Media Matters has a post up today explaining that
Internet gossip Matt Drudge has claimed that Media Matters for America is a “Soros operation.”
In fact, Media Matters has never received funding from progressive philanthropist George Soros.
Looking at the non-authoritative but informative Sourcewatch entry on Media Matters we get:
Funded with “more than $2 million in donations from wealthy liberals.” “Among Mr. Brock’s donors is Leo Hindery, Jr., the former cable magnate; Susie Tompkins Buell, who is co-founder of the fashion company Esprit and is close to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and Ms. Buell’s husband Mark; and James C. Hormel, a San Francisco philanthropist whose appointment as ambassador to Luxembourg was delayed for a year and a half in the late 1990’s by conservative lawmakers protesting what they called his promotion of a ‘gay lifestyle.’ [5]
Media Matters for America is funded in part by the Democracy Alliance.
And following the Sourcewatch link to ‘Democracy Alliance’ we get:
“Members of the Democracy Alliance include billionaires like George Soros and his son Jonathan Soros, former Rockefeller Family Fund president Anne Bartley, San Francisco Bay Area donors Susie Tompkins Buell and Mark Buell, Hollywood director Rob Reiner, Taco Bell heir Rob McKay … as well as New York financiers like Steven Gluckstern.” [3]
Conservative site ‘Discover the Networks‘ says:
Media Matters has not always been forthcoming about its high-profile backers. In particular, the group has long labored to obscure any financial ties to George Soros. But in March 2003, the Cybercast News Service (CNS) detailed the copious links between Media Matters and several Soros “affiliates” – among them MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, and Peter Lewis. Confronted with this story, a spokesman for the organization explained that “Media Matters for America has never received funding directly from George Soros” (emphasis added), a transparent evasion.
Here’s why this matters – if the issue is to replace one group of powerhungry liars with another, it’s really hard for me to motivate any energy to become involved. And I assume that I’m not alone.
Transparency and honesty matter, or they don’t. You can’t bust GWB for failing to be completely transparent and then cloak yourself in bullshit without the room starting to stink.
Honesty is more important to me than social justice because I don’t believe that people who are profoundly dishonest are capable of advancing the cause of social justice.
I agree with you completely about the importance of honesty and transparency. The way to settle this is with more truth, rather than less, recognizing that folks with a beam in their eye are very fond of pointing out the mote in someone else’s eye to keep attention off themselves.
Here are the answers I would want:
(a) How much did Media Matters get from the Democracy Alliance?
(b) What fraction of Media Matters’ budget is this?
(c) How much did Democracy Alliance get from George Soros?
(d) What fraction of Democracy Alliance’s budget is this?
Imagine that those two fractions are 0.9 and 0.9. In that case, Media Matters is trying to obfuscate the fact the George Soros funds them.
However, imagine that those two fractions are 0.1 and 0.1. In this case, a tiny fraction of Media Matters’ support comes from Soros, and the critics are just blowing smoke.
Surely, someone out there knows the relevant sources and can answer the above quantitative questions with little effort. Care to illuminate us?
Similar analyses can be done with Richard Mellon Scaife, or anyone else with strong convictions who has a lot of money to spend to push their point of view.
If someone is prepared to do a deeper analysis, I would be interested in a non-partisan comparison of, for example, George Soros and Richard Mellon Scaife, with respect to the appropriateness of the ways they spend their money to influence the political process. Wealthy people have free speech like everyone else, but there are lines that shouldn’t be crossed. Have these folks been crossing those lines? How much and how often? What are the criteria, and what does the evidence say?
Analysts Drudge and Moore need not apply.
Hmmm . . . ?
And, by the way, I do fault Media Matters for failing to answer the question themselves, along the lines I have suggested. This is not rocket science.
The problem, Beard, is that both MM and Democracy Alliance explicitly obscure their donors. I wish they didn’t, and think it would be a great step forward for them and the causes they support if they suddenly were to publish detailed lists of donations and the connections (background) of the donors.
A.L.
Again, my question would be, who is transparent and who is not? And what are the genuine reasons for transparency and non-transparency?
I don’t move in those circles, but I can imagine that privacy is a very limited resource when you are super-wealthy (and certainly if you are super-famous). To what extent is anonymous support appropriate, and to what extent is it not?
