@Lash,
You're as dishonest as Builder. Ever take a look at your what part of society's sphincter you take these RW sources from????
Ballotpedia was founded by the Lucy Burns Institute, which was bought out by the Lynda and Harry Bradley Foundation.
ballotpedia.org
Ballotpedia is a nonprofit and nonpartisan online political encyclopedia that covers federal, state, and local politics, elections, and public policy in the United States. The website was founded in 2007. Ballotpedia is sponsored by the Lucy Burns Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Middleton, Wisconsin.Wikipedia
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Lynde_and_Harry_Bradley_Foundation
Harry Bradley was one of the original charter members of the far right-wing John Birch Society, along with another Birch Society board member, Fred Koch, the father of Koch Industries' billionaire brothers and owners, Charles and David Koch.[6] "Bradley was also a keen supporter of the Manion Forum, whose followers believed that social spending in America was part of a secret Russian plot to bankrupt the United States," Jane Mayer writes in Dark Money.[7]
In the same book, Mayer details that, "The event that multiplied the Bradley Foundation's assets by a factor of twenty almost overnight, transforming it into a major political force, was the 1985 business takeover in which Rockwell International, then America's largest defense contractor, bought the Allen-Bradley company, a Milwaukee electronics manufacturer, for $1.65 billion in cash. The deal created an instant windfall for the Bradley family's private foundation, which held a stake in the company. Its assets leaped from $14 million to some $290 million.[7]
Changes to Mission Statement
Jane Mayer in her book Dark Money discusses how the mission statement of the Bradley Foundation changed over time,
"Originally, the foundation's purpose was to help aid needy employees and the residents of Milwaukee, as well as prevent cruelty to animals...After (Mike) Joyce took over the foundation in 1985, however, a new mission statement was drafted, directing its grants to the support of "limited, competent government," "a dynamic marketplace," and "vigorous defense."'[7]
News and Controversies
Board Member Cleta Mitchell Forced to Resign from Foley & Lardner After Advising Trump in Challenging Election
Bradley board member Cleta Mitchell was one of several lawyers on a January 2, 2021 call in which Donald Trump pressured Georgia's Secretary to State to "'find' enough votes to overturn his defeat".[8] The call was described by legal scholars as "a flagrant abuse of power and a potential criminal act."[8]
Mitchell had "been advising Mr. Trump despite a policy at her firm, Foley & Lardner, that none of its lawyers should represent clients involved in relitigating the presidential election."[9] Mitchell resigned from Foley & Lardner after fallout from the call.[9]
"Partying with Russian Fascists and Oligarchs"
A trove of emails, according to ThinkProgress, indicated that Dan Schmidt, who was a vice president at the Bradley Foundation at the time, attended a "swanky gala" in Russia with the likes of Russian fascists and oligarchs.ThinkProgress cites hacked emails from Russian officials and others released by the website "Distributed Denial of Secrets" as evidence for Schmidt's attendance. Schmidt was the Vice President for Program then through as recently as 2016, and has been a part of Bradley for decades.[10]
Ties to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
Governor Scott Walker signed a right-to-work bill into law on March 9, 2015, with some help from the Bradley Foundation. The foundation "doled out over $8 million in 2012 and 2013, the latest years for which information available, to support the operations of a web of nearly three dozen groups promoting right to work laws and radical privatization policies that empower the wealthy and corporate CEOs at the expense of the middle class," according to a report by One Wisconsin Now published on February 25, 2015. "The Bradley Foundation, having nearly half a billion dollars in assets, regularly hands out $30-40 million a year, making it perhaps the largest right-wing funding foundation in America. Groups operating in Wisconsin, including the MacIver Institute, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, Media Trackers and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Foundation, took in excess of $2.9 million.[11]
Walker proposed his 2013-2015 budget, which contained plans to massively expand Wisconsin's school voucher program, in February 2013. Congruent with the efforts of the Bradley Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), this would provide state subsidies for students to leave public schools in exchange for private schools, effectively transferring substantial government public education funding to the private sector.[12]
The Center for Union Facts, an anti-union organization that is part of lobbyist Rick Berman's family of front groups, received $1.55 million between 2007 and 2010 from the Bradley Foundation and spent heavily to support Walker and smear teachers unions with an anti-union website during the 2011 fight over public sector collective bargaining rights.
The MacIver Institute (a member of the ALEC-tied State Policy Network) and the Koch-founded and -funded Americans for Prosperity spent millions defending Walker in his 2011 recall election. Americans for Prosperity received $600,000 from the Bradley Foundation from 2004 to 2010.
