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RELATED LINKSInternal LinksProfiles: Other internal: External LinksAmerican Association of Retired Persons website Center for Media and Democracy website Creative Response Concepts website Institute for Policy Innovation's website Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm website Swift Boat Veterans for Truth website There Is No Crisis report on USA Next Cursor.orgMediaTransparency.org sponsor More stories by Bill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs' Media Transparency writersAndrew J. Weaver FundometerEvaluate any page on the World Wide Web against our databases of people, recipients, and funders of the conservative movement. |
ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz Richard Viguerie's Army Attacks Social SecurityUSA Next, an organization founded by Viguerie as the United Seniors Association in 1991, backs Bush in battle to privatize Social SecurityIn their new book, America's Right Turn: How The Conservatives Used New And Alternative Media To Take Power, Richard Viguerie -- the right wing king of direct mail -- and co-author David Franke, describe how the printing press played a pivotal role in the battle between Lutherans and Catholics in the 16th century: "The revolution of 1517 did not begin...when Martin Luther posted his controversial 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg...The revolution came in the weeks following Luther's posting...as his arguments spread across Europe with a rapidity never before seen, and reached the lay public -- beyond the clerical community -- that until this point had been precluded from involvement in theological issues...That was the revolution, and it was a revolution wrought by the printing press." Viguerie and Franke maintain that the Lutheran-Catholic struggle was the "world's first media war" and one of the "enduring lessons about using the media" is "how important it is to be first." With more than 2 billion letters sent out by clients and front groups during his 40 year career, Viguerie has always believed in the power of the printing press. "The American Revolution" writes author Paul Johnson in A History of the American People, "...was the first event of its kind in which the media played a salient role -- almost a determining one -- from first to last. Americans were a media conscious people. They had a lot of newspapers and publications, and were getting more every month." With the availability of cheap printing presses and access to them by "inflammatory writers...there was no... possibility of putting down the media barrage in the courts by successful prosecutions for seditious libel." Viguerie and Franke draw a straight line from the "media revolutions" of 1517 and 1776 to "our modern world of mass communications and ever-faster communications." Nearly 500 years after Martin Luther's bold proclamation and almost 230 years after the American Revolution, USA Next (website), an organization founded by Viguerie in 1991 under the name United Seniors Association launched its own media campaign in support of privatizing Social Security. USA Next's new campaign -- called "Stop Scaring Seniors NOW!" -- also attacks the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP - website). USA Next kicked off the campaign with an outrageous advertisement currently making the rounds on the Internet and which has appeared on a number of national and local television news programs. In the ad, USA Next places a soldier next to a gay couple. The couple's image has a green checkmark on it while the picture of a US soldier has a red "X" across it. Below the photos is the phrase "The REAL AARP Agenda." In recent weeks, USA Next's chairman and chief executive, Charles W. Jarvis, who once worked for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and its national chairman, entertainer Art Linkletter, have appeared on the Fox News Channel several times. USA Next has a long history of using "dishonest tactics," and scaring the wits out of America's senior citizens. According to a 1992 New York Times story, the organization "bombard[ed] the elderly with tens of millions of solicitations, generating millions of dollars in fees for his [Viguerie's] private companies." A new repor posted on the Web site of There Is No Crisis takes a close look at the history and recent activities of the USA Next: "In August 2003, Health and Human Services fined United Seniors over half a million dollars for deceptive mailing practices, including misleading senior citizens into believing that United Seniors' solicitations were official government communications; The GAO determined in 1997 that United Seniors was guilty of 'misinformation' for claiming that senior citizens couldn't contract for medical treatment outside the Medicare system." and "United Seniors has been investigated multiple times by state Attorney Generals and federal grand juries for using exaggerations and distortions to extort money from senior citizens to fund partisan conservative activism." The United Seniors Association, now USA Next, was founded as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization "to assume debt from an earlier, 1990, Viguerie creation, the for-profit Retired Americans Legislative Lobby, Inc.," the report states. The organization worked on behalf of Clarence Thomas' appointment to the Supreme Court and later turned its attention to the economic agenda of President Bill Clinton. "Before Clinton even introduced his economic plan, United Seniors mailed out an opposition letter; in March 1993, it mailed out two million copies of a 'special report' that accused Clinton of wanting to raise taxes on poor seniors. It strongly supported a balanced budget amendment." In an effort to undermine the Clinton Administration's health care plan, the organization "helped create" the National Coalition Against Rationing Health. Over the course of its campaign, it sent out "more than 25 million pieces" of mail, and in 1993, it raised $5.3 million in donations, "only to plow more than $4.2 million back into fund raising mail," the report states. During its first few years United Seniors "endorsed 'privatizing' Medicare, worked with the Republican-controlled House to implement Newt Gingrich's Contract With America, supported the defunding of the Legal Services Corporation, and worked to "provide a 'conservative alternative' to the AARP." In subsequent years, under the name "A.L.A.R.M." -- Americans Lobbying Against Rationing of Medical Care -- United Seniors sent out direct mail packages warning