I’m not pre-judging the answer to this. I haven’t thought about it carefully enough to have an opinion I would argue for (yet).
If MM and DA obscure their donor lists, I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that corresponding conservative organizations do the same thing, and I’ll bet there are pragmatic reasons for it. Perhaps it’s a reasonable policy, and we should just live with that, and focus on what MM and DA do, whereever they get the money to do it.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps the rules of the game should be changed. But I want to understand why the rules are what they are, before trying to change them too much.
I don’t believe that every piece of information needs to be shared.
(Irresistable paren: During the Clinton administration, a reporter asked Hillary what she would do if she discovered that Chelsea were pregnant. She said, “I certainly wouldn’t discuss it with you!” Privacy is a legitimate value.)
Nonetheless, everything you say should be scrupulously true. Shaving it close, like “nothing _directly_ from Soros”, may be technically true, but is just asking for trouble, since you know perfectly well what the questioner is after.
Nonetheless, I’ll bet someone, somewhere, can make some reasonably well educated guesses about the quantities I wanted.
A “Soros operation” implies that it’s directly under his control or aegis. Given that that’s flatly incorrect, MM’s response seemed fine to me.
Hosnesty in the media yeah its just like saying the titanic was unsinkible
Honesty is indeed more important than social justice. In part I agree with you for this reason: we can usually agree about what “honesty” means in a given situation, whereas Americans have vastly different ideas of what “social justice” is or ought to require.
“Two years ago Media Matters denied that they were connected to Soros, and then backpedaled.”:http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Carchive%5C200503%5CSPE20050303a.html
I don’t know what it matters which rich elite is currently paying their bills, especially when they truck with people like David Brock.
AL —
IMHO very clearly Media Matters and other elitist liberal organizations are not and never will be interested in “Social Justice.”
What they are interested in IMHO (and hence the obscuring of their Soros connections and that of other wealthy Liberal elites) is social control over the average person.
Global Warming? An opportunity to control the average person and degrade their standard of living to the lowest possible level. While Captain Save the Planet and Leo jet about in their private jets.
Troubles in the Third World? Take money from average Americans and give them to Trillionaire African Kleptocrats like Mugabe, Amin, or Mbeki.
Wages falling in the US? Let’s import even more poor people from Mexico to drive down the cost of gardeners, nannies, maids, and chauffeurs. At the same time, let’s drive down white collar wages by importing lots of cheap engineers from India via H-1B visas, and outsource like crazy.
Control, more control, and even more controls are the name of the game.
Social Justice? Please don’t make me laugh. The name of the game is making the average person an impoverished peasant, and along the way playing identity politics. It’s no accident as Karl used to say that the anti-White Male politics are aimed squarely at preventing upward social mobility that might challenge the wealthy elite like Goreacle, Soros, etc. as the masters of America and Europe.
The enemy of “progressives” who champion “social justice” is not hunger, disease, poverty, malnutrition, sex traffic, oppression of women, etc. but the Average White Male who is the root of all evil.
So no, of course Media Matters will not disclose the nature or degree of their Soros ties. Why should they? They have more important things to do.
“Honesty is more important to me than social justice because I don’t believe that people who are profoundly dishonest are capable of advancing the cause of social justice.”
B.S. That’s just plain silly.
So some person or group states with absolute clarity and honesty, “we are going to drag jews out of their houses, confiscate their property, throw them into gas chambers and kill them in mass numbers because we just plain don’t like those hook nosed, money grubbing, pound of flesh eating so and soes – and, well after all, we have the guns and the numbers and we know we can get away with it”
This is better – in your opinion – because it’s honest as opposed to a group that would seek social justice and shut down ethnic discrimination? Even if that group had “compromised” itself – again in your opinion – because maybe it failed to disclose that it receives funding in part from a Jewish orginization?
Very bizarre thinking for someone who claims to a “liberal” – or is that title just a rhetorical device designed – as obvious as it is ineffective – to throw a debater off guard?
avedis –
Of course – because if they say that we get kick their asses. One of the benefits of transparency is that you are seen for who you are, not who you claim to be.
A.L.
