The engines of the left

Here is a probably fairly complete list of all foundations that distribute millions of dollars every year to anti-capitalist, far left organizations and causes around the world.  Want to know why it's so hard to hear a conservative voice in the political dialogue these days?  The answers here.

The Wine, Women and Song Foundation

By Clarice Feldman

I have watched over the years how publicly unaccountable foundations have amassed billions of dollars, tax free, and spend it on dangerous, leftwing, often anti-American and anti-Israeli outfits, conferences and promoters.  Taxpaying citizens opposed to abortion without restrictions, open borders, balkanization of the country, erosion of their constitutional rights, dumbed down education of their children and environmental extremism are fighting opposition very generously funded by these groups.

The irony of this development is that capitalists -- like Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Pew -- who owed their fortunes to American free market policies, started most of these foundations. Further, the notion of permitting many of the thousands of foundations to exist tax free developed during the Depression when public funds were tight and, it was argued, these foundations could supply the money to provide for necessary public services in the absence of any other resources that could do this.

Today the Ford Foundation sits on about $11 billion in assets. The Rockefeller Foundation holds about $5 billion in assets. The Carnegie Corporation holds about $2.5 billion in assets and the Pew Foundation about $5 billion. Those are just a few of the most  well-known of the "charitable" foundations.

The normal pattern with these is that the benefactor's family and/or associates who held his views sat on the board that determined how these funds would be spent. In time, they died or drifted away and the sums, which kept growing, were under the control of people who held views diametrically opposed to those of the founders.

While tax- exempt foundations are by law supposed to spend down a percentage of their assets annually, they've invented numbers of dodges around this and their fortunes grow as those of the taxpayers and government treasuries diminish.

I cannot list all of the misguided expenditures made by these foundations in recent years, but here's a short reminder:

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation played a large part in funding the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism (in Durban, South Africa), which degenerated into a circus of anti-Semitic and anti-American displays. Ford has given funding to a number of the NGOs that played key roles in the Durban Conference. Among these were: LAW (which received $1.1 million from Ford between 1997-2003); the Palestinian NGO Network, or PNGO (which, from 1999 to 2002, received several Ford grants, totaling $1.4 million, and an additional $270,000 supplemental grant); the Al Mezan Center (which, around the time of the Durban Conference, received $100,000 in Ford money for "community based advocacy work on economic, social and cultural rights in Gaza" -- i.e., the disruption of Israeli Defense Force activities); and the Health, Development, Information and Policy Institute (which, around the time of the Durban Conference, received two Ford grants totaling $135,000). Ford has also provided large amounts of funding for Rabbis for Human Rights, for "rabbinically based" educations efforts "supporting human rights policies by Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."
Ford has provided financial backing to the New Israel Fund (NIF) since 1988. In 2003 Ford awarded a $20 million grant to NIF; four years later, it gave another $20 million to the organization.

Through its Cairo office, Ford disbursed more than $35 million in grants to 272 Arab and Palestinian organizations during 2000-2001 period alone -- plus 62 additional grants (totaling more than $1.4 million) to Arab and Palestinian individuals. From the 1950s through 2003, Ford's Beirut and Cairo offices awarded over $193 million to more than 350 Middle East organizations, almost all of which were Arab, Islamic, or Palestinian. Edwin Black, in a four-part article series titled "Funding Hate: Ford Foundation finances anti-Israel Activists," written for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, states: "The overwhelming majority of Ford's monies for the Middle East are granted to pro-Palestinian and Islamic rights groups."

