DLC Funding Open Thread

11 Comments

1. 

   Dean Pajevic on February 11, 2006 at 4:01 pm

   Anybody know the ASCII code to make an accented e for expose?

   • 

     Arcturus on February 11, 2006 at 5:27 pm

     alt+0233 = é

     Glad to see this being talked about more. I’ve been pissing people off for years by insisting that the DLC/Clinton success was but further proof of the Vicotry of the Reagan revolution in 1980.

2. 

   Dean Pajevic on February 11, 2006 at 4:11 pm

   From IMDb news:

   Mormons Concerned Over Paxton Polygamy Drama

   America’s Mormon community is angry about Bill Paxton’s new TV drama Big Love, fearing it will spread the myth the religion allows polygamy. The Titanic star plays a Mormon with three wives – played by Chloe Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Ginnifer Goodwin – in the HBO show, which hits US TV screens next month.

   The Mormon Church is concerned the drama will refuel the misconception followers practice multiple marriage, which was banned 116 years ago, reports PageSix.com. Church spokeswoman Kim Farah says, “Polygamy was officially discontinued in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) in 1890. Those groups which continue the practice in Utah and elsewhere have no association (with us) and most of their practitioners have never been among our members. It will be regrettable if this program, by making polygamy the subject of entertainment, minimizes the seriousness of that problem.”

   A statement at the end of Big Love will read: “According to a joint report issued by the Utah and Arizona attorney general’s offices, July 2005, ‘approximately 20,000 to 40,000 or more people currently practice polygamy in the United States.’ The Mormon Church officially banned the practice of polygamy in 1890.”

3. 

   floridagal on February 11, 2006 at 4:19 pm

   at the start.  Have to check my records.

   Help!  I can NOT get a link to post here.  I had two different posts it won’t accept, keeps telling me I have the wrong html for the link, and I don’t.  One is posted right now at HEP and is fine there.  

   Any ideas? Here is the link to the post with the link I can post there and not here.  

   http://howardempowered.blogspot.com/2006/02/remember-when-howard-said-capturing.html

   And this one won’t let me use html…something changed here for posting?

   • 

     Dean Pajevic on February 11, 2006 at 4:29 pm

     Like this:

     Remember When Howard Said

     Right-click the page, and you can see the code I used, or you can e-mail me and i’ll send you the code.

   • 

     Dean Pajevic on February 11, 2006 at 4:30 pm

     So you’re saying that the DLC isn’t funded by these conservative groups any longer?

     • 

       the other colleen on February 11, 2006 at 8:20 pm

       So you’re saying that the DLC isn’t funded by these conservative groups any longer?

       I don’t know if the Heritage Foundation at one time funded the DLC but I do know that the Bradley Foundation gives sizable grants to both organizations.
       The DLC is characteristically coy about it’s funding sources and those defending it get very upset when the subject comes up. Nevertheless here’s a list of the major funding sources for their umbrella organization, The Third Way Foundation  (formerly the Progressive Foundation)
       The Bradley Foundation [http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=11219] (along with the Olin Foundation which also funds the TWF) is one of the major funding sources for right-wing groups (30 million a year) including The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy studies, The Independent Women’s Foundation (formerly Women for Clarence Thomas), The Heritage Foundation, American Conservative Union Foundation, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, and Washington states own Evergreen Freedom Foundation. To name just a few. They also funded Charles Murray (author of The Bell Curve), Dinesh D’Souza and Robert Bork.

       I’ve been trying to increase public awareness of the DLC and it’s affiliates for about a decade now and so thank you for bring this to the attention the the readers here. At some point the ‘big tent’ people need to look at this organization, at what it does, at what it’s politicians do and recognise that they’re not irrelevant, they’re not going away and that they present a considerable problem to anyone desiring decent and responsible governance. One has to ask oneself why an organization that funds The Federalist Society and the Independent Women’s Forum would also be happy to be giving money to the cause of Bruce Reed and Al From.

4. 

   floridagal on February 11, 2006 at 4:56 pm

   Will see what I can find.  They are not very open about it now, nor are they required to be.  They apparently don’t have to disclose funding, since supposedly they don’t help candidates.  Go figure, guess that is how it is.

   Checking now.  Sent you the mail.