Oh, and Jim Roquefort……it was progressives, liberals and democrats mostly that desegrated the South, pushed civil rights for all Americans, waged the war on poverty….etc, etc, etc
“…..The name of the game is making the average person an impoverished peasant………etc, etc ad nauseum”
Liberals are doing this? Have you seen that under Republican tax and social resource distribution policy it is the top 1% of Americans who are enjoying the bulk of the economic benefits (i.e the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer)? You do actually think before you comment don’t you?
“…..The enemy of “progressives” who champion “social justice” is not hunger, disease, poverty, malnutrition, sex traffic, oppression of women, etc. but the Average White Male who is the root of all evil……”
I am wondering if you might have skipped your rabbies shot this year.
“Of course – because if they say that we get kick their asses. One of the benefits of transparency is that you are seen for who you are, not who you claim to be.”
A.L.
Whose going to kick who’s ass? When? Six million Jews died before the Nazis had their collective ass kicked.
Has the KKK had its ass kicked out of existance? How many linchings, how many years of oppression before the KKK and its sympathizers even got a black eye?
Your sounds to me like a low and brutish, haphazard and insufficient alternative to social justice/civil rights upheld by rule of law.
“Has the KKK had its ass kicked out of existance?”
Yes, it has. When I was a boy in Georgia, we saw them marching in robes and sometimes hoods — they didn’t usually bother with the hoods, as the community largely thought it was an honor rather than a disgrace to belong.
I haven’t seen a Klansman in open garb in fifteen years. Those KKK organizations that are still active are so fully infiltrated by the FBI that they serve to inform on, rather than to support the activities of, the few remaining dangerous racists.
Don’t underestimate this particular victory.
avedis, the law is a tool used in large part to enforce social norms (why laws against sex with children? against fraud?). By enforcing some measure of transparency, it is easier to measure the place actors have vis a vis those norms (which, btw, evolve) and to offer them credit and social capital – or deny it.
‘asses kicked’ didn’t imply guys with axe handles. The KKK got it’s ass kicked when a brave man named “Stetson Kennedy”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stetson_Kennedy infiltrated the Klan and exposed their dirty laundry for much of the world to see.
Sunlight is in fact a really good disinfectant.
A.L.
A.L.
Are you trying to say that no one knew what the KKK was all about until Stetson? Not true. Also, you miss the point.
Perhaps I have obfuscated the point by providing specific examples that may not be the best represenatives of the higher concepts I wish to illucidate.
If I am reading you correctly, you seem to be approaching the topic from a sort of libertarian free market perspective. With full disclosure all parties can assess the value of a source and then make an informed decision as to whether or not to consume the information, affiliate with the parties, etc.
I am saying that this is not better than social justice – though I must admit I do not even necessarily understand what you mean by social justice (your definition?) – because, without systematic social justice enforceable by rule of law, a majority could fully disclose that they wish to oppress a minority, obtain buy in from all of the majority members and then move forward to oppress the minority (as with Jim Crow).
I really cannot see how full disclosure could contribute more to the maintenance of a civil democracy than, say, civil rights encoded into a Constitution and enfored universally by law.
This is not to say that full disclosure isn’t important in a market. It is. It alleviates a market failure known as asymmetry of information (that prevents all parties to a transaction assigning fair value to a commodity). And fraud would be an example of asemmetrical information damaging a contract – not a social norm.
Also this bit about a prohibition against sex with children being merely a “social norm” is a little disturbing. You can’t be serious?
You should read some of the myriad of literature pertaining to the often life-long psychological damage experienced by molested children.
No. These are laws designed to protect the weak and vulnerable from serious harm.
Do you want to argue with me also, avedis? I say social justice doesn’t matter as much as honesty, because honesty is a virtue we hold in common. The various “social justice” schemes are debatable ground. We ought to defend our common values, as they are the things which underlay any compromises we make on the debatable issues.
avedis –
Um, twelve year old girls were often married in Europe in the 16th century.
And protecting the vulnerable is in fact a social (as opposed to an absolute) norm.
And while Grim makes a very good point, I’ll suggest in addition that honesty is in fact a necessary precursor to social justice…
A.L.
Sure Grim, I’ll argue with you because you don’t make sense. You are trapped in semantics of your own defining.
“….because honesty is a virtue we hold in common…..”
A virtue? Really now. What is the difference between a virtue and “spcial norm”? What would Machiavelli say about this? Hell, what would the intellectual ancestors of the “neocon” movement say about it (hint “the noble lie” and Ledeen’s “entering into evil”, etc)?
