine of 'progressive' philanthropy, doctrines that would reorder our political, economic and cultural priorities." "This movement, driven by a bankrupt ideology, long since disproved by history, would impose its own standards of 'social justice' based on more involvement of government in philanthropy and more involvement of charities in politics. It has lost faith in the traditional American values of individual responsibility and free choice, to say nothing of the diversity in the marketplace of ideas," she wrote.

According to the web site, SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media & Democracy, the publishers of the invaluable PRWatch newsletter, the membership of the National Advisory Board was listed on its website in 2001, but it no longer discloses the board's current membership: In 2001 it included a veritable Who's Who of the right:

Richard V. Allen - President, Richard V. Allen Company, Washington, D.C. A member of the Council on National Policy since 1988 and former National Security Advisor to President Ronald Reagan (1980-1982). Allen is currently a senior (CSIS) first senior staff analyst and research principal from 1963 to 1966. He currently serves as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the CSIS Advisory Board as well as the Advisory board of the CRC.
Dr. Larry Arnn - President, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan.
Dr. John Baden - Chairman, Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment, Seattle, Washington.
Linda Chavez - a former Reagan appointee president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity. Chavez was Bush's first choice for Secretary of Labour. Signatory to the PNAC.
T. Kenneth Cribb Jr - President, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Cribb "was Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Reagan Administration, serving as President Reagan's top advisor on domestic matters".
Midge Decter - Author, New York. Wife of Norman Podhoretz (one of the key forefathers of neoconservatism), She "continues to advocate hard-line policies from her perch at the neoconservative Institute on Religion and Public Life". Signed Founding statement of Principles of the Project for the New American Century. Board of Trustees of Heritage Foundation. Board of Overseers of Hoover Institution.
Michael J. Horowitz - Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C.
Dr. Deal W. Hudson - Editor, Crisis, recently forced to resign from the magazine over publicity involving a sexual harassment case.
Adam Meyerson - President, The Philanthropy Roundtable. Ex- Vice President for Educational Affairs, The Heritage Foundation.
Michael Novak - George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy, American Enterprise Institute.
Kate O'Bierne -Senior Editor, National Review, Washington, DC
P. J. O'Rourke - Author, Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Marvin Olasky - Editor, World Magazine, and a senior fellow at the Acton Institute.
Sally Pipes - President, Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco.
Menlo F. Smith - President, Sunmark Capital Corporation, St. Louis.
Dr. Walter Williams - Professor of Economics, George Mason University Fairfax, Virginia; serves on advisory boards of: Landmark Legal Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation and others.
Thomas S. Winter - Editor-in-Chief, Human Events, Washington, D.C.
Robert L. Woodson, Sr - President, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise Washington, D.C.

Disinfopedia also reported that the CRC's 2002 IRS return filed in May 2003 listed the office bearers as:

Terrence Scanlon, President and chairman of CRC's board of trustees since 1994.
Marion G. Wells, Vice President; the Founding Trustee of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida-based Lillian Wells Foundation and, since 1992, has been a Co-Chairman of The Heritage Legacy Society, a group of Heritage Foundation supporters making estate gifts to the foundation.
Daniel J. Popeo, Treasurer; Chairman and General Counsel of the Washington, DC-based Washington Legal Foundation (WLF).
Constance Larcher, Secretary; President and Executive Director of the WLF.
Beverley Danielson, Director; with the Institute of World Politics in Coral Gables, Florida.
Edwin Meese III, Director; A former Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and currently a Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
Dean Webster, Director; retired CEO of Blue Seal Feeds, Inc in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Pamela Witherspoon Officer.
Barbara Kenney, Director; serves on the boards of the Washington Policy Center and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and is trustee of the Lillian L. Wells Foundation in Ft Lauderdale Florida.

CRC publishes four newsletters: Organization Trends, a monthly that reports on and analyzes the activities of advocacy organizations; Labor Watch, a monthly tracking "the increasing activism of labor unions that are trying to achieve through political coalition-building the goals they have failed to achieve at the bargaining table"; Foundation Watch, a monthly "examin[ing] the grantmaking of private foundations"; and Compassion & Culture, a monthly "highlighting the work of small, locally based charities that help the needy."

Ironically, reports Sourcewatch, while the organization "claims that exposing the funding" of progressive non-profits "is important because 'sunshine--the glare of public scrutiny--is 'the best of all disinfectants'...[it] doesn't seem to think its own hidden agenda should receive public scrutiny," as it allocates no space on its web site to information about where it receives its funding.

Media Transparency's grants database shows that between 1985 and 2002, the CRC received 153 grants valued at more than $7 million. Major donors include The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, The Carthage Foundation, and the Earhart Foundation.

CRC also sponsors three additional watchdog projects: GreenWatch, "an on-line database and information clearinghouse providing factual information on over 500 non-profit environmental groups"; EducationWatch, "an online database and news service providing timely information about nonprofit policy and advocacy groups involved in the public debate over the reform of K-12 primary education"; and CorporatePatterns, "monitor[ing] the philanthropic activities of America's leading corporations."

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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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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

The Capital Research Center at 20

Defunding progressive organizations and scrutinizing the funders that sustain them drives DC-based institute

MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH

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