Scaife Must Be So Proud

From Dana Milbank at the Washington Post:

Representatives of prominent conservative groups converged on the Heritage Foundation on Monday afternoon for the umpteenth in a series of gatherings to draw attention to the Benghazi controversy.

But this one took an unexpected turn.

What began as a session purportedly about “unanswered questions” surrounding the September 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya deteriorated into the ugly taunting of a woman in the room who wore an Islamic head covering.

Yea, no one would have expected that!  I mean look at who was on the panel:

Unanswered Questions, Unaccountable Officials, Broken Trust

Chris Plante, WMAL Talk Radio Host (Moderator)
Clare Lopez, Member, Citizens' Commission on Benghazi, and Vice President for Research &; Analysis, Center for Security Policy
Brigitte Gabriel, Founder, President and CEO, ACT! for America
Frank Gaffney, President, Center for Security Policy

So we have of the 4 people on the panel half are from the Center for Security Policy.

That would be the same Center for Security Policy that got about 52% of its foundation support from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife ($5.126 million from Sarah Scaife and an even $1 million from Carthage out of a total $11,612,809, according to the Bridge Project)

And, of course, it was a Heritage Foundation event so which got about 20% of it's foundation support from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife ($24.235 million from Sarah Scaife, $2.544 million from Carthage and $1.35 million from Allegheny out of a total of about $146 million, according to the Bridge Project)

Go read Milbank for the ugly Scaife funded details.

Yea, he must be so so proud of himself.

Refuting Spakovsky Who's "Refuting" Mediamatters

This'll be kinda circular so bear with me for a while.

In today's Tribune-Review my good friends on the [board who decides these things] decided to give Hans A. Von Spakovsky some space in (as the headline puts it):

Refuting (not rebutting) Media Matters
But with the usual misplacement of some very pertinent information (a practice so prevalent on the Trib editorial page), he does neither.

Hans begins:

Media Matters, the self-styled “media watchdog” of the left, has accused the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review of using “deceptive numbers” to “attack” immigration reform. But the Trib is exactly right when it says that the Obama administration is not committed to border enforcement and cannot be trusted to implement a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

The criticisms voiced by Media Matters are way off base — particularly their claims about so-called “secret numbers” from The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

Of course he leaves out how much money the owner of the paper's given to those two fine organizations. Here, let me help you with that:

•  The Center for Immigration Studies has recieved a total of $11,476,000 in foundation money over the years with 17% of it ($1,947,5000) coming from two foundations (Sarah Scaife and Carthage) controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife.  Indeed in the first decade of records found at the bridge project (1991,2001), Scaife's foundations gave about 66% of the total foundational support.  I think that's called "seed money" but I could be wrong.
• We all know about how much Scaife's sent to the Heritage Foundation.  A this point, Heritage has received $109,986,558 in foundation money with about 25% ($27,944,000) coming from three Scaife foundations (Allegheny, Carthage and Sarah Scaife).  In the first decade of Heritage numbers found at the Bridge Project (1985-1995), Scaife's foundations gave almost exactly half of the foundation money given to Heritage ($12,439,000 out of $25,138,677).  Again, seed money.

But that's old stuff.  While its omission invalidates anything that follows, still let's move on.  This is how the Media Matters posting Von Spakovsky found so offensive begins:

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review cited deceptive statistics from the Heritage Foundation to attack the immigration reform effort, falsely claiming that the Obama administration is not enforcing current laws and arguing that it would continue this practice under a comprehensive immigration reform law.

A December 15 editorial by the Tribune-Review cited a post by the Heritage Foundation to claim that "the deportation of illegal aliens, in fact, has sunk to its lowest level in 40 years" and that the Department of Homeland Security has accepted 81 percent of 580,000 applicants for provisional legal status under a program called the Deferred Act of Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The Tribune-Review argued that these numbers show that the Obama administration is not committed to border enforcement and therefore should not be trusted to roll out a comprehensive immigration reform plan.