Within days of Walker's 2010 election, he met the board and senior staff of the Bradley Foundation at Milwaukee's elite Bacchus Restaurant. Two weeks later, the Bradley-funded MacIver Institute published an editorial calling for Walker and the legislature to end collective bargaining for public employees and attack private unions by making Wisconsin a "Right to Work" state.[13]
The MacIver Institute received $360,000 from Bradley in its first three years of existence, and ran a series of pro-Walker "It's Working!" ads with Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which has also been funded by Bradley.[13]
In addition to the ties to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker noted above, Bradley Foundation CEO Michael Grebe personally conducted interviews at the cabinet level of the Walker administration and served as chair of Walker's campaign, the "Friends of Scott Walker."[14]
In 2010, the MacIver Institute, which is funded by the Bradley Foundation, posted an op-ed pushing for a repeal of collective bargaining rights. The article read: "Two simple but fundamental steps to kick start the Wisconsin economy and get our state budget mess resolved would be to repeal collective bargaining for public employees and to make Wisconsin a right to work state, giving private sector workers the choice of whether they want to pay union dues in their workplace."[15]
Bradley Foundation Provides Financial Backing to Groups Fighting Scott Walker's John Doe Probe
The Center for Media and Democracy reported in June 2014, "The Bradley Foundation and its directors have given nearly $18 million to groups that are now connected to individuals involved in the John Doe investigation and the campaign against it. Prosecutors in that high-profile probe allege that Scott Walker is at the center of a "criminal scheme" to illegally coordinate fundraising with Wisconsin Club for Growth and other nonprofit "dark money" groups during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections."[16]
Funding of Voter Suppression Billboards
In 2010 and 2012, billboards went up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a few cities in Ohio that displayed the message "Voter Fraud is a Felony!"
The original billboards in 2010 had a picture of a black man behind bars, but the billboards were changed after public outcry.
Shortly before the 2012 election, public pressure mounted in Milwaukee demanding that the funders of the billboards be disclosed, and that the billboards come down.
Clear Channel Outdoor, the advertising company that owned the billboard space, finally agreed to take the billboards down.
One Wisconsin Now, a progressive advocacy organization, later revealed that the Einhorn Family Foundation was behind the billboards, and a few days later Michael Grebe, the president and CEO of the Bradley Foundation, confirmed to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it had provided $10,000 to the Einhorn Family Foundation in 2010 that had in fact been used for billboards.[17]
Funding Islamophobia in the United States
LHBF has funded various organizations and individuals contributing to an anti-Islamic hysteria in the United States, according to research by the Center for American Progress (CAP). Between 2001 and 2012, LHBF contributed $6,540,000 to various Islamophobic groups, including the Center for Security Policy, the Middle East Forum, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center.[18]
Contributions of the Bradley Foundation
For a full list of grants from 1998-2019, see the Contributions of the Bradley Foundation page.
In 2013, a total of $33,988,318 in grants was awarded.[19]
According to Right Wing Watch, the Bradley Foundation has given grants to highly controversial individuals:[20]
"Bradley has supported and in some cases, had to defend controversial right-wing recipients of their grants, particularly Charles Murray and Dinesh D'Souza.[20]
"Charles Murray - Murray, author of "The Bell Curve," which argues that intelligence is predicated on race, and "Losing Ground," whose thesis is that social programs should be abolished. Murray's work was so controversial and objectionable that the right-wing Manhattan Institute, supported by Bradley and for which he worked, asked him to leave. However, the Bradley Foundation stood by him because Murray, according to former Bradley President Michael Joyce, "is one of the foremost social thinkers in the country." Bradley extended Murray's $100,000 per year grant when he went to the American Enterprise Institute. [20]
"Dinesh D'Souza - D'Souza, in his book, The End of Racism, attempts to absolve Whites from discrimination against Blacks during slavery, claiming that Blacks were too uncivilized to be a part of society anyway."[20]
Ties to DonorsTrust, a Koch Conduit
DonorsTrust is considered a "donor-advised fund," which means that it divides its funds into separate accounts for individual donors, who then recommend disbursements from the accounts to different non-profits. Funds like DonorsTrust are not uncommon in the non-profit sector, but they do cloak the identity of the original donors because the funds are typically distributed in the name of DonorsTrust rather than the original donors.[21] Very little was known about DonorsTrust until late 2012 and early 2013, when the Guardian and others published extensive reports on what Mother Jones called "the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement."[22][23]
Americans for Prosperity, an organization founded and funded by the Koch brothers, received nearly $9.5 million from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund from 2010 to 2012.[24]
DonorsTrust Funding
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation contributed $2,969,292 to DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund between 2009 and 2013[25] (see links to the foundation's IRS forms 990 below).
