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More stories by Bill Berkowitz
BornAliveTruth.org plays loose with the facts in targeting Obama
PAC man
Freedom's Watch smearing Democratic Congressional candidates with false robo-calls
Republicans resurrecting Jeremiah Wright as campaign issue
David Bossie's big play
Defining Obama 24/7
Anti-gay politics continues to drive Don Wildmon's American Family Association
A president desperately seeking a legacy
'Battling for America's Soul'
John Hawkins: A strident right-wing voice in a crowded blogosphere
Media Transparency writers
Andrew J. Weaver &
Nicole Seibert
Andrew J. Weaver, et. al.
Bill Berkowitz
Bryan G. Pfeifer
Dave Johnson
David Domke
David Neiwert
David Rubenstein
Dennis Redovich
Eric Alterman
Hacked By 1nj3ct.org
Jerry Landay
Mark & Louise Zwick
Max Blumenthal
Michael Winship
Phil Wilayto
Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D.
Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D. and Lawrence H. McGaughey, Esq.
Rob Levine
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Bill Berkowitz
September 15, 2005
Heritage Foundation Capitalizes on Katrina
Washington, DC's premier right wing think tank puts forward a laundry list of conservative proposals to rebuild the Gulf Coast
Drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, suspend environmental regulations including the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, suspend prevailing wage labor laws, promote vouchers and school choice, repeal the estate tax and copiously fund faith-based organizations. These are just some of the recommendations a trio of hearty Heritage Foundation senior management officials are making to best facilitate the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.
Just as the Iraq War has been a Petri Dish for the neoconservative foreign policy agenda, rebuilding the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina could prove to be the mother of all testing grounds for a passel of active Heritage Foundation's domestic policy initiatives.
Washington, DC's most prestigious and influential right wing think tank has been rocking and rolling since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
In a WebMemo entitled "President's Bold Action on Davis-Bacon Will Aid the Relief Effort," Senior Research Fellow Ronald D. Utt applauded Bush for suspending provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act applying "to federally funded construction projects in the Gulf Coast areas hit by Hurricane Katrina."
Utt wrote that the president "is to be commended for showing the courage to take this important but controversial stand... eliminating the 'prevailing wage' clause [which] should lead to a more efficient and lower cost recovery." Finally, without a hint of irony as to which entities will actually capitalize on the disaster, Utt praises the president for showing courage "in denying the politically powerful labor unions the unfair benefits they would otherwise have reaped from others' misfortune."
Two Heritage Press Room commentaries warned against playing the "blame game":
In her September 9, commentary entitled "Preventing future catastrophes," Helle Dale, the director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the foundation, deflects blame from President Bush while praising him for "the creation of an investigatory committee to look into 'what went right and what went wrong,' as the president put it."
James Carafano's September 13, Press Room commentary entitled "The Limits of Relief," provides a litany of so-called reasonable hypotheses as to why it took so long for the government to provide relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
It will be interesting to see how the foundation's commentators spin President Bush's remarks on Tuesday, September 13, when he said that he "take[s] responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina.
A far more impressive Heritage Foundation document, however, says it all: An expansive Special Report written by Ed Meese, Stuart Butler, and Kim Holmes, lay out the foundation's cross-pollinated all-encompassing plan for rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Entitled "From Tragedy to Triumph: Principled Solutions for Rebuilding Lives and Communities," the Special Report provides a set of guidelines and recommendations which come from the foundation's two-plus decade playbook.
Meese and comrades maintain that it is imperative "that taking action swiftly does not lead to steps that cause dollars to be used inefficiently or unwise decisions that will frustrate rather than achieve long term success."
The Heritage Foundation's "Guidelines" for rebuilding the Gulf Coast include:
- The federal government should provide support and assistance only in those situations that are beyond the capabilities of state and local governments and the private sector. State and local governments must retain their primary role as first responders to disasters. The federal government should avoid federalizing state and local first response agencies and activities.
- Federal financial aid, when necessary, should be provided in a manner that promotes accountability, flexibility, and creativity. In general, tools such as tax credits and voucher programs, which allow individuals and families to direct funds, should be utilized to encourage private-sector innovation and sensitivity to individual needs and preferences.
- Consistent with genuine health and safety needs, red tape should be reduced or eliminated to speed up private-sector investment and initiative in the rebuilding of facilities and the restoration of businesses. Regulations that are barriers to putting people back to work should be suspended or, at a minimum, streamlined.