“…Common Values…..”? For some people honesty is not a virtue or a value. Again, for some people honesty is a sucker’s game. So, who’s right regarding honesty? You? Because you say so? I don’t think so.
Some people would say that “social justice” is a societal virtue.
Virtue, value, social norm……..there’s really very little – if any – difference. Or maybe you explain without using circular logic.
“Um, twelve year old girls were often married in Europe in the 16th century.”
Um, in the 16th century “witches” and other “heretics” were burned at the stake in public. Disease producing waste was tossed into the street, slaves were bought and sold like cattle………lots of thing were done in the 16th century that would now be illegal. So just because something was done somewhere at some time doesn’t make it a simple matter of preference when it comes to right or wrong, does it. Hell, in some societies cannibalism was the “norm”. You OK with cannibalism?
“And protecting the vulnerable is in fact a social (as opposed to an absolute) norm.”
This statement is absolutely remarkable in its extremeness of assininity.
If there is one thing that is completely fundemental to any mammalian social organization it is protection of children from harm. Note I said Mammalian; this is so basic that even animals adhere to it and yet you say it is some sort of socially based choice. Even alligators protect their eggs fom threats.
Friggin’ city slickers that don’t know squat about real life. Fancy motorcycles and racing suits instead of juevos.
avedis:
Oh, no it isn’t.
The fundamental mammalian instinct is the protection of one’s OWN offspring, which is an entirely different thing from the protection of children under law.
Many mammal species deliberately exterminate offspring that is not their own. Unfortunately humans are such a species, sometimes even after acquiring a good dose of civilization.
Among the isolated tribes of New Guinea, it was custom to kill any human who was not related to you by blood. If two strangers from different villages met on a road, they discussed genealogy. If they found a common relative, they went their separate ways. If not, they battled to the death on the spot, even if they had nothing to fight over.
There is nothing natural about defending someone else’s child, so A.L. is correct to call it a social norm.
avedis,
It seems to me (transparently?) clear that saying “honesty is more important than social justice” is not an expression of preference for honest Nazis over the (adulterous) Martin Luther King.
Rather, it is another way of saying “the ends don’t justify the means.” Or to put it another way, promoting social justice doesn’t justify lying. After all, when Nazis and Communists lied, they did it in the name of the greater good.
It’s sort of an analogous principle to the preference for process over results in American law: better that your opponent be elected President than you stuff ballot boxes to prevent it.
“Oh, no it isn’t.”
Actually, you are wrong. Herd animals, like horses, elephants, javelina, monkeys (OK, it’s called a “troop” not a herd) etc, do indeed protect all offspring within the herd.
What is herd, but a society in its most rudimentary form?
And I tell you what, if you came to my home town and started having sex with my neighbors’ 12 year olds I’d shoot you and leave your carcas in the woods. And I’d probably have to get in line to have the opportunity. No one around here would have any sympathy that it’s just a social norm -a life style choice – and that they used to do it in the 16th century. But hey we all know those swinging Californians do things differently.
But in all seriousness, I’m having a hard time understanding the negativity towards the idea of an advanced human society pooling resources for the protection of its citizens and for the furthering of the greater good.
“…..so A.L. is correct to call it a social norm…..” Ok. if you and A.L are correct, then why is “honesty” not a social norm as well. As I have already stated, there are many examples of thoughtful humans who have believed that honesty is a hinderance to effective governance.
“..Rather, it is another way of saying “the ends don’t justify the means.”…”
Interesting. I would observe that on this blog there are many who believe strongly that it is OK to torture people if doing so has even a chance of saving some of “our” lives (though I do not know if you yourself subscribe to this notion). Maybe the ends not justifying the means is a principle that only applies when the actions of “liberals” or democrats are the subject of scrutiny….
“It’s sort of an analogous principle to the preference for process over results in American law: better that your opponent be elected President than you stuff ballot boxes to prevent it.”
No. It is not. We are talking about an organization accurately stating that George Soros doesn’t directly fund it and A.L. bitching and bloviating because G.S. is a member of an organization that in turn funds the organization in question. This is nothing like stuffing ballot boxes.
In fact, one must ask, what constitutes “dishonesty”?