But the Tribune-Review's analysis should be taken with a grain of salt since its Heritage Foundation numbers come from "secret numbers" obtained by the anti-immigrant nativist Center for Immigration Studies, which is known for fabricating information and pushing misleading studies.

Let's start with that "secret numbers" link since Von Spakovsky mentions it specifically.  It leads to this paragraph in this piece at the Washington Times:

Authorities deported fewer illegal immigrants in fiscal 2013 than at any time since President Obama took office, according to secret numbers obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies that suggest Mr. Obama’s nondeportation policies have hindered removals.

Just 364,700 illegal immigrants were removed in fiscal 2013, according to internal numbers from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement that CIS released Wednesday — down 11 percent from the nearly 410,000 who were deported in 2012.

And here's that report from CIS - and I'll ask, where do you think the Washington Times came up with the phrase "secret numbers"?  Here:

The report also presents previously unpublished statistics disclosing the startlingly large number of cases on ICE’s post-final-order docket of aliens who have been ordered removed, but who remain living here in defiance of immigration enforcement.

Now let's go back to how Hans pumped up the charge against Media Matters:

...particularly their claims about so-called “secret numbers” from The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS)

He wants you to think that the charge of "secret numbers" came from Media Matters when it was actually from the Washington Times piece dutifully describing the very CIS "research" he's trying to defend.

Didn't he think someone would check?

Then there's Von Spakovsky's next charge:

Media Matters accused CIS of “fabricating information.”

But then he rebuts the charge by citing the very same Washington Times piece we've just been talking about.  The point being, he had to know about how they were the exact source of the "secret numbers" phrase and yet still decided not to tell you.

But let's look back at that "fabricating information" charge.  When and how did Media Matters say it?  What context?  It's in a sentence discrediting CIS in general - it's not about the specific charge Von Spakovsky attempts to rebut with the Washington Times piece.  The link at Media Matters leads to this PDF from the Center for New Community where we can read this description of CIS from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

CIS often manipulates data, relying on shaky statistics or faulty logic to come to the preordained conclusion that immigration is bad for this country.

That sentence is from this page at SPLC.  Here's an example of why the SPLC thinks CIS "fabricates information":

"Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name: Inside the Green Card Marriage Phenomenon" (November 2008). This report alleges widespread fraud among marriages between American citizens and foreigners, but then goes on to admit that "there is no way of knowing" just how prevalent marriage fraud is because there is no systematic data. CIS even concedes that most marriages "between Americans and foreign nationals are legitimate." Then, based on this non-data, CIS gets to what seems to be the real point of its study — "if small-time con artists and Third-World gold-diggers can obtain green cards with so little resistance, then surely terrorists can." Fraudulent marriage applications, CIS concludes, are "prevalent among international terrorists, including members of Al-Qaeda. [Bolding in original.]

So much unmentioned by Von Spakovsky...kinda makes you wonder who's fabricating what information for which purpose.

More On Birther Diana West And The Trib

On November 22, The Tribune Review published this piece by Diana West.

We've written about her before.  In that blog post we let you know that she thinks that Rush Limbaugh is reluctant to discuss President Obama's "eligibility" because Rush "has a comfort zone" and (obviously) the birth certificate is outside of it.

Yea.  I know.  That's funny.

The current piece is about how FDR, by "normalizing" relations with the USSR in 1933 opened the door to:

[T]his Soviet war on America, spearheaded by traitors directed by Moscow, would intensify. A veritable army of Stalin's secret agents, agents of influence, fellow travelers and dupes entered the U.S. government and related institutions. They would fight an unceasing stealth war against this country, even — I should say, especially — during World War II.

Blah, blah, blah.  To quote the title of neoconservative historian Ronald Radosh's review of West's book: American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character, this is "McCarthy on Steroids." And that's from Frontpage.com which is published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  The David Horowitz Freedom Center has received $7.75 million in Scaife foundation money (about 36% of the total foundation money received by DHFC).

So she's not liked by at least one conservative at at least one Scaife-funded media outlet.

