Friday, March 30, 2012

Foundations and their tremendous influence

Tax Free....little if any oversight....and nearly zero disclosure of investors and agenda.

A little bit on a few foundations (also called unions, funds, societies, alliances, institutes, think tanks, etc)...to basically demonstrate the high degree of cross pollination and incestuous management/funding sources...and since I just finished the rant on Ron Paul....I'll focus on the conservative flavor that controls that side of the franchise.  Also for a better understanding you probably should go through that post first as well as the links providing the historical background for my comments and opinions.

Further Background:
Tax-exempt Foundations were originally setup for humanitarian purposes to provide grants to existing institutions. Rene A. Wormser served as General Counsel to the Reece Committee, which was a congressional committee that investigated the Tax-exempt Foundations from 1953 to 1955. His book, Foundations: Their Power and Influence, is a documented expose of his experience with the committee. In it he wrote, "Foundations were originally created to support existing institutions and to undertake certain 'operating' functions."
Soon after (or possibly from their inception) foundations became a loop hole that the financial elite used to avoid taxes. "By the time the income tax became law in 1913, the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations were already operating. Income tax didn't soak the rich, it soaked the middle class," wrote Perloff. "Because it was a graduated tax, it tended to prevent anyone from rising into affluence. Thus it acted to consolidate the wealth of the entrenched interests, and protect them from new competition."
Smoot pointed out that the primary purpose of some of the large Tax-exempt Foundations is no longer humanitarian in nature, but "predominately tax avoidance." "One of the leading devices by which the wealthy dodge taxes" concurred Perloff "is the channeling of their fortunes into tax-free foundations." He also charged that, "The major foundations, though commonly regarded as charitable institutions, often use their grant-making powers to advance the interests of their founders."
The "independent, uncontrolled financial power often enables foundations to exert a decisive influence on public affairs," wrote Wormser. He further testified that, "They have a power comparable to political patronage." He cautioned "When they do harm, it can be immense harm--there is virtually no counterforce to oppose them." Source
In the international field, foundations, and an interlock among some of them and certain intermediary organizations, have exercised a strong effect upon our foreign policy and upon public education in things international. This has been accomplished by vast propaganda, by supplying executives and advisors to government, and by controlling much research in this area through the power of the purse. The net result of these combined efforts has been to promote 'internationalism' in a particular sense - a form directed toward 'world government' and a derogation of American 'nationalism.'
They observed that the major foundations 'have actively supported attacks upon our social and government system and financed the promotion of socialism and collectivist ideas.' The Reece Committee clearly declared that the CFR was 'in essence an agency of the United States Government' and that its 'productions are not objective but are directed overwhelmingly at promoting a globalist concept.' Source
On August 19, 1954, Reece summed up his investigation:
"It has been said that the foundations are a power second only to that of the Federal Government itself ... Perhaps the Congress should now admit that the foundations have become more powerful, in some areas, at least, than the legislative branch of the Government." 
The investigation ended in 1955, when funding was withheld. Source

This tool comes in handy for further investigation (names and connections) as well as visual picture of the web...


American Conservative Union:
Established in 1964, the American Conservative Union (ACU) is a large grassroots conservative lobbying organization, committed to a market economy, the doctrine of original intent of the framers of the Constitution, traditional moral values, and a strong national defense. It was formed in response to the electoral defeat of Barry Goldwater; the organizing meeting included Robert Bauman (organizer); Frank S. Meyer, John Chamberlain, Jameson Campaigne Sr., John Ashbrook, Katharine St. George, William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell. It was modeled after the Americans for Democratic Action, and also was positioned as an organization where members of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), founded by Buckley, could go when they reached the maximum age of 35. 
In 1984, David Keene, the current chairman of the ACU, assumed that position. He is also the managing associate of Carmen Group Lobbying, a Washington, DC-based lobbying firm. Source
Board members include: Senator Jesse Helms; Grover Norquist, Morton Blackwell, also on the Conservative Leadership PAC and Free Congress Foundation boards; and Becky Norton Dunlop, also serves on boards of the Heritage Foundation, the Family Foundation and Century Communications 
Frequent Donors: The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; the Bill and Berniece Grewcock Foundation; and the William E. Simon Foundation                                                          Source
Less than a month after he succeeded David Keene as chairman of the American Conservative Union, Al Cardenas sat down with HUMAN EVENTS to discuss the outlook for the ACU and the conservative movement. A Florida co-chairman of Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign and the 1978 Republican opponent to longtime Rep. Claude Pepper (D.-Fla.), Miami attorney Cardenas, whose family came from Cuba, has been in active in most of the modern conservative political battles. As head of the nation’s oldest national conservative organization, which is the main sponsor of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the 59-year-old Cardenas will no doubt be a player in helping direct the movement in the coming decade. Source
The Leadership Institute:
The Institute was founded in 1979 by conservative activist Morton C. Blackwell. Its mission is to "increase the number and effectiveness of conservative activists" and to "identify, train, recruit and place conservatives in politics, government, and media."

The Leadership Institute offers 40 types of training seminars at its Arlington headquarters, around the United States, and occasionally in foreign countries. In 2009, the Institute trained more than 9,500 students. Since its 1979 founding, the Leadership Institute has trained more than 91,475 students. Notable alumni include Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, Senator Mitch McConnell, Congressman Mike Pence, and seven new members of the 112th Congress.

While the Institute does not provide instruction in philosophical conservatism, it does encourage its graduates to read classic conservative authors like Edmund Burke and "classical liberal" authors like Frederic Bastiat, as well as more modern conservative thinkers including William F. Buckley Jr., Milton Friedman, Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater, and libertarian thinkers such as F. A. Hayek.

The Leadership Institute teaches 41 different types of classes and seminars using its own curriculum. Class content varies from teaching how to create a campus newsletter to political activism (i.e. grassroots activism) to professional training and development (i.e. broadcast journalism).

The Institute has developed an interest in training students internationally, and has been active in the creation of similar Institutes in Greece, Chile, Poland, France, the U.K., Korea, Canada, and Japan.  Source
Blackwell is considered something of a specialist in matters relating to the rules of the Republican Party. He served on rules committees of the state Republican parties in Louisiana and Virginia. He serves now on the RNC’s Standing Committee on Rules and has attended every meeting of the Republican National Conventions’ Rules Committees since 1972.

Blackwell has been a member since 1984 of the Council for National Policy, a group of politically active conservatives. Founders included Richard Viguerie, the Virginia direct-mail specialist, Paul Weyrich, Howard Phillips of the Constitution Party, and Phyllis Schlafly, a St. Louis activist who led the opposition to the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. Another founder was Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind novels. The council does not make its proceedings public. When he first ran for president, George W. Bush addressed the Council for National Policy. His remarks from 2000 have never been unveiled.  Source
We know that at least two of the young men charged in connection with attempts to tamper with Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office phones led conservative college newspapers that received seed money from The Leadership Institute. But what’s the Leadership Institute?

Leadership Institute Vice President David Fenner said in a phone interview this morning that the group had “informal, above-board relationships” with both James O’Keefe and Joseph Basel when they were college students.

O’Keefe founded The Centurion at Rutgers and Basel launched The Counterweight at the University of Minnesota-Morris — each of which received $500 “Balance in Media” grants from the Leadership Institute. Both were charged yesterday with trying to tamper with Landrieu’s phones.

In tax forms posted on its website, the Leadership Institute reported receiving nearly $6 million in contributions in 2008, compared to $9.6 million in 2007. The group reported spending $11.2 million in 2008 and $11.4 million the year before — leading to a net loss both years.

The group claimed its net assets and fund balances totaled $11.6 million at the end of 2008.

In 2008, the Leadership Institute reported spending more than $3 million conducting “344 training schools of 39 different types to train youth leaders and provide education regarding the public policy process.”

Additionally, the group reported $4.6 million in spending on its “campus leadership program” — the same program that O’Keefe and Basel benefited from. The Leadership Institute uses this program to conduct “leadership schools for these groups and helps students start newspapers on their campuses.”  Source
...basically the Leadership Institute is a feeder program (training and indoctrination) for use by the foundations...for example -
Andrew, as a young twenty-something, has a resume with experience at Grove City’s Center for Vision and Values, the Leadership Institute, Young America’s Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, The Fund for American Studies, Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation’s Associate Program, and the Bill of Rights Institute, where he is currently a director of development.