To mind, Drudge has violated the principles of transpaency and honesty by incorrectly stating that Media Matters is “Soros operation” – with the implication being that Soros directs and controls the content of Media Matters. There is nothing to suggest this is true.
Furthermore, A.L. is, himself, at least guilty of perpetuating the lack of honesty by buying into Drudge’s B.S. and by excoriating Media Matters, when Media Matters has not been dishonest. It’s very sleazy of A.L. – the kettle – to be calling the pot black.
A.L.’s Inuendo and negative spin are just has damaging to the priciples he claims to value as are outright fraud.
avedis:
No, I am not wrong, you are. You have narrowed it down from mammals in general to “herd animals”, but you are still wrong. It is not a general characteristic of herd animals to protect all offspring. In a herd of wild horses, for example, only the dominant stallion is allowed to sire any offspring at all. In many species, competing males in a herd often kill each other’s offspring.
The protective circle that elephants form around their calves is pretty rare herd behavior. Most herds flee and abandon offspring to the predator.
Again, if there was such a thing as a natural instinct to protect juveniles, humans certainly didn’t inherit it. When the Romans killed Aelius Sejanus, they killed his three small children, too.
Oh yes, MMFA is absolutely a Soros organization. OMG!
OMG!
OMG!
wait—
OMG!
…what then?
That it’s gotten to this point is proof that MMFA’s mission is vitally important. It’s really sad to see them fall like this, huh A.L.?
Guess we’ll have to wait for another white knight before poor liberals like you and me will be able to truly fight back against the Rightwing Noise Machine.
Until then, Kemo Sabe.
Trying to define words away doesn’t actually take them away, avedis.
“What is the difference between a virtue and ‘social norm’?”
The difference is that a virtue is good whether it is normal or not; whether it is expected or not; even if it would be considered rude, given the actual social norms. Honesty in a man is a good quality, even if he lives in a society that is habitually dishonest — even if it is accustomed to being so for what it thinks of as good reasons.
For example, in China, it is considered rude to tell someone something that will make him unhappy or uncomfortable. This leads to rampant dishonesty in business practices. I once had a lady tell me, in response to my request to know when they intended to pay me, “Maybe today!” In fact, there was no possibility that today would be the day when I would be paid, which day eventually came three months later.
She was acting in accord with her social norms, to use your term. An honest answer, however, would have been better. This is not simply because I am an American, and raised to _want_ an honest answer. It is because an honest answer would have allowed me to budget and plan for three months without pay.
It would also allowed me, or anyone else, to deal with her and her company on a basis of trust. That kind of underlying trust has tremendous capacity to work good in society — see Bill Whittle’s “The Web of Trust”:http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000135.html for a long but excellent piece on the subject.
“For some people honesty is not a virtue or a value. Again, for some people honesty is a sucker’s game.”
That is a dodge. Honesty remains a virtue, for the reasons described above. It remains a “common value,” because it is extolled as such in all our foundational documents; because the common culture understands what is meant by it and why it is important; and so forth. It is a value we all understand.
The proof of this is that even you, in your extended trip into semantics, didn’t try to convince me that “honesty” might mean something else. Truth is not lies: we all understand that.
That is what it means to say that honesty is a value we hold in common. You personally may choose not to abide by it; but if you are an American, your culture considers it a value, and everyone in that culture means more or less the same thing by the term.
“Social justice,” by contrast, is an empty term. Does it mean government handouts? Religious duties to the poor? Affirmative action? The opposite of affirmative action — the refusal to discriminate? All of that is subject to debate.
If you want to convince me that your way is the right way, the wrong way to begin is to convince me that you don’t really care if you’re honest while debating the question.
“In a herd of wild horses, for example, only the dominant stallion is allowed to sire any offspring at all….” Another city slicker watching – with poor focus – Discovery Channel and thinking he knows everything.
We are not talking about reproductive freedom; are we (well maybe you and A.L. are talking about the freedom to breed with 12 year olds)?
“It is not a general characteristic of herd animals to protect all offspring”
In a herd of horses the dominant *female* runs the herd. She and some of her stronger underlings will fight to protect herd members. They stand guard against outside intruders and predators. I know. I breed horses, own a herd, and have observed horse behavior for my entire life. Plus, it’s in all the books. You simply don’t have a clue and should not be talking on this subject.