And this is where it gets interesting.  If we go onto her website, we find this:

On Wednesday, November 20, I received the Mightier Pen Award from Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy at the Union League Club in Manhattan. It was a truly spectacular event. As I noted in my remarks, in early September when Frank announced the award, which is dedicated to the doctrine of peace through strength, it came not only as a great honor, but also as a welcome missile shield against continuing attacks on me and American Betrayal. I can't thank Frank and CSP enough for their unwavering support and friendship throughout, and now, for this unforgettable celebration.

Hmm...Frank Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy.  We've seen them before, haven't we?

And you do know that the Center for Security Policy has received about $5.9 million in Scaife foundation money over the years, right?  Or that that's about 58% of the CSP's total?

Then there's this from Heritage:

In American Betrayal, Diana West argues that – current policies today notwithstanding – America began to abandon its core ideals and march toward Socialism nearly 75 years ago. Starting in the late 1930s, at the time of FDR, the Soviets were already in a position to take advantage of the many communist sympathizers in the U.S. Not only FDR, but also Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and those in their inner circles played roles in enabling the U.S.S.R. as well as concealing the massive Moscow-directed penetration of American society. West shows that the system of spies designed to denigrate the American way of life was deep and extensive.

And as we all know, the Heritage Foundation's received tens of millions from the various Scaife controlled foundations ($27.944 at last count, or about 25% of the total).

It's astounding (time is fleeting) how much Scaife money is swirling around both sides of this story.

But it's still McCarthy on steroids.  And West's still a birther - that alone should invalidate anything (ANYTHING) she's written since.

Bad News For RM Scaife

We all know how embedded Richard Mellon Scaife is with the Heritage Foundation.  The owner of the Tribune-Review is vice chairman of the board of trustees and his foundations have given wads of sweaty money (at least $24 million worth) to that venerable rightwing think tank.

But yesterday, Senator Orrin Hatch called them out:


The important part:

Heritage used to be the conservative organization helping Republicans and helping conservatives and helping us to be able to have the best intellectual conservative ideas. There's a real question on the minds of many Republicans now, and I'm not just thinking for myself, for a lot of people - is Heritage going to go so political that it doesn't amount to anything anymore? I hope not. I'm going to try to help survive and do well. But right now I think it's in danger of losing its clout and its power around Washington, DC.

Uh-oh.

So what's Scaife's braintrust gonna now do with Orrin?  Only last August they praised him for this speech on the Senate Floor.

Like the rest of the GOP's internal arguments, this'll be fun to watch.

A Warm Tribune-Review Sendoff

Where Eric Heyl offers a nice moist towel (metaphorical, of course) to Ed Feulner, Trib columnist and current President of the Heritage Foundation.

For those not familiar with this story, here's some background.  Earlier this month the Tribune-Review reported that South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint would be resigning from the Senate to replace Feulner as President of the Heritage Foundation.  According to this piece from Newsmax, this makes for one big happy:

Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner is enthusiastically welcoming the appointment of South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint as his replacement.

In announcing that DeMint will step down from the Senate on Dec. 31 to take over the running of the foundation, Feulner issued the following statement.

“Three years ago, I told the Heritage Foundation's Board of Trustees that I would step down as president in April of 2013. I urged them to set up a formal succession process and begin a national search.

“During their nationwide search, the Board looked for a successor who would keep Heritage on its course of growth and innovation, and preserve our widely acknowledged status as an institutional center of the conservative movement. And the Board has found a splendid successor.

“I'm delighted to announce that the Board has elected Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina to take over next April as President of The Heritage Foundation.

Do I need to add that Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife is the Vice-President of the Board of Trustees for Heritage and also owns 40% of Newsmax?

Nice tight little web of journalismness there, huh?  All those connections to Scaife.  No mention of them in Scaife's paper...

Anyway, I wanted to point out a few things.  I think we can gather where Heyl did his research for his first question:

Q: You shepherded The Heritage Foundation from a nine-member outfit to an organization that employees 275-plus and occupies three Washington, D.C., buildings. Were you confident setting out that you could grow the foundation into what The New York Times once called “the Parthenon of the conservative metropolis”?