“Attending my first Leadership Institute’s Youth Leadership School in 2002 led to my first job as a youth campaign coordinator in the most expensive congressional primary race in 2004,” Andrew said. “My first experiences in Washington, D.C. came to fruition because of my internship at the Leadership Institute. That summer served as a springboard for me in many ways.” Source
The goal of the alliance, according to organizers, is to foster the growth of liberal or left-leaning institutions equipped to take on prominent think tanks on the right, including the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, as well as such training centers as the Leadership Institute and the Young America's Foundation. Source
The Performance Institute:
Called “the leading think tank in performance measurement for government” on OMB’s ExpectMore.gov, The Performance Institute has been a leader in Performance Management training and policy since the 2000 administration transition. As part of the Government Performance Coalition, a group of good government organizations, the Institute worked in 2000 to deliver recommendations to the then new administration on what would become the President’s Management Agenda. Source
Carl DeMaio's former company, the Performance Institute, reaped the majority of its revenue from public funds. Then, DeMaio used that money to push for his own political agenda. DeMaio called the Performance Institute a "private think tank," but unlike other think tanks, it has no board and no oversight. In the past, the Performance Institute did not disclose its donors, or how much its former CEO, Carl DeMaio, made. Source

In 2007, Thompson Publishing Group, now Thompson Media Group acquired The Performance Institute and The American Strategic Management Institute from founder Carl DeMaio. The Performance Institute is a private, non-partisan think-tank in the United States that specializes in improving government results through the principles of performance, transparency and accountability.

Thompson Media Group, LLC, originally established as Thompson Publishing Group, Inc. was founded in 1972 by Carl DeMaio. It is a privately-held media company that specializes in providing compliance, regulatory, and market information through its four operating units: Thompson Publishing Group, The Performance Institute & American Strategic Management Institute, AHC & BioWorld, and Sheshunoff Information Services, A.S. Pratt, & Alex Information (collectively, SIS). Thompson Media Group, LLC, is based in Washington, DC. Thompson Media Group LLC established their name during reorganization in 2011. Source
American Conservative Defense Alliance:
A think tank and interest group that supports national security conservatism, emphasizing that the United States should take foreign action only in service of vital national interests. Its platform states: 
Supporting a strong, cost-effective and Constitutional national defense strategy, the purpose of which is to secure the lives, liberty, and property of the American people.
Creating, strengthening, and maintaining military forces capable of defeating any enemy that attacks the United States. Ensuring that America’s soldiers, airmen, marines, sailors, coast guard and reserve component forces are the best equipped, trained, and led military forces in the world. 
Promoting a foreign policy of strategic independence, thereby avoiding foreign conflicts unless there is a verifiable and imminent threat to the United States. If the U.S. does engage in military action, there must be clear standards for victory and exit. Absent exceptional circumstances, when a vital national interest is at stake, America should neither underwrite regimes nor engage in nation building.
Providing to the world examples of how to maintain a free and prosperous society based on the rule of Constitutional law, individual liberty, and the rights of private property.

Its positions reject the doctrines of neoconservatism. Source
Michael advocated for American national security interests as a co-founder of the American Conservative Defense Alliance, which worked to promote a traditional conservative foreign and defense policy (2008- 2010). He blogs on national security related issues at Politico. Working to promote civil liberties, Michael co-founded and is National Director of the Liberty Coalition, a transpartisan coalition of groups working to protect civil liberties, privacy and human autonomy (2005- present). He is presently the coalition coordinator and public policy counsel for the Campaign for Liberty working on transparency and open government issues including Audit of the Federal Reserve. He also sits on the Steering Committee for Openthegovernment.org and Board Member for Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Source
This public policy group is the creation of Grover Norquist, an anti-tax conservative activist with a record of ties to Muslim Brotherhood leaders and Islamist front groups.90 It was founded in early 2008 and, until recently, housed in Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform offices. 91 ACDA Board Members include Samah Norquist, secretary (also Grover Norquist’s wife); Peter Gemma, treasurer; and Philip Giraldi, the Francis Walsingham Fellow.

Norquist’s role in Islamist influence operations is an ominous one. He founded a front organization called the Islamic Free Market Institute in 1998 together with a Muslim activitist long associated with Muslim Brotherhood operatives named Khaled Saffuri “to promote a better understanding of Islam in America.”

During the presidential campaign of 2000, Norquist arranged a meeting between Alamoudi and then- Republican presidential candidate, Texas Governor George W. Bush.96 Later, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush appeared at a prayer service with Alamoudi and apparently remained unaware of his terrorist links for a number of years after that.97

Another troubling connection is Grover Norquist’s close relationship with Faisal Gill, Policy Director of the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection division for the Department of Homeland Security under President Bush. In 2004, it was discovered that Gill, who was a political appointee, had failed to disclose his own formerly close working relationship with Alamoudi, whom he apparently served as spokesman for the American Muslim Council. Nevertheless, Gill was permitted to retain his government position.98

Although the American Conservative Defense Alliance claims to advocate for a strong U.S. national defense policy, it eschews any initiative that would entail “imposing American-styled ‘democracy’ abroad” or engaging in “nation-building.”99 ACDA’s place within the Iran Lobby network can be discerned from a look at key figures among its leadership boards, website links to other Iran Lobby entities and posted statements by its associates that scoff at evidence of the Tehran regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and involvement in supporting terrorist militias in Iraq

The ACDA links with NIAC’s Trita Parsi also include a November 14, 2007 event at the Nixon Center that was co-sponsored by ACDA and featured a panel discussion about U.S. foreign policy towards Iran. Panelists included Philip Giraldi and Trita Parsi. The event was posted on the personal website of Michael D. Ostrolenk, ACDA President and Board Member. Ostrolenk’s homepage also highlights an October 17, 2007 discussion with Trita Parsi about his then just-released book, Treacherous Alliance.  Source 
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance Source
...other current key people -
Donald Devine,Director, Office of Personnel Management, 1981-85
Bruce Fein, Ron Paul's 2012 Campaign Legal adviser, Former Reagan lawyer
Thomas Gale Moore, Economist, Council of Economic Advisers, 1985-89
William Niskanen, Chairman of the Cato Institute
Richard Viguerie, Conservative activist                                                                           Source
Americans for Tax Reform:
Fiscal conservative interest group, headed by Grover Norquist, which opposes all tax increases and advocates a flat tax; rates legislators on compliance with its key issue votes; Advisory Committee and Supporting Member, Congressional Internet Caucus  Source
Its founder and president is Grover Norquist, a conservative tax activist. It was founded by Grover Norquist in 1985 at the request of President Ronald Reagan.

Shortly after Bill Clinton's 1992 election, ATR headquarters became the site of a weekly, off-the-record get-together of conservatives to coordinate activities and strategy. The "Wednesday Meeting" of the Leave Us Alone Coalition soon became an important hub of conservative political organizing. Participants each week include Republican congressional leaders, right-leaning think tanks, conservative advocacy groups and K Street lobbyists. George W. Bush began sending a representative to the Wednesday Meeting even before he formally announced his candidacy for president in 1999, and continued to send representatives after his election in 2000. 
ATR has helped to establish regular meetings for conservatives nationwide, modeled after the Wednesday meetings in Washington, with the goal of creating a nationwide network of conservative activists to help support initiatives such as tax cuts and deregulation. There are now meetings in 48 states and more internationally, with meetings in Canada, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

According to an investigative report from the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on the Jack Abramoff scandal, released in June 2006, ATR served as a "conduit" for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to finance surreptitiously grass-roots lobbying campaigns. Records show that donations from the Choctaw and Kickapoo tribes to ATR were coordinated in part by Abramoff, and in some cases preceded meetings between the tribes and the White House. Source
Free Congress Foundation:
Found by Paul Weyrich in 1974 after serving as President of the Heritage Foundation for a number of years and considered one of the most influential men in US politics.
The Free Congress Foundation’s history as an active voice on behalf of conservative ideas and principles reaches back to its founding in 1977 by the late Paul Weyrich.

The foundation won early national prominence and played an important role in organizing and driving coordinated political action by modern conservatives.

Powered over the years by the financial support of a broad range of donors, FCF has had significant impact on public policy issues of importance to all Americans.  Source
The Free Congress Foundation (or Free Congress Research and Education Foundation or FCF for short), is a conservative think tank founded by Colorado beer magnate Joseph Coors and led by Paul M. Weyrich. It evolved from the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress and the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. A group affiliated with the FCF is the Free Congress Political Action Committee. The organization publishes Empowerment!. Source
No one has said, "What will fill this coming vacuum?" No one has developed a strategy for the transition from Washington to localism.

Such thoughts are not common in today's world of Federal power and Federal money. It takes a specific worldview even to ask such a seemingly utopian question.

Ron Paul has such a worldview. So do his followers.

