Post by RPankn on Apr 6, 2004 4:51:03 GMT -5
I wasn't sure where exactly to post this article as it covers a lot of ground from the media, to neo-con think tanks to political candidates. But since Bush is a neo-con and the Republican Party is currently controlled by them, I thought this would be the best place for it.
I don't agree with the author's conclusions concerning Podesta's "Progressive" Policy Institute because its suggestions for Kerry's foreign policy show that the Democrats have their own version of neo-cons, too
George W. Bush's back-door
political machine
It's anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, and is working to create a one-party America
© 2004 by Jerry M. Landay
for Mediatransparency.org
POSTED MARCH 18, 2004 --
On a Tuesday evening in mid-January, a right-wing Washington writer-for-hire named Clark Judge appeared on public radio's Marketplace.
In a commentary heard by an estimated five million people, Judge complained that the philanthropist George Soros was engaged in an "unethical" effort to outwit legal restrictions on campaign contributions.
Judge huffed that Soros, along with the Democratic Party, was "ponying up" millions of dollars in funding to tax-exempt, liberal advocacy organizations to prevent the re-election of George W. Bush. He labeled Soros and the Democrats "prime abusers," for using barely legal tactics to evade the contribution ceilings of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law.
Judge was correct when he implied that legal and IRS regulations that are supposed to curb political activities by tax-exempt non-profit organizations are riddled with loopholes. Judge went much farther, though, implying that Soros and the Democrats had cornered the market on cheating. He warned his listeners to "brace...for the biggest tidal wave of political sewage in American history" from these Soros-supported organizations.
The Pot and the Kettle
In political parlance, Judge was acting as a surrogate. He had no apparent connection with the Bush campaign. But he had struck a blow for Bush's re-election on behalf of the political propaganda machine of the organized right. To the uninitiated, Judge's credentials seemed to lend throw-weight to his attack: managing director of the White House Writers Group, an umbrella firm of former ghostwriters for Republican presidents and bureaucrats now at the service of anyone willing to pay.
But only those in the know would understand the flaws in Judge's statements. He failed to mention that hundreds of tax-exempt organizations of the far right have been exploiting the twilight zone of campaign and IRS regulations for three decades -- receiving billions of dollars in grants and contributions to wage ideo-political warfare for far-right ideas, causes, and Republican candidates. Liberal political organizations resort to the same shortcuts, but they pale when compared to the scale and duration of right-wing mischief. Judge is one more cog in a vast machine that, in the judgment of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has "played a critical role in helping the Republican Party to dominate state, local and national politics." It is now operating at full throttle to keep Bush in office.
Though its activists like to call themselves conservatives, there is nothing they wish to "conserve" beyond their power, status, and wealth. They are right-wing radicals who have stolen the GOP away from the true conservatives who once dominated it.
The Cohort
In its latest report, called The Axis of Ideology, the NCRP has identified at least 350 tax-exempt, ostensibly non-partisan organizations within the right-wing's activist front, many operating at regional, state, and local levels. They have penetrated the three branches of the federal government, and dominate the political debate. They guide and oversee the agenda that directs White House action (or inaction). Two of these organizations housed the planners who invented the Iraq war.
Rob Stein, an independent Washington researcher, follows the money flow to the radical activist establishment. He estimates that since the early 1970s at least $2.5 to $3 billion in funding has been awarded to the 43 major activist organizations he tracks that constitute the core of the radical machine.
He terms the big 43 the "cohort" -- an "incubator of right-wing, ideological policies that constitute the administration's agenda, and, to the extent that it has one, runs its policy machinery."
He calls the cohort "a potent, never-ending source of intellectual content, laying down the slogans, myths, and buzz words that have helped shift public opinion rightward." The movement's propulsive energies are largely generated within the cohort.
Stein describes it as movement conservatism's "intellectual infrastructure" -- multiple-issue, non-profit, tax-exempt, and supposedly non-partisan. The apparatus includes think tanks, policy institutes, media-harassment enterprises, as well as litigation firms that file lawsuits to impose their ideological templates on the law.
They mastermind the machinery of radical politics, policy, and regulations. They include campus-based centers of scholarship, student associations, and scores of publications. The shorthand of their faith is well known: less government, generous tax cuts for the privileged, privatization or elimination of Social Security and Medicare, rollbacks of environmental safeguards, major curbs on the public's right to go to court, and a laissez-faire free market system unfettered by regulations or public-interest accountability. Bush campaigns to advance the ideological agenda of the right, and the radical front in turn campaigns for Bush.