A report by the Center for Public Integrity exposes a number of DonorsTrust funders, many of which have ties to the Koch brothers. One of the most prominent funders is the Knowledge and Progress Fund, a Charles Koch-run organization and one of the group's largest known contributors, having donated nearly $9 million from 2005 to 2012. Other contributors known to have donated at least $1 million to DonorsTrust include the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation, Searle Freedom Trust, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation.[26]
Since its inception in 1999, DonorsTrust has been used by conservative foundations and individuals to discretely funnel nearly $400 million to like-minded think tanks and media outlets.[26] According to the organization's tax documents, in 2011, DonorsTrust contributed a total of $86 million to conservative organizations. Many recipients had ties to the State Policy Network (SPN), a wide collection of conservative state-based think tanks and media organizations that focus on shaping public policy and opinion. In 2013, the Center for Media and Democracy released a special report on SPN. Those who received DonorsTrust funding included media outlets such as the Franklin Center and the Lucy Burns Institute, as well as think tanks such as SPN itself, the Heartland Institute, Illinois Policy Institute, Independence Institute, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, South Carolina Policy Council, American Legislative Exchange Council, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and the Cascade Policy Institute.[27]
Funding Rick Berman's Front Groups
In the latest annual report posted to its website, the Bradley Foundation said it gave a total of $675,000 to Richard Berman's PR front groups in 2013: the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF, which changed its name to the Center for Organizational Research and Education (CORE) in early 2014), the Center for Union Facts, and the Employment Policies Institute.[19]
The Bradley Foundation gave at least $375,000 (from 2009 to 2012) to one of Berman's PR front groups, CCF, which runs HumaneWatch.org, the Environmental Policy Alliance, and the Humane Society for Shelter Pets, ConsumerFreedom.com, ActivistCash.com, CSPIscam.com (attacking the Center for Science in the Public Interest), Animal-Scam.com, FishScam.com, ObesityMyths.com, Sweetscam.com, PhysiciansScam.com and PetaKillsAnimals.com.
CCF/CORE actively opposes smoking bans and lowering the legal blood-alcohol level, while targeting studies on the dangers of meat and dairy, processed food, fatty foods, soda pop, pharmaceuticals, animal testing, overfishing, and pesticides.[28] It is reportedly primarily funded by corporate restaurants and the food industry.[29]
The Bradley Foundation gave CCF $200,000 in 2009,[30] $50,000 in 2010,[31] $125,000 in 2012,[32] and $250,000 in 2013.[19] See Contributions of the Bradley Foundation for more.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Franklin_News_Foundation
Franklin Center Under New Leadership
Wisconsin Watchdog reporter James Wigderson tweeted on April 14, 2017, “The Franklin Center is shutting down,” but a few days later, it appeared that Franklin was rebooting.[13] In a press release on April 17, Franklin announced that Chris Krug, former editor and manager of the Illinois News Network, would be the new President.[14] The Illinois News Network is a project of the Bradley-funded Illinois Policy Institute, a State Policy Network “think tank.”
Bradley Foundation Kept Wisconsin Watchdog Afloat as Franklin Center Struggled Financially
A 2017 Center for Media and Democracy investigation of Bradley Foundation internal documents revealed that "in recent years the Franklin Center has foundered. The number of state offices dwindled to five in 2016 and employees fled the sinking ship when a single, mystery funder withdrew support."[13]
It is a "text book case of imprudent funding," wrote Bradley staff. "Unable to resist the offer of $10M annually from one source, the organization grew beyond its capacity to manage itself, and became too dependent on one funder, making it able to shrug off criticism from elsewhere (including Bradley). Last year, when that funder shifted priorities and the fecklessness of the administration became evident, the organization began to collapse" (Grant Proposal Record, August 16, 2016).[13]
When Bradley staff were unsure if Franklin CEO Nicolle Niely was "up to the job," they still funded Wisconsin Watchdog because it was "so effective and such a valuable partner in the state’s conservative infrastructure."[13]
Bradley Files
In 2017, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), publishers of SourceWatch, launched a series of articles on the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, exposing the inner-workings of one of America's largest right-wing foundations. 56,000 previously undisclosed documents laid bare the Bradley Foundation's highly politicized agenda. CMD detailed Bradley's efforts to map and measure right wing infrastructure nationwide, including by dismantling and defunding unions to impact state elections; bankrolling discredited spin doctor Richard Berman and his many front groups; and more.
Find the series here at ExposedbyCMD.org.