- Congress should reorder its spending priorities, not just add new money while other money is being wasted. Now is the time to shift resources to their most important uses and away from lower-priority uses to use taxpayer dollars more effectively. It is critical that America focus on building capabilities for responding to a catastrophic disaster, not on catering to the wish lists of cities, parishes or counties, states, and stakeholders.
- Private entrepreneurial activity and vision, not bureaucratic government, must be the engine to rebuild. New approaches to public policy issues such as enhanced choice in public school education should be the norm, not the exception...The critical need now is to encourage investors and entrepreneurs to seek new opportunities within these cities...The key is to encourage private-sector creativity -- for example, by declaring New Orleans and other severely damaged areas "Opportunity Zones" in which capital gains tax on investments is eliminated and regulations eliminated or simplified.
- Funding from the federal government for homeland security and disaster response and relief activities should focus on national priorities, better regional coordination and communication, and capitalizing federal assets.
- Catastrophic disasters will require a large-scale and rapid military response that only the National Guard can provide. The National Guard needs to be restructured to make it both more effective and quicker to take action.
According to Meese, Butler and Holmes the key to successfully rebuilding the Gulf Coast is to "encourage creative and rapid private investment through incentives and reduced regulation, and to channel long-term education, health, and other assistance directly to the people and areas affected so that they can control their future."
The report suggests that, "New Orleans and other affected areas" be declared "Opportunity Zones." In these areas, "the President should direct an Emergency Board, drawn from federal, state, and local agencies and the private sector, to identify regulations at all levels that impede recovery and should propose temporary suspension or modification of these rules."
Suspending Davis-Bacon "would significantly reduce the cost of reconstruction and provide more opportunities for displaced Americans who are without jobs to work on federal projects to restore their neighborhoods." They do not detail the putting in place of any mechanisms aimed at preventing the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast from turning into an Iraq-like rip off. In addition, they do not explain how workers, many of whom have lost everything, can possibly afford to rebuild their homes and their lives by working for wages at, or close to, the minimum wage.
They recommend "repeal[ing] or waiv[ing] restrictive environmental regulations that hamper rebuilding a broad array of infrastructure from refineries to roads and stadiums." They also advocate "substantial changes in environmental laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Water Act" which they charge "have contributed to Katrina's damage,"
They believe the best way to get the energy infrastructure up and running is to "waive or repeal Clean Air Act (CAA) regulations that hamper refinery rebuilding and expansion," "waive or repeal gasoline formulation requirements under the Clean Air Act so as to allow gasoline markets to work more flexibly and efficiently and reduce costs to the American consumer," and "increase the production of oil in the United States" by drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
As an indication of how out of touch the Heritage Foundation is with the vast majority of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, they are offering a so-called tax relief package that will have little to no effect on most of the victims' lives. Front and center are recommendations to: "streamline or suspend" parts of the federal tax code in the so-called Opportunity Zones; repeal the estate tax in order to prevent the victims of the disaster from being "hounded by the IRS"; "postpone payment of 2004 and 2005 individual and business income taxes for Katrina's victims," and "waive penalties for withdrawals from tax-advantaged savings such as IRAs and 401(k) plans."
How many of the folks that you saw on the roofs of their houses and stuffed into the crumbling Superdome have IRAs and 401(k) plans, Mr. Meese?
The report goes on to propose "refundable tax credits for the purchase of the kind of health insurance that best meets their personal needs," voucherizing public school education, and encouraging public/private partnerships "through leasing" instead of constructing new public schools.
Finally, the report advocates the elimination of any-and-all barriers that prevent "charitable and faith-based groups, as well as uncertified or non-union individuals," from participating fully in the reconstruction.
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Reader Comments
Knowing the modus operandi of the Heritage Foundation, the bulk of opportunity will occur for its constituency of narrow political ideologues. "Opportunity Zones" sounds like an Orwellian code word employed to obscure the Foundation's true intent in reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, namely to make the Gulf Coast the "poster child" for the radical right's autocratic ideology. If conservative think tanks are given free rein, this catastrophe will benefit the corporate oligarchy at the expense of the people of the Gulf Coast. This type of politically motivated recovery will most certainly increase the divisions between people instead of encouraging them to solve problems through consensus and cooperation. The emphasis in reconstruction should be on meeting needs of all the people not on the self -interest of narrow political agendas. Let's not "stack the deck" by prejudicing the recovery with radical agendas. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "America does not let its needy citizens fend for themselves."