about "Medicare rationing." After the 1998 elections United Seniors joined the National Association of Manufacturer's Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, "to push for privatization of Social Security." The following year, the group joined in Citizens for Better Medicare, a coalition with PhRMA (the drug companies). According to the There Is No Crisis report, "This would start a process where lawyer Curtis Herge would ease United Seniors away from its Viguerie-inspired direct mail roots and toward big industry donations." By the time George W. Bush took office in 2000, United Seniors turned its attention to supporting Bush's appointments -- it "spearhead[ed] a coalition in support of John Ashcroft's nomination for the Attorney Generalship" -- and the president's tax cut agenda. Charlie Jarvis, who worked on Gary Bauer's failed run for the presidency, replaced Sandra Butler as new President and CEO of United Seniors. In the first year of the Bush Administration, United Seniors went to bat for Bush by forming an "Enron front group, the 21st Century Energy Project, set up by Ed Gillespie to promote President Bush's energy plan," which included supporting "drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. Two years ago, United Seniors turned its attention toward Social Security. In late 2003, Jarvis "demand[ed] that Congress address the deepening crisis of Social Security" and he accused AARP of "dropp[ing] out Social Security modernization." According to There Is No Crisis report, the organization "came out strongly in favor of a plan created by the Institute for Policy Innovation's (website) Peter Ferrera. They also found time to attack Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, stock option expensing, John Kerry's 'wishing away the Social Security crisis,' the movie The Day After Tomorrow, class action suits, the McCain-Lieberman bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and efforts to reduce mercury exposure. Much of its anti-environmental activism took place under the coalition name 'United for Jobs.'" USA Next is dedicating 2005 to "dynamiting" AARP, hoping to bring one million AARP members into its fold. On Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program Jarvis said "there's never been a tax increase [AARP] didn't love, there's never been a tax cut they didn't hate, and they are definitely against traditional values." While Jarvis may be willing to spend upwards of $10 million to attack AARP, by crafting the soldier/gay couple ad he has been able to garner valuable face time on television for free. According to There Is No Crisis, USA Next has hired the strategists responsible for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (website) attacks on John Kerry during last year's presidential campaign, Chris LaCivita, Rick Reed, a partner at Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm (website), Creative Response Concepts (website), and Regnery Publishing (website). Hiring on the people who crafted the Swift Boat Veterans attack on John Kerry could prove to be a big plus in terms of their ability to generate buzz and publicity, but it could also be a negative, as people may be growing tired of their truth-impaired act. One thing is certain: the production of outrageous ads will definitely increase their exposure via the mainstream media as well as through the vast right wing media network. "The right wing is much more powerful across the board in the media than are liberals or the left, whether we are discussing radio, TV or the internet," John Stauber, a founder of the Center for Media and Democracy (website), wrote in an e-mail. Stauber argued that the right is "more powerful on the internet because they operate within the overarching right wing echo chamber." While "Moveon.org can reach millions via email, its campaigns don't echo and reverberate reaching tens of millions through Limbaugh, Scarborough, O'Reilly, and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal." Stauber pointed out "the brilliant way the right wing used 527 groups in the past election," as an example of their reach. "The pro-Kerry forces thought they had the 527 political battlefield to themselves. Then the Republicans pulled out their check books and hired their PR operatives, who charged in with just as much money and much nastier and more effective messages, as demonstrated by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth internet and TV campaign which just hammered Kerry in swing states." While the "Internet is now the most important media" for liberals and the left, for the right, the Internet is just another key part of their echo chamber with right wing talk radio, Fox TV, and the increasing conservative mainstream media. The echo chamber amplifies the right wing internet media in ways currently unavailable to the left. In the media as in politics, progressives have a long, long way to go, barely getting started while the right wing just keeps forging ahead in front." In 1517, Richard Viguerie and David Franke write in their book, Martin Luther had a "secret weapon": the printing press. By the time of the American Revolution the printing press was no longer a secret, so the task was "harnessing...the...technology on a more massive scale than had ever been attempted before." The rise of the right "from obscurity to attain[ing] power in the second half of the twentieth century" had to do with many things, including a steadfast grassroots effort, "the communications networks," and "the conservatives' new media weapon, which also served as their main source of funding." Through it all, Viguerie and Franke maintain, "the ruling liberal establishment, which sought first to ignore the conservatives, then to ridicule them, then to suppress them...[refused] to utilize the new media until it was too late." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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OTHER LINKSMatt Stoller Is the privatization scheme just a junk mail operation?It appears that USA Next, the front group for Social Security privatization, was really just a junk mail and spam operation in disguise to benefit Richard Viguerie in the 1990s. It appears that it engaged mostly in scaring up donations from conservative activists before becoming a corporate shell for pharmaceutical industry and energy industry money and lobbying. 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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Social Security Privatization
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