As for training materials, they already exist. Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation developed them three decades ago: the Kasten system. This system of local mobilization got Bob Kasten elected to Congress in 1974 and to the Senate in 1980. Source
While in Rep. Paul's office, I also worked closely with the Free Congress Foundation's Coalition for Constitutional Liberties and its 800 member organizations to educate the public on the privacy implications of KYC. It was this coalition that generated most of the comments to the regulators--many through the Libertarian Party's DefendYourPrivacy.com web site. I have teamed up with Free Congress to double our efforts for privacy and against KYC. We are leading the initiative against the global KYC initiative. Our coalition and letter by forty-three organizations (http://www.freecongress.org/) are credited with forcing the Bush administration to review their policies. Source
The Future of Freedom Foundation (FFF):

Founded in 1989 in Denver, Colorado, by Richard M. Ebeling and Jacob G. Hornberger, both with ties to the Foundation for Economic Education....and who sits on the board?

BOARD OF TRUSTEES:
Harold Luhnow, president of William Volker & Company
A.C. Mattei, president of Honolulu Oil Corporation
Charles White, president of the Republic Steel Corporation
Donaldson Brown, former vice-president of General Motors
Jasper Crane, former vice president of Du Pont
B.E. Hutchinson, chairman of the finance committee of Chrysler Corporation
W.C. Mullendore, president of the Southern California Edison Company

Foundation for Economic Freedom:
Established to study and advance classical liberalism, the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is the oldest free-market organization in the United States. Murray Rothbard recognized FEE for creating a "crucial open center" that he credits with launching the movement.

In 1946, FEE was founded by Leonard Read of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Donaldson Brown of General Motors Corporation, Professors Leo Wolman of Columbia University and Fred R. Fairchild of Yale University, Henry Hazlitt of the New York Times, Claude Robinson of Opinion Research Corporation, and David Goodrich of B. F. Goodrich. The William Volker Fund was instrumental in subsidizing FEE's establishment.  Source
Lawrence W. Fertig (b. 1898 – d. 1986) was an American advertising executive and a libertarian journalist and economic commentator.

Fertig wrote columns for the New York World-Telegram and the New York Sun. Fertig also wrote the 1961 Regnery Press offering, Prosperity Through Freedom.

He was the founder of Lawrence Fertig & Company, a New York advertising and marketing firm. The Hoover Institution maintains an archive of Fertig's papers at their Stanford, California location.

After attending the 1944 Bretton Woods conference on behalf of Scripps-Howard newspapers, Fertig authored a weekly column on financial matters, something that he would continue until the collapse of the New York World Journal Tribune in the late 1960s. He was on the board of trustees of the Foundation for Economic Education's monthly journal, The Freeman.

Fertig, who was a member of the NYU board of trustees, was instrumental in supporting his friend Ludwig von Mises when the economist fled Europe to the United States during the rise of the Third Reich, even going so far as to pay part of Mises' salary himself when Mises began teaching at Fertig's alma mater. Referring to Mises' visiting professorship at NYU, economist Murray Rothbard stated that

NYU’s support for Mises was grudging, and only came about because advertising executive and NYU alumnus Lawrence Fertig, an economic journalist and close friend of Mises and Hazlitt, exerted considerable influence at the university. 
The Mises Institute, founded in 1982 in honor of Ludwig von Mises, credits Fertig as being instrumental in its creation and development. The institute offers a Lawrence Fertig memorial prize to the author whose work "best advances economic science in the Austrian tradition." Source
Brookings Institution:
Brookings Institution is a tax-exempt think tank created in 1916 as the Institute for Government Research by a group of business leaders and academics led by St. Louis timber and mining executive Robert Brookings, who later served on the War Industries Board. The IGR was founded to provide research and expertise to help restructure government agencies in accord with modern business methods, in order to promote administrative competence and government efficiency. During the Depression Brookings took on government and corporate research contracts. Renamed in 1927, the Brookings Institution established itself as a conservative think tank supported by industry and critical of the New Deal social programs, which were seen as replacing free enterprise with central authority.

After the second world war, Brookings supported the Marshall Plan and an active U.S. presence in the world, and by the 1960s had a reputation as a liberal think tank, but Brookings income flowed from Rockefeller and Ford Foundation grants and corporate contributions. By the mid-1980s, in keeping with the Democratic Party and other "liberal" institutions, Brookings positioned itself back in the "center" of the political spectrum again. In the 1980s Brookings studies called for government budget cutbacks, corporate competitiveness, and national security. In the 1990s Brookings studies promoted market-based incentives to replace regulation, increases in military spending, and "free" trade. In 1995, Michael Armacost, a U.S. State Department official under Reagan, became the president of Brookings.

Brookings board of trustees includes the corporate CEOs and directors of AT&T, Fremont Group (Bechtel), Booz Allen & Hamilton, Kissinger Associates, Human Genome Sciences, Inc., Johnson Capital Partners, State Farm, Aetna, Times Mirror, the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, Heinz Family Philanthropies, ARCO, Chase Manhattan, USAirways, Bank of America, Levi Strauss, as well as Robert S. McNamara (former president of the World Bank) and James D. Wolfensohn (the current president of the World Bank). Brookings trustees also include directors and trustees of foundations, hospitals, and universities, including Johns Hopkins University, University of Chicago Law School, Harvard, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the University of Pennsylvania, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  Source
Heritage Foundation:
The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 with funding from ultraconservative sources including Scaife and Coors, is a think tank whose mission is "to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." Heritage produces articles, lectures, conferences, and briefings for Congress, Congressional staff, executive branch policymakers, the news media, and academia.

U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich called the Heritage Foundation "the most far-reaching conservative organization in the country in the war of ideas," and U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey said "when conservatives on Capitol Hill are looking to turn ideas into legislation, the first place they go is The Heritage Foundation." Two-thirds of the Heritage Foundation's 1981 policy recommendations to President Reagan were adopted.

The Center's national advisory board includes William F. Buckley Jr., conservative journalists Mary Lou Forbes, Paul Greenberg, and Charles Krauthammer, and several professors of journalism. Heritage claims its more than 200,000 members make it "the most broadly supported think tank in America." Heritage Foundation had income of $43 million in 1998; two-thirds of it from individuals, 26 percent from foundations, and 4 percent from corporations. Amway, Joseph Coors, Pfizer, John M. Olin Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation are recent funders of the Heritage Foundation's work. Source
The Heritage Foundation has been home to some of the nation's most influential neo-conservative voices, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Foundation has since lost some of its luster, as some of its leading voices have graduated to other influential government and non-government careers. Still, the Foundation remains a conservative voice in Washington and around the world.

Meanwhile, there was also a connection between Heritage and the Rev Sun Myung Moon (founder of the Moonies). This first appeared in a 1975 congressional investigation on the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) activities in the US.

The report noted, "In 1975, Ed Feulner ... was introduced to KCIA station chief Kim Yung Hwan by Neil Salonen and Dan Feffernan of the Freedom Leadership foundation".

Salonen was head of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church in the United States. The Freedom Leadership Foundation (FLF), a political arm of Moon's Unification network, was linked to the World Anti- Communist League.

In the early 1980s, the KCIA began making donations to Heritage Foundation. In turn, Heritage established an Asian Studies Center. Source 
Paul Weyrich is considered by conservative Powers That Be as the most powerful man in American politics today. Weyrich allegedly founded the immensely influential conservative think tank, Heritage Foundation, in 1973 with funding from Joseph Coors of the Coors beer empire and Richard Mellon-Scaife, heir of the Carnegie-Mellon fortune. 
Over the past 25 years, Heritage has also been funded by private foundations such as Pew Charitable Trust which also funded many GOALS 2000 initiatives. William Greider's bestseller, Who Will Tell the People: The Betrayal of American Democracy reveals other benefactors: "Not withstanding its role as 'populist' spokesman, Weyrich's organization, for instance, has received grants from Amoco, General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank [David Rockefeller] and right-wing foundations like Olin and Bradley."
Paul Weyrich served as President of Heritage Foundation until 1974 when he founded the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress (which he heads today as the Free Congress Foundation). Heritage Foundation guided the Reagan administration during its period of transition and Joe Coors served in the President's "Kitchen Cabinet." During its first year, the Reagan administration adopted fully two-thirds of the recommendations of Heritage's Mandate for Leadership: Policy Management in a Conservative Administration.

John Saloma's Ominous Politics, refers to Heritage as a "shadow government" noting that "[Heritage President] (Edwin) Feulner also served on the Reagan transition executive committee (fourteen other Heritage staff and board members also had transition appointments), but declined to join the administration." Source
Back around 1988, Rockefeller and an assistant -- the son of a very famous foreign policy expert -- interviewed Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. He wanted to know which figures in the conservative movement were hostile to him. Weyrich mentioned the John Birch Society. "Who else?" he asked. "The hard- money movement," Weyrich replied. "What's that?" Rockefeller asked. The assistant said, "I'll brief you later."