If you go to Ed Feulner's bio at Heritage, you'll see these two paragraphs at the top:

Edwin J. Feulner’s leadership as President of The Heritage Foundation has transformed the think tank from a small policy shop into America’s powerhouse of conservative ideas and what the New York Times calls “the Parthenon of the conservative metropolis.”

Under Feulner, Heritage’s presence in Washington grew from a nine-member staff working out of a rented office on Capitol Hill in 1977 to a 275-person organization occupying three office buildings near the U.S. Capitol today.

Eric, that's some great in-depth research, my friend!  Must've taken you all of 6 seconds to find.  In touting Heritage, Feulner points out how it became such a powerhouse; credibility, marketing and timeliness.

On its credibility, he responds with this on pointing out some of Heritage's significant achievements:

It‘s been 35 years so I could go through a long, long list. But in the ’80s, it has to be when Ronald Reagan (backed) the anti-missile defense system, or Star Wars, as it was then called, and (the ideas) that tax reform and tax cuts lead to a growing economy.

Hmm...so the great achievements are SDI and Trickle-down Economics - but was any of it true?

Well we have the American Physical Society way back in 1987 already doubting the feasibility of the Strategic Defense Initiative and we all know how well Trickle-down works:

The tax cuts came in 1981, Reagan's first year in office. The administration's plan slashed corporate and individual income tax rates, with the biggest cut in the top rate. The Reagan team promised that their tax cuts would jolt the economy back to life because, as the Wall Street Journal's editors put it, "high taxes interfere with natural human creativity and drive." And the true believers went so far as to suggest that the economy would grow fast enough that tax revenues would actually rise, making the tax cuts painless.

The results never came close to measuring up to the supply-side rhetoric. For starters, the tax cuts busted the federal budget. The federal deficit ballooned from 2.7% of GDP in 1980 to 6% of GDP in 1983, the largest peacetime deficit in history, and was still 5% of GDP in 1986. Tax revenues did pick up, especially after the 1983 payroll tax increase kicked in, reducing the deficit somewhat. Still, tax revenues grew far more slowly over than the 1980s business cycle (2.5% from 1979 to 1989) than they did in the 1990s business cycle (4.1% from 1989 to 2000).

Yea, great achievements, there Ed.

One bit of early Heritage history not brought up much these days (and a h/t to an astute reader for bringing this to my attention): Roger Pearson.  From the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism at Ferris State University:

Fascist ideologist Roger Pearson, a Pioneer Fund beneficiary ($568,000 from 1981-1991) and author of Eugenics and Race, published by Willis Carto's notoriously anti-Semitic Noontide Press, argues that the white race is endangered by inferior genetic stock, but with proper use of modern biological technology "a new super-generation" descended from "only the fittest" of the previous generation can be produced. The first nation to adopt such a scientific breeding program, Pearson contends, "would dominate the rest of the world."

In 1965 Pearson became editor of Western Destiny, a magazine established by Carto and dedicated to spreading fascist ideology. Using the pseudonym [link to deposition] of Stephan Langton, Pearson then became the editor of The New Patriot, a short-lived magazine published in 1966-67 to conduct "a responsible but penetrating inquiry into every aspect of the Jewish Question," which included articles such as "Zionists and the Plot Against South Africa," "Early Jews and the Rise of Jewish Money Power," and "Swindlers of the Crematoria."

Despite Pearson's long history of association with neo-Nazi groups, he was appointed in 1977 to the original board of editors of Policy Review, a journal published by the respected Heritage Foundation, a conservative political research organization in Washington, D.C. [Emphasis added.]

After an expose in the Washington Post in May, 1977, Pearson was asked to leave Heritage.  Feulner became President of Heritage in 1977 - would've been nice to see a comment on how/why Heritage fired the   fascist (maybe even why they hired him in the first place), huh?