Carnegie Corporation  

During the past few decades, the political leanings of the Carnegie Corporation (CC) have shifted leftward. Today CC believes that its mission is to serve as a catalyst for social change of a leftist nature. One notable individual who served on the Carnegie Board of Directors until recently was Teresa Heinz Kerry, the wife of Senator John Kerry. [snip]

 Among the many recent recipients of Carnegie Corporation grants are the American Bar Association; the Alliance for Justice; the American Civil Liberties Union; the Aspen Institute; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center; theBrookings Institution; the Center for Community Change; Citizen Action; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; the Cornell University Peace Studies Program; Democracy Matters Institute; Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action; Duke University; the Earth Day Network; the Economic Policy Institute; the Gates Foundation Funds; Human Rights Watch; the Immigrant Workers Citizenship Project; the Interfaith Education Fund; the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the League of Women Voters Education Fund; the Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund; theNational Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense & Education Fund; the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; National Council of La Raza; National Public Radio; National Urban League; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Neighborhood Funders Group; the Paul Robeson Foundation; People for the American Way; the Ploughshares Fund; Project Vote; the Proteus Fund; the Public Broadcasting System; Public Citizen; the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund; Rock the Vote Education Fund; the Rockefeller Family Fund; Rutgers University; State Voices; the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the Urban Institute; the U.S. Public Interest Research Group; and the William J. Brennan Jr. Center for Justice.

The Pew Foundation

With other foundations, Pew manipulated surveys and provided fake research to facilitate the passage of the campaign finance reform act, now largely emasculated by the Supreme Court. This seems to be the clearest evidence that Pew and other tax-free foundations want to and have worked to retain their monopoly -- along with the mainstream media -- on free speech in America:

Starting in 1994, Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) and a few other leftist foundations began bankrolling front groups and so-called "experts" whose aim was to persuade Congress to swallow the fiction that millions of Americans were clamoring for "campaign-finance reform." This deceptive strategy was the brainchild of Sean Treglia, a former program officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts.3 Between 1994 and 2004, some $140 million of foundation cash was used to promote campaign-finance reform. Nearly 90 percent of this amount derived from just eight foundations, one of which was OSI, which contributed $12.6 million to the cause.4 Among the major recipients of these OSI funds were such pro-reform organizations as Common Cause ($625,000); Public Campaign ($1.3 million); Democracy 21 ($300,000); the Alliance For Better Campaigns ($650,000); the Center For Public Integrity ($1.7 million); the Center For Responsive Politics ($75,000); Public Citizen ($275,000); and the Brennan Center for Justice (more than $3.3 million).5 The "research" which these groups produced in order to make a case on behalf of campaign-finance reform was largely bogus and contrived. Forinstance, Brennan Center political scientist Jonathan Krasno had clearly admitted in his February 19, 1999 grant proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts that the purpose of the proposed study was political, not scholarly, and that the project would be axed if it failed to yield the desired results: "The purpose of our acquiring the data set is not simply to advance knowledge for its own sake, but to fuel a continuous multi-faceted campaign to propel campaign reform forward. Whether we proceed to phase two will depend on the judgment of whether the data provide a sufficiently powerful boost to the reform movement." The other seven foundations that, along with OSI, contributed most heavily to the promotion of campaign-finance reform were the Pew Charitable Trusts ($40.1 million); the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy ($17.6 million); the Carnegie Corporation of New York ($14.1 million); the Joyce Foundation ($13.5 million); the Jerome Kohlberg Trust ($11.3 million); the Ford Foundation ($8.8 million); and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($5.2 million).

Congress has known for some time the extent of the money locked up by these new era versions of Medieval abbeys -- then rolling in wealth garnered from tithes and taxes and gifts,   while all around them the peasants starved -- but has chosen to do nothing about closer monitoring their operations; limiting what this money can be spent on, forcing a faster pay out of this treasure for the public welfare.

There's only one thing left: The creation of a new Wine, Women and Song Foundation, led by yours truly, with the aim of persuading rich young men to spend their cash on wine women and song. (In the case of the newly rising cadre of wealthy women entrepreneurs, the term "women" embraces men.)

Do not leave your money to a foundation. You will not gain entry to heaven by doing so. You will surely be funding those whose views are anathema to you and who will prevent others living here from attaining what you did.

Buy that yacht!

Cover yourself and your loved ones with jewels.

Build 90,000 square foot homes wherever you choose to.

Travel the world in private jets.

Just don't leave your money in the hands of "public interest" grifters who will further beset your fellow countrymen  and the world.

It's for the public good.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/the_wine_women_and_song_foundation.html#ixzz2OTrOIQU8
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