Rockefeller was intrigued. "Who are they?" Weyrich mentioned me and Larry Abraham. (Thanks, Paul. He blew our cover.) "What are they saying?" Weyrich accurately replied: "They are saying that you and your big business colleagues are making deals behind the Iron Curtain, so that when full trade resumes, you will already be set up there."

Weyrich reported to me and to Abraham that Rockefeller replied, "They're right," and then went on at some length to describe their efforts. Within a few months, the Berlin Wall went down. In 1991, the USSR committed suicide.

All I am saying here is this: For a man still at the top of the pinnacle of influence, he has remained out of touch with respect to the American Right, which is among his greatest enemies, along with the American Communists -- defunct for over 20 years -- and some fringe groups on the Left. Source
Hoover Institute:
The Hoover Institution is a conservative think tank founded in 1919 as a center for advanced study in domestic and international affairs, supporting conservative scholars, sponsoring conferences, publishing books and articles, and producing television and radio programs.

The Hoover Institution says it "strives to conceive and disseminate ideas defining a free society, involving the study of politics, economics, and their interrelationships (that is, political economy) within the United States and other countries." The Hoover Institution describes its work in terms of the rule of law and property rights; promoting the idea of society based on individualism rather than classes; government performance in terms of accountability to society; economic growth and tax policy; and international rivalries and global cooperation with respect to security, trade and commerce, and the rule of law.

Former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich and former U.S. Secretary of State (and corporate insider) George Schultz are research fellows at Hoover. Other Hoover scholars include national security and Pentagon officials like William Perry, Richard Allen, and Bobby Inman. "Honorary Fellows" include Ronald Reagan, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Margaret Thatcher.

Like other ultraconservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Hudson Institute (see the separate profiles for these organizations), the Hoover Institution is funded by the ultraconservative foundations such as John M. Olin, Lilly, Smith Richardson, Carthage, and Scaife.

Hoover's "board of overseers" includes the Archer Daniels Midland chairman Dwayne Andreas, Texas oilman Robert Bass, Seattle television personality Jean Enersen, Herbert Hoover III, David Packard of military and electronics giant Hewlitt-Packard, former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Mellon oil heir and ultraconservative philanthropist Richard M. Scaife, and free-market guru and former U.S. Treasury Secretary William E. Simon. Source
A number of Hoover Institution fellows had connections to or held positions in the Bush administration and other Republican administrations. High-profile conservatives Edwin Meese, Condoleezza Rice, George Shultz, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and Amy Zegart are all Hoover Institution fellows.

The Hoover Institution Press also publishes the bimonthly periodical Policy Review, which it acquired from the Heritage Foundation in 2001. Source
American Enterprise Institute:

Founded by William J. Baroody and Milton Friedman in 1943. Source
The American Enterprise Institute is a think-tank founded in 1943 which promotes "free markets, free trade, a vigilant defense, and individual freedom and responsibility." AEI is "dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of a free [sic] society-limited government, competitive private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and vigilant defense-through rigorous inquiry, debate, and writing."

AEI is governed by 26 trustees including corporate and Pentagon insider Dick Cheney and executives from major corporations including State Farm Insurance, Motorola, American Express, Enron, Alcoa, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and Dow Chemical. AEI officers include Samuel P. Huntington (Harvard professor, member of National Security Council, architect of forced urbanization in Vietnam, author of Trilateral Commission report on "excess democracy"), former U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and economist Murray L. Weidenbaum, architect of deregulation under Reagan.

AEI and the Brookings Institution operate a Joint Center for Regulatory Studies (JCRS) with the purpose of holding lawmakers and regulators "accountable for their decisions by providing thoughtful, objective analyses of existing regulatory programs and new regulatory proposals." The JCRS pushes for cost-benefit analysis of regulations, which fits with AEI's ultimate goal of deregulation. Source
Among the better known figures based at the institute are several former George W. Bush administration officials and advisors who were key promoters of the “war on terror” policies put in place after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, including John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, John Yoo, and David Frum. President Bush highlighted the enormous influence the institute had in his administration during a January 2003 speech at an AEI dinner celebrating neoconservative forefather Irving Kristol. After commending AEI for having "some of the finest minds in our nation," the president said, "You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds."

Founded in 1943, AEI is one of the oldest policy institutes in Washington. AEI traces its origins to a New York City-based business association called the American Enterprise Association (AEA), which was founded in 1938 and soon after World War II opened a Washington office to lobby against government intervention in the domestic economy. AEA, which brought together some of the country's largest corporate firms, substituted "institute" for "association" and became one of the nation's first policy think tanks. Lewis Brown, president of Johns-Manville Corp., was the principal figure behind AEA, which from its beginning had a strong pro-business posture. Like the AEA, AEI is dedicated to the "maintenance of the system of free, competitive enterprise."18

One of the institute's earliest supporters on Capitol Hill was Gerald Ford, who as a congressional representative praised the institute in 1950, beginning what AEI describes as a "long and happy relationship with the president-to-be." A key figure in AEI's early history was William Baroody, who joined AEI as president in 1954 and was responsible for bringing some of the country's most conservative economists into the institute, including Milton Friedman and Paul McCracken.

With the emergence of several new conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, AEI's influence appeared to diminish. Despite this, President Ronald Reagan in 1988 acknowledged the institute's pervasive influence in spearheading the "Reagan Revolution." According to Reagan, "The American Enterprise Institute stands at the center of a revolution in ideas of which I, too, have been a part. AEI's remarkably distinguished body of work is testimony to the triumph of the think tank. For today the most important American scholarship comes out of our think tanks—and none has been more influential than the American Enterprise Institute."

AEI headquarters are located in a building on Washington's 17th Street that is a warren of right-wing operations. Before it shuttered most of its operations in 2006, the Project for the New American Century had its offices there. Several PNAC principals, including Gerecht, Bruce Jackson, Gary Schmitt, and Tom Donnelly, moved from PNAC to AEI. Also located in the same building are the offices of the Weekly Standard, which often serves as a favored outlet for AEI scholars. The Philanthropy Roundtable, the rightist association of foundations that split off from the Council of Foundations in the early 1980s, also found a home in the AEI building.

The membership of AEI's board of trustees reveals the institute's strong ties to the corporate community. Members include Bruce Kovner (Caxton Associates), John Faraci (International Paper), Raymond Gilmartin (formerly of Merck), Harvey Golub (formerly of American Express), Roger Hertog (formerly of Alliance Capital Management), Mel Sembler (Sembler Company), William Stavropoulos (Dow Chemical), and Wilson Taylor (CIGNA), among many others.33 Over the past several decades, AEI's board of trustees has included representatives of scores of the nation's top corporations, including Rockwell, Amoco, Hewlett Packard, Exxon Mobil, Texas Instruments, Eli Lilly, and Citicorp. Former board members include Dick Cheney (whose wife Lynne is an AEI fellow), then at Halliburton, and Kenneth Lay of Enron.

Among the many corporate contributors to AEI is the Walton Family Foundation, which was founded by the same family that started Wal-Mart. According to the New York Times, Wal-Mart "has discovered a reliable ally: prominent conservative research groups like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute.”

Major donors include the heavy hitters of the conservative foundation world: the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, as well as smaller right-wing foundations such as Carthage, Earhart, and Castle Rock.

According to People for the American Way, corporate donors to AEI have included the General Electric Foundation, Amoco, Kraft, Ford Motor Company Fund, General Motors Foundation, Eastman Kodak Foundation, Metropolitan Life Foundation, Procter & Gamble Fund, Shell Companies Foundation, Chrysler Corporation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Pillsbury Company Foundation, Prudential Foundation, American Express Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Alcoa Foundation, and PPG Industries. Source
The Cato Institute:
The Cato Institute is a think tank dedicated to "promoting public policy based on individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace." It was founded in 1977 by petroleum millionaire and libertarian Charles Koch and Edward Crane of the Alliance Capital Management.

Cato sponsors an annual monetary conference, which has been attended by Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan and others from the regional Federal reserve Banks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, International Monetary Fund first deputy managing director Stanley Fischer, and Harvard professor Jeffrey Sachs, author of "shock therapy" economic restructuring programs.

Cato opposes laws discriminating against gays. It promotes the legalization of drugs, and opposes censorship of pornography. Cato's opposition to government intervention led it to oppose U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf and Bosnia. But libertarian positions on various issues does not mean that the Cato Institute does not support corporate power. In the absence of civil authority, eliminating government regulation and government programs simply means that corporate power is unchecked.

Most of the funding comes from conservative foundations such as Sarah Scaife and John M. Olin. Source
The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane, who remains president and CEO, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the second largest privately held company by revenue in the United States.