--- KenDG | 9-22-2005 | 3:57 pm
MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH
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December 12, 2008
Media Matters Action Network acquires MediaTransparency.org from Cursor, Inc.
Today, Media Matters Action Network and Cursor, Inc. jointly announced the sale of Cursor, Inc.'s website MediaTansparency.org to Media Matters Action Network. Together they released the following statements:
“This sale is a win-win for both parties,” said Rob Levine, president of Cursor, Inc. “We've been trying for some time to institutionalize our organization and websites but have unfortunately been unable to raise the funds necessary to carry on our labor-intensive tasks. As the primary tool for tracking the funding of conservative organizations and their representatives who appear in the media, MediaTansparency.org is an excellent fit for Media Matters as they continue to expand their efforts to hold the media accountable.”
“MediaTransparency.org is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking to hold the media to task. We are thrilled to have this important and dynamic tool in our belt,” said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters Action Network. “Cursor, Inc., has done an outstanding job developing MediaTransparency.org, the most robust database of its kind available today. The wealth of data they have assembled on the funding behind conservative organizations is unparalleled.”
Bill Berkowitz
October 10, 2008
BornAliveTruth.org plays loose with the facts in targeting Obama
Head of anti-abortion group claims Obama 'supports infanticide'
Two weeks ago, BornAliveTruth.org, an anti-abortion group headed by Jill Stanek, launched a major attack on Sen. Barack Obama with a very personal and heart-wrenching television advertisement aimed at the voters in the toss-up states of New Mexico and Ohio. The ad, which according to Stanek cost the organization $338,000 to run -- in addition to what it is paying its public relations firm, CRC Public Relations -- was titled "The Gianna ad," and features Gianna Jesson, who is identified as an "Abortion Survivor."
"My name is Gianna Jesson, born 31 years ago after a failed abortion," Jesson states in the ad. "But if Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn't be here. Four times Barack Obama voted to oppose a law to protect babies left to die after failed abortions. Senator Obama, please support Born Alive Infant Protection. I'm living proof these babies have a right to live."
The ad, paid for by conservative philanthropist Raymond Ruddy, "singles out Obama's efforts while in the Illinois Senate to defeat the Born Alive Infants Protection Act," according to the Associated Press' Jim Kuhnhein. The AP story reported that "Obama and abortion rights forces in Illinois have said the bill would have undermined the landmark Supreme Court case on abortion, Roe v. Wade."
The BornAliveTruth spot has garnered a great deal of media attention for both Jesson and Stanek. In a late-September telephone interview, Stanek told Media Transparency that both she and Jesson have made a number of television and radio appearances. According to Stanek, in its first two weeks, the ad garnered more than 200,000 hits on YouTube and other websites that have made it available.
Bill Berkowitz
September 26, 2008
PAC man
Our Country Deserves Better PAC aims to 'define' Obama's 'weaknesses' and make him 'an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief'
He maintains that the newly-launched anti-Obama political action committee is not tied, nor related, to the campaign of Sen. John McCain and that it is not out to Swiftboat Sen. Barack Obama. The PAC intends to "define [his] weaknesses as a candidate, and thus make him an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief." One of the group's earliest fundraising pitches, posted at the TownHall Spotlight, is titled "Barack Obama Sinks To A New Low." And among its ready-for-prime-time television advertisements are spots titled, "Obama Mocks America's Christian Heritage," "Obama's Patriotism Problems" and "Obama's Wrong Values."
He also pointed out that the PAC has clearly defined ethical lines that it will not cross when criticizing Obama.
Meet Joe Wierzbicki, the coordinator of Our Country Deserves Better PAC.
In the ever-expanding universe of Republican Party-sponsored/related groups attacking Sen. Barack Obama, add Our Country Deserves Better PAC to the list. Run by veteran California-based Republican Party conservative activists Sal Russo and Howard Kaloogian, Our Country Deserves Better PAC is a recently launched political action committee -- a committee organized to spend money for the election or defeat of a candidate -- that has several provocative pieces in the hopper.
In a series e-mail exchanges, PAC Coordinator Joe Wierzbicki told me that the Rancho Santa Marga, California-based entity hopes to "raise in excess of $1 million by Election Day," to run a series of anti-Obama television ads in as many as "ten states."