5. 

   floridagal on February 11, 2006 at 5:10 pm

   Strange Bedfellows

   I am going to look up more.  The new Third Way website is a treasure trove of those involved, mostly members of Americans for Gun Safety….I mean strange bedfellows indeed.  Not a topic I care about, but count the members from that group who formed the Third Way.  The Clintons were the founders, basically, and Hillary and Lieberman are strongly with them, though not listed among the leadership. You can link from PPI/DLC and find the Third Way founding with the Clintons and Blair.  They called themselves Blair Democrats.

   http://www.third-way.com/

   I notice the cache link worked the way it should..now to redo my posts or figure it out.

6. 

   Street Kid on February 11, 2006 at 7:41 pm

   here

7. 

   shari on February 12, 2006 at 10:24 am

   Articles on DLC funding:
   This one:

   Funding

   The DLC and its close associate, the Progressive Policy Institute, are the recipients of grants from many Fortune 500 companies and such right-wing foundations as the Bradley Foundation. Corporate contributors to the Progressive Policy Institute include AT&T Foundation, Eastman Kodak Charitable Trust, Prudential Foundation, Georgia-Pacific Foundation, Chevron, and Amoco Foundation. (17) The Third Way Foundation, an umbrella group of the New Democrats in the DLC, receives funding from the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Ameritech Foundation, and General Mills Foundation. According to one magazine report, the DLC enjoys funding from Bank One, Citigroup, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, Health Insurance Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Occidental Petroleum, and Raytheon. (9)

   How the DLC Does It

   While the DLC will not formally disclose its sources of contributions and dues, the full array of its corporate supporters is contained in the program from its annual fall dinner last October, a gala salute to Lieberman that was held at the National Building Museum in Washington. Five tiers of donors are evident: the Board of Advisers, the Policy Roundtable, the Executive Council, the Board of Trustees, and an ad hoc group called the Event Committee–and companies are placed in each tier depending on the size of their check. For $5,000, 180 companies, lobbying firms, and individuals found themselves on the DLC’s board of advisers, including British Petroleum, Boeing, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Coca-Cola, Dell, Eli Lilly, Federal Express, Glaxo Wellcome, Intel, Motorola, U.S. Tobacco, Union Carbide, and Xerox, along with trade associations ranging from the American Association of Health Plans to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. For $10,000, another 85 corporations signed on as the DLC’s policy roundtable, including AOL, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Citigroup, Dow, GE, IBM, Oracle, UBS PacifiCare, PaineWebber, Pfizer, Pharmacia and Upjohn, and TRW.

   And for $25,000, 28 giant companies found their way onto the DLC’s executive council, including Aetna, AT&T, American Airlines, AIG, BellSouth, Chevron, DuPont, Enron, IBM, Merck and Company, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Texaco, and Verizon Communications. Few, if any, of these corporations would be seen as leaning Democratic, of course, but here and there are some real surprises. One member of the DLC’s executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively–meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000.

   Bruce Dixon, Commondreams

   A purely corporate edifice

   The DLC doesn’t represent any Democratic Party voters. Its masters include American and United Airlines, Aetna and New York Life Insurance, Microsoft, DuPont, the agribusiness and pharmaceutical industries, Citigroup and, until recently, Enron, among many others. The DLC is an organization conceived in the boardroom and dedicated to the proposition that moneyed interests trump all others. About two hundred corporations comprise its Board of Advisors (fee: $5,000), and nearly 100 pay the cost to be the boss on the DLC’s Policy Roundtable ($10,000 each). For $25,000, around 30 corporate executives pretend to be Democrats as members of the DLC Executive Council. Enron sat there, along with Philip Morris, Texaco, Chevron, and Dupont.

   The Bradley Foundation funding is a key link. The DLC education policy is, not surprisingly, closely aligned with the conservatives who are push charter schools and privatization.  School choice. And the DLC people online are one of the most enthusiastic supporters of NCLB anywhere.  

   If you want education policy, the DLC has developed solutions of which we need to take a more critical stance. Not surprisingly, they work hand in hand with the big conservative people such as the Fordham people and with Rick Hess.

   Time to keep a closer eye on the DLC. They don’t have our backs when it comes to real progressive education policy. Unfortunately, we don’t have a good grounding re: progressive education policy.