Libertarian economist Murray Rothbard was a core member of Cato's founding group and coined the institute's name. Rothbard served on its board until leaving in 1981.

Still, some critics have accused Cato of being too tied to corporate funders, especially during the 1990s. Such critics report that Cato received funding from Philip Morris and other tobacco companies during this period and that at one point Rupert Murdoch served on the boards of directors of both Cato and Philip Morris. Source
In 2010, the Cato Institute reported support by some 60 plus foundations including:

Atlantic Philanthropies
Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
Earhart Foundation
JM Foundation, founded by businessman Jeremiah Milbank
John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Castle Rock Foundation (formerly known as The Coors Foundation)
Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife, Carthage)
Ford Foundation
Ploughshares Fund
Marijuana Policy Project                                                                                                Source

Koch Industries denies funding tea parties, but official filings say otherwise


The battle for control over a prominent libertarian organization in Washington has cast a spotlight on its highly unusual structure, which allows the nonprofit research institution to be controlled by shareholders.

The Cato Institute, one of the largest think tanks in Washington, is governed by four people, each with a 25 percent stake in the organization. That stake can be bought and sold for cash under an arrangement, only legal in a handful of states, that is frowned upon by the Internal Revenue Service.

Charles and David Koch, billionaire brothers who own a large energy conglomerate, filed suit on Thursday seeking an option to increase their 50 percent stake in Cato, a large research organization that espouses free-market economics and limited government.

Although they don’t receive dividends like shareholders of a for-profit company, the structure gives the Koch brothers power to appoint half of Cato’s board. In most nonprofits, new directors are elected by the organization’s membership or the current board members. Source

Ludwig von Mises Institute:
Founded by Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr. in 1982 after serving as Ron Paul's Chief of Staff for 4 years. The Institute's stated goal is to "undermine statism*** in all its forms". Rockwell credits Rothbard with convincing him to reject statism completely:

"It was clear to me at the time that Murray Rothbard was Mises's successor, and I followed his writings carefully. I first met him in 1975, and knew immediately that he was a kindred spirit.... I cannot remember the day that I finally came around to the position that the state is unnecessary and destructive by its nature – that it cannot improve on, and indeed only destroys, the social and economic system that grows out of property rights, exchange, and natural social authority – but I do know that it was Rothbard who finally convinced me to take this last step." Source
Many readers may be surprised to learn the extent to which the Graduate Institute and then Mises himself in the years immediately after he came to United States were kept afloat financially through generous grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. In fact, for the first years of Mises’s life in the United States, before his appointment as a visiting professor in the Graduate School of Business Administration at New York University (NYU) in 1945, he was almost totally dependent on annual research grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. Even after he finally landed the position at NYU, where he remained only a visiting professor until his retirement in 1969, his salary was paid for not by NYU, but from funds contributed by generous private supporters. Source
Hayek’s teacher Wieser had been the main contact of the Rockefeller Foundation among the academic economists in Vienna. After 1926, when he succeeded Wieser as the main contact of the Rockefeller Foundation in Vienna, Mises had the opportunity to provide or withhold material benefits. Source
Project for New American Century:
The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle. Source
Project for The New American Century info and sources
Mont Pelerin Society:

Founded in 1947 in Mont Pelerin, Switzerland by Frederich von Hayek. The stated objective of the Mont Pelerin Society is to strengthen the principles and practices of the free society by encouraging market-oriented economic systems with minimal and dispersed government as opposed to government regulation of industry.

In 1947, 39 scholars, mostly economists, with some historians and philosophers, were invited by Professor Friedrich Hayek to meet at Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, and discuss the state, and possible fate of classical liberalism and to combat the "state ascendancy and Marxist or Keynesian planning [that was]sweeping the globe". Invitees included Henry Simons (who would later train Milton Friedman, a future president of the society, at the University of Chicago); the American former-Fabian socialist Walter Lippmann; Viennese Aristotelian Society leader Karl Popper; fellow Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises; Sir John Clapham, a senior official of the Bank of England who from 1940-6 was the president of the British Royal Society; Otto von Habsburg, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne; and Max von Thurn und Taxis, Bavaria-based head of the 400-year-old Venetian Thurn und Taxis family.

Milton Friedman was president of the Mont Pelerin Society from 1970-1972. Edwin Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, was president of the Mont Pelerin Society from 1996-1998 and is currently the Senior Vice President.

The American membership of the MPS has included, besides Milton and Rose Friedman and the late journalist Walter Lippmann [CFR], influential conservatives affiliated with the Heritage Foundation: Michael Novak [CFR/American Enterprise Institute], Thomas Sowell [Hoover Institution] and Deepak Lal [Cato Institute]. Anther member of the Mont Pelerin Society is former CNP member Dr. John A. Howard, president of The Rockford Institute, Senior Fellow of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society and a member of The Bohemian Club.

Over a dozen of the scholars who could not previously get a job, a review, or a book deal would go on to win the "Nobel Prize in Economics" (this "epic" story will be told separately). More importantly, the Mont Pelerin Society would itself beget 500 foundations and organizations in nearly 80 countries... again with strategic contributions from Mr. Anonymous.

Initiated at Mont Pelerin and copying the FEE, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) was created in London in 1955. Serving as a conduit for both cash and "ideas", the IEA set about the task of "rejuvenating" the dead and decaying British Tories. By 1985, the "Iron Lady", Margaret Thatcher, would positively gush on the occasion of the Institute's 30th Anniversary: "You created the atmosphere which made our victory possible... May I say how thankful we are to those who joined your great endeavor. They were the few, but they were right, and they saved Britain." With that, the IEA begat the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, which in turn created a network of over 50 "think-tanks" in more than 30 countries.

And what were the scale of these efforts? John Blundell, the head of the IEA, in a speech to the Heritage Foundation, and Atlas in 1990, would identify a rare failure in the Society's efforts. Shaking his head at the abortive attempt to subsidize academic "Chairs of Free Enterprise" in dozens of countries throughout the world, Blundell complained about wasting, "hundreds of millions, perhaps one billion dollars". This was just one initiative among many.

William Volker Fund:
The William Volker Fund was a charitable foundation established in 1932 by Kansas City, Missouri, businessman and home-furnishings mogul William Volker.

In 1932, Volker set aside half of his fortune into the William Volker Charities Fund. The fund’s articles of incorporation claimed it would “care for the sick, aged and helpless”; “provide means and facilities for the physical, mental, moral and spiritual betterment of persons”; “improve living and working conditions”; and provide “education and educational facilities” (209-210). 
When William Volker died in 1947, his nephew Harold W. Luhnow took control of William Volker & Co. and also became the head of the William Volker Charities Fund’s board of directors. Under the Luhnow’s administration the fund shifted its focus away from charities in the Kansas City area and began pursuing a number of strategies for increasing the acceptance of Old Right and Austrian economics thought in the United States. Source
When William Volker died in 1947, his will added $15 million of his assets to the already sizable William Volker Charities Fund. Luhnow took primary control of the trust. He also took control the William Volker & Co. In 1952, Luhnow moved the headquarters of the fund and the company to Burlingame, California.

Luhnow used Volker Fund assets to support bringing schools associated wit the Austrian School of economics to U.S. institutions. He "paid [Ludwig von] Mises's salary at New York University; he paid F. A. Hayek's salary at the University of Chicago; he funded lectures that Milton and Rose Friedman turned into Capitalism and Freedom and he approved the grant that enabled Murray Rothbard to write Man, Economy and State. As early as 1946, Luhnow earmarked Volker Fund money to support Leonard Read and agreed to fund the establishment the Foundation for Economic Education, which became the first major post-war libertarian think-tank. By the late 1950s, Luhnow had led the Fund to provide critical support for a host of political groups, including the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies. In the 1960s Luhnow's leadership of the Fund became more and more erratic until he eventually fired most of its staff and much of the Volker Fund's remaining assets were given to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Source
The William Volker Fund also launched a number of Libertarian think tanks, foremost among them the “Hoover Institution for War, Revolution and Peace.”

“In addition to its own activities, the Volker Fund helped fund the formation of various complementary institutions, including the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI), which was later renamed Intercollegiate Studies Institute; the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE); the Earhart Foundation; and the Relm Foundation. According to observers such as John Blundell of the Mont Pelerin Society, the William Volker Fund’s strategic successor on its expiration was the F.A. Harper’s Institute for Humane Studies. In 1963, most the Volker Fund’s activities were transferred to a new Center for American Studies (CAS), which proved short-lived and closed late in 1964. A decade later, the Volker Fund’s remaining money, amounting to about seven million dollars, went to the Hoover Institution. The Fund’s files have disappeared.” (William Volker Fund)

The official story is that Hoover Institution was founded by Herbert Hoover with $50K, although $7 million in funding would later arrive from the Volker Fund. What is also usually not mentioned is that (1) the Hoover Institution was heavily involved with the Eugenics societies of that day and (2) Herbert Hoover’s implementation of free market, laissez faire ‘do nothing’ economics prolonged the misery of the Great Depression.