Bill Berkowitz
September 3, 2008
Freedom's Watch smearing Democratic Congressional candidates with false robo-calls
'Shady soft money group' going after Senate and House seats
Early last month the Republican lobbying group Freedom's Watch (FW) launched a series of television and radio advertisements criticizing congressional Democrats for going on vacation instead of staying in Washington and dealing with energy legislation. One ad urged supporters to "Tell Mark Udall," the Colorado Democratic Congressman now running for a Senate seat, "to show up to work and start fixing Colorado's energy crisis."
Freedom's Watch, which made its first public appearance with a $15 million radio and television advertising campaign aimed at maintaining Congressional support for President Bush's Iraq troop "surge" [escalation] just prior to General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's Congressional appearances in late-August 2007, is now attacking Democrats in a number of House and Senate campaigns.
Tony Feather, a veteran of past GOP campaigns, recently signed on "to run" Freedom's Watch's "new Senate-focused wing," the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza recently reported. Feather, who will oversee the group's work in a number of Senate contests, was "intimately involved in the founding of Progress for America, a 527 group aligned with Republicans that spent millions on advertisements during the 2004 presidential election," the newspaper reported. Feather is a partner in Feather, Larson & Synhorst, "a do-it-all Republican consulting firm with strong ties to the Bush team."
In addition to its new focus on a handful of Senate seats, Freedom's Watch is commissioning misleading or false robo-calls in dozens of Congressional races. The House campaign is being led by Carl Forti, the former communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee. In early July, PolitickerOH.com reported that FW was running advertisements / robo calls "against nine state lawmakers in eight different states." According to Kyle Kutuchief, writing for The Point, the organization "has been making robo-calls into the 16th Congressional District falsely attacking Democratic Candidate John Boccieri for voting for a gas tax in the State of Ohio in 2003."
Bill Berkowitz
August 20, 2008
Republicans resurrecting Jeremiah Wright as campaign issue
Conservative philanthropy funded Media Research Center astonishingly claims news networks held collective tongues on the Wright affair
In 1962, two years after losing the presidency to John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon ran and lost the governor's race in California. At a post-election press conference, Nixon famously told reporters that they wouldn't "have Richard Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." It wasn't. He won the presidency in 1968, escalated the Vietnam War, was re-elected in 1972, and two years later he was forced to resign in disgrace over the Watergate Affair.
These days, one can easily imagine that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright might wish -- in his heart of hearts -- that the press, the cable news networks, conservative pundits, the headline writers and Republican Party operatives didn't have Jeremiah Wright "to kick around any more."
Thanks to conservative philanthropy and the Republican echo machine, the story about the relationship between the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Senator Barack Obama will be with us through Election Day and beyond. Whether Obama wins or loses, there will be much post-election analysis about how much the Wright Affair hurt the campaign.
Bill Berkowitz
August 14, 2008
David Bossie's big play
It won't be a post-Labor Day blockbuster or win critical acclaim, but Bossie's Citizens United is rolling out 'Hype: The Obama Effect,' an anti-Obama documentary that aims to make waves
Regnery has published a major anti-Obama book -- David Freddoso's "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate" -- and 2004 Swiftboater Jerome Corsi has written his -- "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality." All sorts of folks are peddling anti-Obama t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers and more. Now it's David Bossie's turn for a big politico/merchandizing play.
Although still a relatively young man, Bossie, the president of Citizens United, has been a political mudslinger for a nearly two decades. He gained some national notoriety in the 1990s when he was relentless in his pursuit of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and later that decade was fired from his position as an investigator for a House committee. Earlier this year, Bossie "took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University's newspaper and the Chicago Tribune ... searching for [Obama's] ... term paper," supposedly a thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament, Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer, reported in late July. Although he couldn't find it, he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News that "A thesis entitled Nuclear Disarmament, written at the height of The Cold War in 1983, might shed some light upon what Barack Obama thought about our most pressing foreign policy issue for 40-plus years (U.S.-Soviet Relations)."
Bossie's biggest play this election season is the production of an anti-Obama film: On the eve of the Democratic Party convention in Denver, Citizens United Productions will premiere its full-length documentary, "Hype: The Obama Effect." The film is unlikely to be a blockbuster, it thus far hasn't generated the buzz Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" did before its release, and will surely not be hitting the festival circuit. In fact, thus far, there are no movie houses listed under the "Theater" section of the hypemovie.com website, scheduled to show the film.