Franklin Center Called Out for Blocking Action on Climate Change
In July of 2016, nineteen U.S. Senators delivered a series of speeches denouncing climate change denial from 32 organizations with links to fossil-fuel interests, including the Franklin Center.[15] Sen. Whitehouse (RI-D), who led the effort to expose "the web of denial" said in his remarks on the floor that the purpose was to,
"shine a little light on the web of climate denial and spotlight the bad actors in the web, who are polluting our American discourse with phony climate denial. This web of denial, formed over decades, has been built and provisioned by the deep-pocketed Koch brothers, by ExxonMobil, by Peabody coal, and by other fossil fuel interests. It is a grim shadow over our democracy in that it includes an electioneering effort that spends hundreds of millions of dollars in a single election cycle and threatens any Republican who steps up to address the global threat of climate change. . . .
t is long past time we shed some light on the perpetrators of this web of denial and expose their filthy grip on our political process. It is a disgrace, and our grandchildren will look back at this as a dirty time in America’s political history because of their work.”[15]
Conflict of Interest in Wisconsin "John Doe" Campaign Finance Investigation
In 2013, Franklin Center's "Wisconsin Reporter" website published over a dozen articles aggressively attacking Wisconsin's "John Doe" probe into possible campaign finance violations during Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 recall elections, and broke stories about the investigation. The Center for Media and Democracy (publishers of Sourcewatch.org) uncovered in December 2013 that the news outlet may have a conflict of interest, as "Franklin Center has close ties to individuals and groups that may be caught up in the John Doe."
Franklin Center/Wisconsin Reporter called its series on the John Doe "Wisconsin's Secret War," and cited "unnamed sources to reveal that Wisconsin Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, and Republican Governors Association had received subpoenas, and describing details about "after-hours visits to homes and offices" and prosecutors' "demands for phone, email and other records." [16]
Franklin Center/Wisconsin Reporter described the John Doe investigation as "an abuse of prosecutorial powers" with "the apparent goal of bringing down Gov. Scott Walker." However, the news outlet had what journalism professors called "a conflict of interest that minimally ought to be disclosed, whenever stories are written."
CMD reported:
"The only name associated with the investigation, Eric O'Keefe, helped launch the Franklin Center's operations in 2009, and his Sam Adams Alliance group provided the majority of its startup budget; O'Keefe has spoken publicly about being subpoenaed in his capacity as director of Wisconsin Club for Growth. Franklin Center's Director of Special Projects John Connors, and the Executive Assistant to the President Claire Milbrandt, also have close ties to a group reportedly involved in the John Doe probe. Its former Director of Operations and General Counsel, James Skyles, worked with another group active in the Wisconsin recalls." [16]
Silence on Pay-to-Play Allegations Highlights Conflicts of Interest
John Menard, owner of the Menard's chain of hardware stores, gave $1.5 million in previously unknown contributions to Wisconsin Club for Growth during the 2012 Wisconsin recall election, according to reporting by investigative journalist Michael Isikoff published March 23, 2015. Isikoff wrote that the contributions "seem to have paid off for the businessman and his company." Over the following two years, Menard's received $1.8 million in tax credits from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, which Walker chairs, and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources "sharply scaled back enforcement actions" under Walker.[17] The story made national headlines, including coverage by The New York Times, MSNBC, and U.S. News & World Report the day following its publication.[18]
Wisconsin Reporter, which had previously defended O'Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth against allegations of improper coordination with Walker and his campaign, made no mention of the pay-to-play allegations in the days following Isikoff's story despite the national news coverage, according to Media Matters. "Their silence on the story highlights the conflicts of interest that surround the outlet's reporting on Walker and the 'John Doe' investigations," Media Matters wrote.[18]
Accusations of Inaccuracy & 'Manufactured News'
In August 2010, the West Virginia Watchdog blog quoted an unnamed source claiming that Democratic Governor Joe Manchin's office had been subpoenaed as part of a federal grand jury investigation. The story said that the subpoenas asked for contracts and records for businesses that have done work at the governor’s mansion. "The target may be Manchin himself, according to a source who asked to remain anonymous," the original story said. The governor’s office responded saying that “Neither subpoena was directed to Governor Manchin or the Governor’s Office.... No individual in the Governor’s Office was served with a subpoena…. The State has not been informed that Governor Manchin or any other state employee is under investigation.” The West Virginia Watchdog updated its site with these statements then reported that their "source was ultimately wrong about the purpose of the subpoenas."[19]
In February, the Wisconsin Reporter sponsored a questionable poll asserting that 71% of Wisconsin residents thought the state's Governor Scott Walker's budget proposal to cut the collective bargaining rights of most of the state's public sector workers was "fair." Several local and national news outlets cited the poll without investigation, including MSNBC. The result seemed completely out of whack with other polling leading some to question the source. The same month, We Ask America, largely owned by the Illinois Manufacturing Association, a leading business organization in the region, polled 2,400 Wisconsin residents and found that 52 percent opposed Walker's bill. The Franklin Center's poll was conducted by Pulse Opinion Research. [20]