“In 1919 the Hoover Institution was founded at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California with a donation of $50,000 from Herbert Hoover… Herbert Hoover founded the Hoover Institution at the suggestion of three men, Andrew Dickson White, (S&B 1853), Daniel Coit Gilman, (S&B 1852) and Ray Lyman Wilbur, president of Stanford… In 1921 the Second International Congress of Eugenics is held in New York City. The sponsoring committee includes Herbert Hoover and the presidents of Clark University, Smith College and the Carnegie Institute of Washington (Rockefeller)… Among the notables in attendance were future President Herbert Hoover, Alexander Graham Bell, (the Congress’s honorary president), conservationist and future Governor of Pennsylvania, Gifford Pinchot, (S&B 1889) and Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin.” (“The History of Health”) Source




Thursday, March 29, 2012

Ron Paul Rant

 Libertarian Background for understanding Ron Paul's political positions - sources
....and libertarianism with all its potential flavors...like Ronald Reagan and aspartame - see last post. Hopefully this post will provide some education as to the source of all these ideas as well as the controversy and heated discussions (why none of them can agree with each other).  Ideas are great....but its the application of the ideas that we need to watch very carefully (aspartame anyone?).  There's a reason the power brokers are libertarian as well as the instigators of corporatism and proponents of black control boxes (foundations).
Many readers may be surprised to learn the extent to which the Graduate Institute and then Mises himself in the years immediately after he came to United States were kept afloat financially through generous grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. In fact, for the first years of Mises’s life in the United States, before his appointment as a visiting professor in the Graduate School of Business Administration at New York University (NYU) in 1945, he was almost totally dependent on annual research grants from the Rockefeller Foundation. Even after he finally landed the position at NYU, where he remained only a visiting professor until his retirement in 1969, his salary was paid for not by NYU, but from funds contributed by generous private supporters. Source
Hayek’s teacher Wieser had been the main contact of the Rockefeller Foundation among the academic economists in Vienna. After 1926, when he succeeded Wieser as the main contact of the Rockefeller Foundation in Vienna, Mises had the opportunity to provide or withhold material benefits. Source
Finally, in his most surprising statement, he [David Rockefeller] revealed he considers himself a follower of the Austrian school of economics. Friedrich Hayek had been his tutor at the London School of Economics in the 1930s. Source

And while I'm on the Ron Paul soapbox from the last post (can you tell I am a former Ron Paul brain washed zealot and campaign donor?)....he rants about abolishing the Federal Reserve (front organization for private banks) but then recommends just turning the money creation power directly over to the private banks (competing currencies - i.e. no adherence to Constitutional mandate for Congress to do the job they are supposed to be doing despite all of his followers claiming how Constitutional he is).  Instead we get digital gold via Lewis Lehrman (CFR, PNAC, etc) and Rand Paul.

Ron is talking about competing currencies...issued by the inner banking circle controlled market of course....in other words setting the stage for the new world order to establish a global currency based on gold as advocated by his buddy Lewis Lehrman of CFR and PNAC. So we have a shell game where they drop the Federal Reserve Notes and go with a global note "backed by gold" (digital gold?)...at least until they say otherwise (think Nixon)....where's the change? Who gets screwed?

Read "The Case for Gold" by Ron Paul and Lewis Lehrman which is their viewpoint after participating in Ronald Reagan's Gold Commission which Ron Paul spearheaded.

Is our debt reduced? The money creation problem resolved? No....instead he proposes that we sell off our gold and lands to satisfy the debt (which was created for the cost of printing). Constitutional...nope.

Ron is talking about getting out of foreign entanglements and bringing the military home. This sounds really good and I hate how the US military has become this globalist tool. That said, much of the damage has been done and at this point it would just pave the way for China/Russia whom the globalists have been building up for multiple decades.

Also...what are those troops going to do when they get home? Any jobs out there? Why? Wouldn't be lack of money would it (which creates lack of demand and lack of jobs)? Is Ron Paul planning to fix that? Nope! Instead he's actually going to make it worse by opening the door to a single global currency based on commodities which "we the people" don't control.

So is bringing the troops home a good thing....again No. It will actually be destructive to the nation from multiple angles. First it provides a vacuum for China/Russia to fill. Second, all these guys come home only to find disillusion as they cannot gain employment (job losses accelerate as we find ourselves in a global race to the bottom for the lowest common denominator - i.e. the cheapest grunt labor)....and their respective skill sets are no longer desired....which leads to destruction/chaos at home.

Does Ron Paul really care about the troops and the challenges they face?  How did the vote on gays in the military go?
Numerous researchers have found out that the creation of a cohesive unit... is significantly influenced by broad cultural values, norms, and characteristics that are the result of a common socialization process and basic agreement among unit members about cultural values.

A significant characteristic about a cohesive unit is the consistent observation and evaluation of the behavior of unit members. Any deviation from unit norms, values, or expected behavior brings immediate and intense group pressures to conform to group norms. If the behavior is not corrected, then cleavage results in the group and cohesion is weakened. If the situation occurs in combat, where survival is threatened, then the group can be expected to expel or somehow separate or isolate the nonconforming individual.
Seventy eight percent of soldiers oppose allowing homosexuals into the military. Ninety percent feel very strongly about the privacy issue. They are strongly against it on the grounds of privacy.  Seventy four percent of male soldiers believe homosexuality is abnormal.
Seventy five percent believe gays serving openly in the Army would be very disruptive to discipline. Eighty one percent think there would be violence against homosexuals if it did happen. This indicates to me that if you did that you would have the severe disruption within these primary groups that we have been talking about that are so violative to cohesion...you have got to have a subordination of the individual values to the group so that they can be resocialized into those group values.
If you have gross, widespread dissimilarities in your initial population of recruits, your are going to have an extremely difficult time in achieving that resocialization process. You are going to have fragmentation, you are going to have personal conflict, and so on. Source
I think I could summarize the argument fairly quickly and then save time for my colleagues and hopefully myself to respond to other charges or questions as they arise during the course of this debate. I think I can summarize it best by stating just three essential points.
Many people who serve in the military today share a viewpoint that allowing homosexuals to serve in the military goes against their religious beliefs or moral convictions. Many of our young soldiers entering the military today are from families who hold very strong moral traditions, beliefs and convictions, and strong religious beliefs. Many military people have stated that a change in this policy will, over time, significantly affect our ability to retain many of the people whom we look to today for leadership in the military and will affect seriously our ability to recruit the needed people for the decade ahead to continue to supply the quality of people that we need in our military. Because, on the basis of their own personal religious convictions or their moral convictions, they see this change as creating an atmosphere in which they do not want their sons or daughters to serve, or which they themselves do not feel comfortable serving in.
Second, we fear that the change in policy will significantly reduce our ability to field an effective military force. Perhaps the most essential ingredient in an effective military force, as our military leaders tell us and as sergeants and captains and colonels and generals throughout the ages have said, is an intangible aspect that some define as morale, some define as esprit de corps, unit cohesiveness, discipline. General Powell has spoken to this. General Powell has indicated that change in this policy will undermine good order and discipline.
General Schwarzkopf said it will destroy the military. These are strong words. They need to be heeded. They need to be listened to. That intangible quality say, our field commanders, our sergeants, our platoon leaders, our battalion leaders--that quality is something that is fashioned in an extraordinary way through intense discipline, training, and it is derived on the basis of a unit cohesiveness that is critical to our effectiveness. It is important that we listen to our military leaders when they tell us that this change in policy will affect that is a very dramatic way.
Now, why? Why? Why does allowing homosexuals in the military affect that ability to field an efficient, effective military? Have not homosexuals served in the military, served as good patriots, served with courage, made positive contributions? Absolutely, they have. But there is an essential element here present that is difficult to talk about, no one really wants to talk about, but it must be talked about for us to understand what is at stake. It is a three-letter word called sex.
For the same reason we do not put men and women together in the enforced intimate living situations that we find in our military which is different from every aspect of life--where people live together in barracks, sleep together in tents, shower together in makeshift showers in the desert sands of the Persian Gulf, dress and undress with each other--for the same reason we do not put men and women together in a situation like that because of the sexual attraction element which is one of the most basic of all human instincts and really does not need to be explained in a whole lot of detail--I think everyone understands that----That is a tension-creating, conflict-creating, consequence-creating element that destroys morale, that undermines unit cohesiveness and effectiveness. Source

Ron has also voted for things like "most favored status" to China which has helped assist them in their build up. That's not an "entangling alliance" with what Ron has also called "one of the most brutal, anti-American regimes in the world"???? And has it not fit hand in glove with globalist plans of building up the communist countries and destroying the United States?