Kind of long article, more here: www.mediatransparency.org/stories/apparat.html
I don't agree with the author's conclusions concerning Podesta's "Progressive" Policy Institute because its suggestions for Kerry's foreign policy show that the Democrats have their own version of neo-cons, too
George W. Bush's back-door
political machine
It's anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, and is working to create a one-party America
© 2004 by Jerry M. Landay
for Mediatransparency.org
POSTED MARCH 18, 2004 --
On a Tuesday evening in mid-January, a right-wing Washington writer-for-hire named Clark Judge appeared on public radio's Marketplace.
In a commentary heard by an estimated five million people, Judge complained that the philanthropist George Soros was engaged in an "unethical" effort to outwit legal restrictions on campaign contributions.
Judge huffed that Soros, along with the Democratic Party, was "ponying up" millions of dollars in funding to tax-exempt, liberal advocacy organizations to prevent the re-election of George W. Bush. He labeled Soros and the Democrats "prime abusers," for using barely legal tactics to evade the contribution ceilings of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law.
Judge was correct when he implied that legal and IRS regulations that are supposed to curb political activities by tax-exempt non-profit organizations are riddled with loopholes. Judge went much farther, though, implying that Soros and the Democrats had cornered the market on cheating. He warned his listeners to "brace...for the biggest tidal wave of political sewage in American history" from these Soros-supported organizations.
The Pot and the Kettle
In political parlance, Judge was acting as a surrogate. He had no apparent connection with the Bush campaign. But he had struck a blow for Bush's re-election on behalf of the political propaganda machine of the organized right. To the uninitiated, Judge's credentials seemed to lend throw-weight to his attack: managing director of the White House Writers Group, an umbrella firm of former ghostwriters for Republican presidents and bureaucrats now at the service of anyone willing to pay.
But only those in the know would understand the flaws in Judge's statements. He failed to mention that hundreds of tax-exempt organizations of the far right have been exploiting the twilight zone of campaign and IRS regulations for three decades -- receiving billions of dollars in grants and contributions to wage ideo-political warfare for far-right ideas, causes, and Republican candidates. Liberal political organizations resort to the same shortcuts, but they pale when compared to the scale and duration of right-wing mischief. Judge is one more cog in a vast machine that, in the judgment of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) has "played a critical role in helping the Republican Party to dominate state, local and national politics." It is now operating at full throttle to keep Bush in office.
Though its activists like to call themselves conservatives, there is nothing they wish to "conserve" beyond their power, status, and wealth. They are right-wing radicals who have stolen the GOP away from the true conservatives who once dominated it.
The Cohort
In its latest report, called The Axis of Ideology, the NCRP has identified at least 350 tax-exempt, ostensibly non-partisan organizations within the right-wing's activist front, many operating at regional, state, and local levels. They have penetrated the three branches of the federal government, and dominate the political debate. They guide and oversee the agenda that directs White House action (or inaction). Two of these organizations housed the planners who invented the Iraq war.
Rob Stein, an independent Washington researcher, follows the money flow to the radical activist establishment. He estimates that since the early 1970s at least $2.5 to $3 billion in funding has been awarded to the 43 major activist organizations he tracks that constitute the core of the radical machine.
He terms the big 43 the "cohort" -- an "incubator of right-wing, ideological policies that constitute the administration's agenda, and, to the extent that it has one, runs its policy machinery."
He calls the cohort "a potent, never-ending source of intellectual content, laying down the slogans, myths, and buzz words that have helped shift public opinion rightward." The movement's propulsive energies are largely generated within the cohort.
Stein describes it as movement conservatism's "intellectual infrastructure" -- multiple-issue, non-profit, tax-exempt, and supposedly non-partisan. The apparatus includes think tanks, policy institutes, media-harassment enterprises, as well as litigation firms that file lawsuits to impose their ideological templates on the law.
They mastermind the machinery of radical politics, policy, and regulations. They include campus-based centers of scholarship, student associations, and scores of publications. The shorthand of their faith is well known: less government, generous tax cuts for the privileged, privatization or elimination of Social Security and Medicare, rollbacks of environmental safeguards, major curbs on the public's right to go to court, and a laissez-faire free market system unfettered by regulations or public-interest accountability. Bush campaigns to advance the ideological agenda of the right, and the radical front in turn campaigns for Bush.
Kind of long article, more here: www.mediatransparency.org/stories/apparat.html