Bill Berkowitz
August 6, 2008
Defining Obama 24/7
Conservatives try to make presidential race about Democratic nominee, painting him as unreliable
As Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama trekked toward the final Democratic primaries, and it looked inevitable that Obama would be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, conservative pundits and cable television talk-show hosts, a host of blogs, and a number of newly formed organizations began intensifying their attacks on Obama, embarking on the early stages of one of Karl Rove's most effective political strategies: Directly attack the opponent's strengths. In the case of Obama, this means turning his very popularity into a negative, defining him as effete and more interested in celebrity before the Democrat can introduce and define himself to the larger nation.
Two new anti-Obama books, "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality" (Threshold Editions, August 2008) by Jerome Corsi -- the co-author of "Unfit for Command," the 2004 book that contained false attacks on Senator John Kerry's military service -- and "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate," by David Freddoso -- a former writer for the conservative weekly, Human Events and National Review Online staff reporter -- are aimed at taking the attacks to a mainstream audience.
Bill Berkowitz
August 1, 2008
Anti-gay politics continues to drive Don Wildmon's American Family Association
California's Proposition 8 draws big-buck supporters, while Wildmon declares that outcome of 'culture wars' depends on turning back gay marriage
Two different -- yet ultimately interlinked -- issues relating to the "homosexual agenda" are agitating the folks at the Tupelo, Mississippi-based headquarters of Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA) these days. One is your basic AFA-sponsored boycott; the other, according to Wildmon, will determine the final outcome of America's "culture wars."
Wildmon is simultaneously leading an effort to boycott the fast food giant McDonald's, and marshaling the troops in support of Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that would reverse the state's Supreme Court recent decision in support of gay marriage.
Why McDonalds? A short time back, the home of the Hamburgler donated $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) in exchange for membership in the NGLCC and a seat on the group's board of directors. That outraged Wildmon, the undisputed kingpin of calling boycotts against companies that might have a scent of gay-friendliness.
Bill Berkowitz
July 11, 2008
A president desperately seeking a legacy
George W. Bush goes back to touting 'compassionate conservatism' and the 'successes' of his faith-based initiative
In 2004, at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, President Bush's contribution to the evening's entertainment was his narration of a slide show that pictured him looking around the Oval Office for weapons of mass destruction. In one of the shots, Bush is looking under some furniture and remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."
Flash forward four years: At this year's dinner, Bush played highlights from a number of his previous appearances. In a wise decision, he left the WMD skit -- which was roundly criticized for making fun of the issue that was the driving force behind the invasion of Iraq, which has led to deaths of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis -- out of the highlight package.
These days, Bush is no longer concerned about whether WMD existed in Iraq.
Instead, he is desperately seeking a legacy; anything that he can latch onto that might trump the fact that a majority of Americans believe that he will go down as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. His search for a legacy could prove as futile as the search for WMD. At this point, it appears that it has landed him back he started a week after his inauguration in 2001; touting his faith-based initiative and "compassionate conservatism."
On January 29, 2001, a little over a week after the start of his first term, Bush, surrounded by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy, unveiled his faith-based initiative by issuing an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). He followed that up with another executive order that eventually established Faith-Based and Community offices at 11 federal agencies.
While Bush's faith-based initiative has spread its tentacles to a host of federal, state and local government agencies -- 35 governors and more than 70 mayors, both Democratic and Republican, have established programs modeled after the federal faith-based and community initiatives program – Congress has never even come close to passing legislation legally enacting it.
Bill Berkowitz
June 24, 2008
'Battling for America's Soul'
The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property leaps headlong into the showdown over same-sex marriage in California
They've been around for more than 30 years; trace their roots to a Brazilian anti-communist dissident Catholic; wear colorful outfits during their protests on college campuses; and apparently have enough spare change to fund three 4,000+ word simultaneously-placed advertisements in three national dailies.
Of all the conservative organizations that will be getting involved in the same-sex marriage showdown in California, one of the least known is a Catholic outfit called the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). TPF isn't a fly-by-night letter-head-only group that suddenly formed to get in on what promises to be one heck of a battle.
On June 5, in response to the California Supreme Court's ruling in support of same-sex marriage, TPF issued a press release announcing the publication of two-page advertisements critical of the decision, appearing "simultaneously" in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times, costing the group perhaps as much as three-quarters of a million dollars.
The ads, which explicitly called for civil disobedience, were titled "Battling for America's Soul: How Homosexual 'Marriage' Threatens Our Nation and Faith -- the TFP Urges Lawful and Conscientious Resistance."