Ron is also recommending privatizing the military, education, TSA, FAA, etc etc etc (the election system for government ???)....all while spouting off that we need to get rid of the "privatized" (Federal Reserve and fractional private banking) money creation system. His Restore America kills a large chunk of government spending (although privatizing portions of it - who gets those contracts?)...basically taking the military from foreign lands (leaving a gigantic vacuum for the Russians/Chinese to fill) as well as large portions of the federal government...while completely reducing costs to corporate interests and selling off government assets. So the corporations receive massive benefits (reduced or near zero taxes). The Russians/Chinese benefit. The rich who have all the investments benefit.

But the poor little guy on the bottom....nah he gets squeezed like never before in history. Safety nets go bye bye. The rich get richer....and the poor get much much poorer.

Ron Paul's free market is a crock of BS. He pretends to be for free market while his strategies and policies are designed to destroy the last remaining controls of government. This is clearly evident in his "Restore America Plan" - notice the removal of controls over banking and corporations as well as the reduction in corporate tax (even further globalization as they can move money where ever they want w/o repatriating taxes)....is that the free market you envisioned???

Is Ron Paul advocating putting the power back in Congress.....or more privatization and power to the corporations???

Again go back and look at Ron Paul's actual policies or intended policies and compare them with "free market"....is it really "free" or do you end up in California's situation after they "de-regulated" power and their power bills went up 1600% over the course of a year or two??? All because they now were competing on the "national" market for power...who won? who lost? How did that Enron/Bush story go again???

What was Ron Paul's stance on the whole Enron and California power de-regulation fiasco???

Ron Paul and his agenda.... how does turning the money over to the "market - i.e. corporations" and out of the hands of the government (Congress - i.e. the people...as long as the franchise or right to vote remains in place) fit in with these statements -

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
- Thomas Jefferson

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
- Thomas Jefferson

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.
- Remarks at dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners of the Western Hemisphere on 4/29/62 by JFK

Ron Paul has long held that land owned by the government should be sold to private developers. In addition to closing the Department of the Interior, his "Restore America" budget plan proposes selling off at least $40 billion worth of public lands such as national parks, and other federal assets, between 2013 and 2016.

Fast forward almost 70 years. Ron Paul announces at the Heritage Foundation that the government should sell its gold to reduce the national debt.

We are buried in debt....is Ron Paul going to help the people....or help the bankers and corporations who are now the legal land owners???

But his followers who talk about the great sacrifices he has made for his country in giving up his vocation of delivering babies to make millions a year and despite a 25+ year history as a representative of "the people" having not gotten one single bill passed.  Does he even donate to his own campaign while asking for whatever "the people" can sacrifice for him?  And those same people cheer when card carrying Bilderberg Group steering committee man Peter Thiel puts a couple million behind Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is a dream-come- true for corporations who want free trade unrestricted by regulation or taxation. Source

Peter Thiel - Ron Paul's biggest fundraiser (both overtly and covertly). PayPal/Facebook/Palantir Technologies/etc...billionaire, 44, who is openly gay and is ramping up the Republican (left?) via GoProud...the host of Homocon...

On the Board of Directors for the Hoover Institution and a member of the Steering Committee of The Bilderberg Group.

Research CIA and Facebook for information concerning the "early" investors...

Bruce Fein - senior adviser to Ron Paul on legal matters concerning his 2012 Campaign run. Bruce Fein is a lawyer in the United States who specializes in constitutional and international law. Fein has written numerous articles on constitutional issues for The Washington Times, Slate.com, The New York Times, Legal Times, and is active on the issues of civil liberties. He has also worked for the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, both conservative think tanks, as an analyst and commentator.

Doug Wead - senior adviser to Ron Paul for 2012 Campaign run. He is a motivational speaker, a Bush family friend, and was a campaign adviser to George H.W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. He was Special Assistant to U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and is the author of more than thirty books, including the New York Times best-seller All the Presidents’ Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of the First Families.

In 1979, Doug Wead joined entertainer Pat Boone and Dan O’Neill in co-founding Mercy Corps. In 1991, Wead provided initial funding to help launch a Mercy Corps economic recovery program in the newly formed Republic of Kazakhstan. Mercy Corps is a global aid agency engaged in transitional environments that have experienced some sort of shock: natural disaster, economic collapse, or conflict. Mercy Corps, in the last 14 years, has founded 12 different finance institutions. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided more than US$1.95 billion in assistance to people in 107 nations. Supported by headquarters offices in North America and Europe, the agency's unified global programs employ 3,700 staff worldwide and reach nearly 16.7 million people in more than 40 countries.

Recommend researching NGOs, the CIA, and Mercy Corps for more information...

Wead was an active behind-the-scenes player in the 2000 United States presidential election, receiving some credit for George W. Bush's victory in the Iowa straw polls of 1999. From 1984 to 2000, he served as an on-and-off adviser to both presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Time magazine called Wead an insider in the Bush family orbit and "the man who coined the phrase 'Compassionate Conservative.'" George W. Bush first picked up the term “Compassionate Conservative” in 1987 from Wead. In 1979, Wead gave a speech titled “The Compassionate Conservative” at the annual Charity Awards Dinner, and tapes of the speech were later sold across the country at corporate seminars.

Lewis E. Lehrman: Independently wealthy (the Rite Aid drugstore fortune), a scholar, philanthropist, and longtime student of monetary policy. He served with Ron Paul on Ronald Reagan's Gold Commission which was instigated by Ron Paul. He and Ron Paul later wrote a book together recommending gold titled "The Case for Gold".

Lewis Lehrman later wrote a book pushing for the use of gold as one world currency.

Lewis was a signatory to the infamous Project For a New American Century document, a pre-9/11 Neo-Con blueprint which yearned for a "new Pearl Harbor" to justify U.S. military expansionism across the globe. He is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Project for the New American Century, as well as a Trustee to the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. He was a former director for the Heritage Foundation. Lehrman was a managing director of Morgan Stanley in the late 1980s. He was also an investor in George W. Bush's Arbusto Energy. He and Gilder were awarded the National Humanities Medal in an Oval Office ceremony on Thursday, November 10, 2005. The Medal was presented by President George W. Bush. He's a close family friend of the Bush family.

He lectured at Hillsdale College in Michigan, in the Ludwig von Mises “Champions of Freedom” series. Founder of the Lehrman Institute who's director was Barton Biggs of Brookings Institution. Bruce Rabb is partner of the Wall Street law firm, Stroock Stroock & Lavan, organized the Lehrman Institute and has been secretary of it since 1978.

Currently recommending a return to gold standard for a global currency along with Rand Paul.  The architect of the plan, Lewis Lehrman, a businessman and scholar, will present his program in an address October 5 at a conference in Washington on the how to return to a stable dollar. He will outline a five-step program to return America to a gold-backed currency within five years.

Murray Rothbard - Ron Paul's self declared mentor. During the early 1950s, he studied under the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises at his seminars at New York University and was greatly influenced by Mises' book Human Action. Rothbard attracted the attention of the William Volker Fund, the main group that supported classical liberal scholars in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Rothbard began his consulting work for the Volker Fund in 1951. This relationship lasted until 1962, when the VF was dissolved. A major part of Rothbard's work for the VF consisted of reading and evaluating books, journal articles, and other materials. On the basis of written reports by Rothbard and another reader - Rose Wilder Lane - the VF's directors would decide whether to undertake massive distribution of particular works to public libraries. During the late 1950s, Rothbard was also an associate of Ayn Rand and her philosophy, Objectivism, along with several other students of Ludwig von Mises, such as George Reisman.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Rothbard was active in the Libertarian Party. He was frequently involved in the party's internal politics. He was one of the founders of the Cato Institute, and "came up with the idea of naming this libertarian think tank after Cato’s Letters, a powerful series of British newspaper essays by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon which played a decisive influence upon America's Founding Fathers in fomenting the Revolution.

Lew Rockwell Jr - Ron Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. Founder of LewRockwell.com. Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul—accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio recordings. A proponent of the Austrian School of economics, and chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. In the mid-1970s Rockwell went to work at Hillsdale College. In his time at Hillsdale College, Rockwell started the Hillsdale College Press, founded the school's monthly publication, Imprimis, and worked in fundraising and public relations. He met Murray Rothbard at Hillsdale College.