In 2009, the New Mexico Watchdog reported that based on data from Recovery.gov millions of dollars were spent in non-existent congressional districts in the state. The story picked up steam among reporters, even turned into a Colbert Report segment called "Know your Made-up District." The Franklin Center released a national report that said $6.4 billion in stimulus money had been spent in hundreds of “phantom” congressional districts. There was truth to the New Mexico Watchdog report, but it turned out, as reported by the Associated Press, that the culprit was an error-ridden government database. The funds were actually distributed to the right recipients but errors such as zip codes entered incorrectly accounted for the "phantom districts" rather than, as the report suggested, had been unaccounted for or misused.[11]
Even with this new information on the shortfalls of the Recovery.gov site, the Franklin Center failed to set the record straight. In its 2010 Annual report, the center boasted it found that the "stimulus sent funds in the form of grants, loans and government contracts to support more than 200 projects in imaginary ZIP codes covering 38 states." It did not mention the errors in the database, but let the record stand as a story of government waste.[21][22]
Additional Criticism from Media Watchdog Organizations
The journalistic integrity of these sites has been called into question by media watchdog groups. Laura McGann, assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, wrote that the Franklin Center is backing news organizations who engage in distorted reporting across the country. "As often as not, their reporting is thin and missing important context, which occasionally leads to gross distortions," wrote McGann, who pointed to several instances where the Watchdog websites wrote stories that turned out to be misleading or untrue.[23]
The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism on a sliding scale of highly ideological, somewhat ideological and non-ideological, ranked the “Watchdog.org” franchise "highly ideological."[24]
Franklin Center "at the Forefront of an Effort to Blur the Distinction Between Statehouse Reporting and Political Advocacy"
"For the most part, the people in charge of these would-be watchdog operations are political hacks out to subvert journalism in their quest to grab and keep power using whatever means they have to do so. . . . At the forefront of an effort to blur the distinction between statehouse reporting and political advocacy is the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity," Gibbons wrote in the Nieman Reports publication of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. He interviewed Franklin Center Executive Director Jason Stverak in March 2010, and Stverak said Franklin sites should be held to the same standard as any news publication -- judged "based upon the content that they produce." But, Gibbons writes, "four months later the Franklin Center cosponsored and played an active role in a two-day conference organized by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. The Right Online Agenda conference included such breakout sessions as 'Intro to Online Activism' and 'Killing the Death Tax” and featured speakers such as conservative U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Tea Party activist Sharron Angle, a Republican who was then running against Harry Reid in the election for U.S. Senate in Nevada. No Democratic legislators were included in the program. The finale of the Las Vegas conference was a November is Coming Rally."[25]
Conservative columnist H. Daniel Glover specifically credited the Franklin Center with helping the conservative cause, according to a June 2010 in-depth report by Gibbons written for the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. "Once conservatives realize they can conduct great investigations that expose the flaws of intrusive government and the special interests that corrupt it, you will see more of them embracing that kind of journalism,” Glover said. “Mainstream publications like the Washington Examiner and organizations like the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which helps support and fund budding watchdogs, are showing them the way.”[26][11]
Gibbons' 2010 report continues:[11]
"Reporters for news sites in Ohio, Illinois and Idaho funded by the Franklin Center or its affiliates have been denied press credentials by accrediting bodies because of the lack of transparency about donors and links to advocacy groups. Veteran journalist John Dougherty, who was briefly on contract to a Nevada group with links to the Franklin Center, said he quit because it became clear to him the journalism was not non‐partisan.
"'They were clearly looking for gotcha stories to embarrass Democrats in any way they could. That's not what I do,' he said. 'I'm an equal opportunity basher -- I've written stories that have damaged Democrats as well as Republicans and Independents. I'm apolitical. If it's a story, it's a story; if it's not, it's not,' Dougherty said. (Several weeks after I interviewed him, Dougherty announced he was a candidate for the Democratic nomination to run for the U.S. Senate from Arizona)."
Ties to the Koch Brothers
The Franklin Center has ties to the Koch brothers. The organization has received funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. Franklin also received funding from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. (See below.)
Koch Wiki
Charles Koch is the right-wing billionaire owner of Koch Industries. As one of the richest people in the world, he is a key funder of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on Charles Koch and his late brother David include: Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, Stand Together, Koch Family Foundations, Koch Universities, and I360.