Milton Friendman - an American economist, statistician, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades. Friedman was an economic advisor to conservative President Ronald Reagan. Friedman spent 1941–43 working on wartime tax policy for the Federal Government, as an advisor to senior officials of the United States Department of the Treasury. As a Treasury spokesman during 1942 he advocated a Keynesian policy of taxation, and during this time he helped to invent the payroll withholding tax system. During 1946, Friedman accepted an offer to teach economic theory at the University of Chicago (a position opened by departure of his former professor Jacob Viner to Princeton University). Friedman would work for the University of Chicago for the next 30 years. There he helped build an intellectual community that produced a number of Nobel Prize winners, known collectively as the Chicago School of Economics. Aaron Director was a famous professor at the University of Chicago Law School who played a central role in the development of the Chicago school of economics with his brother-in-law, Milton Friedman, the leader of the “Chicago School.” From 1977 on, he was affiliated with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He was also a member of the Heritage Foundation as well as the Mont Pelerin Society.

He also played a founding role in the American Enterprise Institute.

Jesse Benton - Ron Paul's 2012 Campaign Chairman. Campaign manager on Rand Paul's 2010 U.S. Senate race from May 2010. Communications director on Rep. Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign starting in March 2007. President of C.I.C Solutions, a Washington, D.C. based consulting firm. Benton has served as press secretary at Americans for Tax Reform, communications director at the American Conservative Union, director of public policy and external affairs at the Performance Institute and communications director and policy consultant for the Liberty Coalition. Media coordinator and board member, American Conservative Defense Alliance. He has also worked on campaigns and in corporate and trade association government relations and external affairs. Alumnus of Mary Washington College.

Grover Glenn Norquist - American lobbyist, conservative activist, and founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Referring to Norquist's activities as head of ATR, Steve Kroft, in a 60 Minutes episode that aired on November 20, 2011, claimed that "Norquist has been responsible, more than anyone else, for rewriting the dogma of the Republican Party."

As a nonprofit organization, Americans for Tax Reform is not required to disclose the identity of its contributors. Critics such as Sen. Alan Simpson, have asked Norquist to disclose his contributors; he has declined but has said that ATR is financed by direct mail and other grassroots fundraising efforts. According to CBS News, "a significant portion appears to come from wealthy individuals, foundations and corporate interests."

While in college, Norquist was an editor at the Harvard Crimson and helped to publish the libertarian-leaning Harvard Chronicle.

Norquist traveled to several war zones to help support anti-Soviet guerrilla armies in the second half of the 1980s. He worked with a support network for Oliver North's efforts with the Nicaraguan Contras and other insurgencies, in addition to promoting U.S. support for groups including Mozambique's RENAMO and Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in Angola and helping to organize anti-Soviet forces in Laos.

In 2004, Norquist helped California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger with his plan to privatize the CalPERS system. In 2010, Norquist joined the advisory board of GOProud, a political organization representing conservative gays, lesbians, transgendered people, and their allies, for which he was criticized by the Family Research Council. He has served as a monthly "Politics" columnist and contributing editor to The American Spectator.

Along with Campaign for Liberty coordinator Michael D. Ostrolenk (who serves as President and is a Board Member), Norquist founded the American Conservative Defense Alliance. He also founded a front organization called the Islamic Free Market Institute in 1998 together with a Muslim activitist long associated with Muslim Brotherhood operatives named Khaled Saffuri “to promote a better understanding of Islam in America.”

John Tate:

John is a long-time political operative who has spent the last 26 years working in the political, lobbying and non-profit world in the areas of high dollar fundraising, direct mail, political strategy, grassroots activism and non-profit management.

He is the founder and President of JFT Consulting, Inc. a consulting firm that specializes in political strategy, fundraising and grassroots lobbying. John served as the National Political Director for The Ron Paul Presidential Campaign Committee and is currently President of the newly formed Campaign for Liberty.

Prior to joining Campaign for Liberty, John served as the Vice President, Membership for the Leadership Institute. In this role he headed up a department of LI staff that contacted and visited supporters nationwide to show them and raise funds for special targeted LI programs. In his 4 years at LI this program raised nearly $4 million. He also taught at many of LI's schools.

Before joining LI, John spent 14 years with the National Right to Work Committee, serving as Vice President from 1998 to 2004. As Vice President he oversaw all state and federal lobbying efforts, public relations, the affiliated state and federal PACs for Right to Work and a direct mail and telemarketing fundraising operation that raised more than $23 million to combat Big Labor’s coercive power over workers.

Ted Anderson - (Midas Resources which is the parent company of Genesis Communications Network) Midas Resources has been a Torch Bearer Supporter of the Campaign For Liberty (C4L) since it's inception. Also a supporter of Young Americans For Liberty (YAL) and many others. Ted Anderson is associated with Wallnuts Investment Club with the role of Principal.

Research Alex Jones and Genesis Communications Network for more insights there...

Here's a nice little tool  and a nice little tool for getting additional names and organizations (foundations, trusts, institutes - all tax free of course) with Lewis Lehrman as example here.

The World Order controls the citizens of the United States through the tax exempt foundations. These foundations create and implement government policy through their staff members in key positions in the executive, legislative and judiciary departments. The foundations create educational policy through their staff members in key positions at every level of the educational system. The foundations control religious doctrine through their staff members in key positions in the leading religious denominations.

“Foundation” is a misleading term; Webster calls it an endowment, but a foundation is really a trust, which Roget states is a “syndicate”. If, instead of Rockefeller Foundation, we were to say Rockefeller Syndicate, we would be much closer to the truth. Alpheus T. Mason, in his biography of justice Brandeis, quotes Brandeis as pointing out that “Socialism has been developed largely by the power of individual trusts.” What we have then, are criminal syndicates masquerading as philanthropic enterprises while they inflict Socialist world slavery on nations and peoples for the benefit of the World Order.

Norman Dodd, director of research for the Reece Committee in its attempt to investigate tax exempt foundations, was asked by Congressman B. Carroll Reece in January, 1954, “Do you accept the premise that the United States is the victim of a conspiracy ?” “Yes,” said Dodd. “Then,” said Congressman Reece, “you must conduct the investigation on that basis.” B.E. Hutchinson, chairman of Chrysler Corp., although approving the goals of the investigation, warned Dodd, “If you proceed as you have outlined, you will be killed.”

The New York Times noted April 29, 1984 that 1400 officials were attending the annual meeting of the Council on Foundations. There were 21,697 foundations in the U.S., which in 1983 distributed $3.4 billion in grants. These grants are dispensed only to those who implement the program of the World Order, and whose goal is world slavery.

The international banking families, whose origins go back to the Middle Ages, set up the principal American foundations to protect the wealth they had amassed in their dealings in slaves, drugs and gold, and to perpetuate that wealth through means which can only be described as “imperial decrees”, government charters, in order to neutralize all potential rivals or opposition by controlling them and directing or misdirecting their opposition.

None of the charters of the foundations indicate their real purpose. They are replete with such phrases as “the well-being of mankind” “the elimination of poverty”, the “elimination of disease, “the promotion of world brotherhood”. Compassion, caring, charity, these are the watchwords of the foundations. There is no hint to the unwary of the despotic instincts which drive these “caring” people to promote world wars and world slavery, nor is there any warning to the menials of the foundations that if they falter at any time in their dedication to the goals of the World Order, the penalty is sudden death. Source

Imagine a world where everything is owned: the land, the water, and the air.

Ownership is the right of influence. When you own something you can do what you will with it. Nobody can tell you otherwise. If you save all your money and buy a Porsche, you can drive it off a cliff for all we care. It is yours, and being yours, it escapes our influence.

In a corporation, decisions are made through ownership percentage of the company. If you and I, together, own 51% of our company, we can institute any corporate policy or bylaws we want. But I ask you, how many of us own 51% of Exxon, or Merrill Lynch, or Monsanto? How many of us have ever sat in on a board meeting for Disney, or Microsoft, or K-Mart? Chances are, you have not, and as long as you don’t own enough of the company, you will never be invited. You will never have influence. That takes ownership.

Imagine a world where everything is owned: not by you, but by one of these companies. Imagine that the presiding authority over the water you drink, or the air you breathe is owned by somebody else, and its use had to be commercially negotiated: that you drink because you have permission to drink, or breathe air because you have permission to breathe it.

What else is a license than merely formal arrangements of permission? When you buy a $0.99 song on iTunes, its not merely the bandwidth you are paying for, or even the royalty to the artist. You are purchasing a license — you are purchasing permission from the owner of the music, the record company, to play and store the music on your computer and iPod.

Imagine a world where the central systems of society were privatized in this fashion: they are owned, not by you, and provided through private permission.

What else is Despotism than a society where everything that is done, is done with permission of the elite? What else is Despotism than the privatization of society? Source