Glen, instead of getting lost in tangents, why don’t you address the more substantial points (e.g. what is “honesty”, how can you say it’s a virtue and not just a social norm, how can you obtain honesty in a society where it pays to cheat, etc)?
Glen, I am absolutely puzzled by your (and A.L.’s) hostility toward the idea that to build a better and more civil society a society must formally enact laws based on guiding principles; one of which being the protection of members of society that are most vulnerable and another being equal application of the law to all members of the society (both of which would be fundemental social justice creating legal infrastructure).
This is a right wing thing, though. I know this. The right wing has consistently attempted to dismantle safety net programs, to scuttle civil rights/equal rights, education for the poor, health care for the poor and for veterans…….
At bottom, the Constitution never mentions “honesty”. It does, however, dedicate much language to what can be considered the framework for social justice.
Additionally, the founding fathers knew that ideals like “honesty” were not to be counted on (e.g. let greed do the work of virtue). Having more “honesty” in our society is a pipe dream. It is asking for a revolution through the creation of a new kind of man.
More Social justice, however, is a viable goal because you can actually take concrete practical steps to obtain it.
A.L.’s talking about “honesty” is like setting out to count how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
“The difference is that a virtue is good whether it is normal or not…”
Who declares it good? Why…. the members (or at least the high priests) of a society. And what is considered “good” will depend on the time and place in history as well as a host of other variables.
Grim, come on, I have been looking up at the sky for almost half a century and not once have I seen it written up there – in God’s blazing handwriting – that “Honesty” is a virtue.
Again, what is a virtue is determined by a concensus of people whos thinking is impacted by a myriad of environmental factors. There is nothing universal about it. The process of assessing what is a virtue is identical to that involved in creating social norms.
Again, you have not shown me why there is a difference between a “virtue” and a “norm” other than by attempting to define them differently.
Again, if we look at the volumes of thinking by political scholars and by actual policy makers and advisors we can see much to suggest that honesty in this realm is more of a vice. Again, there is much that clearly states exactly that. Again, I refer you you to your own ideological heros and their employment of the “noble lie” and their “entering into evil” to accomplish some higher goal.
No where do I see a concensus that “honesty” is a virtue. The words and actions of many lead me to believe that “honesty” is not universally revered.
So, Grim, where are you coming from? Again, you are trapped in semantics. “I say honesty is a virtue therefore it is. Then I say that a virtue is different than a norm and therefore it is…….And Grim looked upon his semantic entanglement and saw that it was good….and on the seventh day he rested”
Sorry to bust you bubble, Grim, but it’s just words.
And no, Grim, I don’t know what honesty is and I don’t think that most people do. Again, your examples seem to relate to full disclosure in contractual relationships to facilitate business efficiency. I am all for that. It is easily defined and enforceable based on performance. This is not a virtue. It is simply good business.
Now, if your wife puts on a dress that makes her look fat and she then asks you, “how do I look”, do you act in a “virtuous” manner and tell her honestly????
The point being that most of us recignize that often it is best to not be completely – if at all – honest. There are many times every day when each of choses to lie or to conceal the the truth. So how is honesty a absolute virtue?
It is not.
But what A.L. is talking about is something else. He is asking that people,public figures, organizations – answer questions about anything and to a minute level of detail.
“I say honesty is a virtue therefore it is. Then I say that a virtue is different than a norm and therefore it is.”
Ah, that’s exactly the opposite of what I said. What I said was that honesty was a virtue whether or not it was normal, because it allows for a number of demonstrable benefits, both to the individual and to others. Read the Whittle link.
“Now, if your wife puts on a dress that makes her look fat and she then asks you, “how do I look”, do you act in a “virtuous” manner and tell her honestly????”
Recently, in the comments to good manners on blogs, I suggested the regular reading of Miss Manners’ column in the _Washington Post_. She teaches techniques that allow you to say what you want to say, without sounding like the sort of person you wouldn’t want to be.
It is as honest to say, in response to my wife’s question, that “I think your striped blouse would be more flattering with that outfit,” rather than “You look fat.” Indeed, the first of the two responses is honest, and contains two other virtues: it is helpful, and it is kind.
“But how do you know they are virtues?” you may demand. In this way: if you treat your wife in that way, she will love you more each day, and your marriage will grow stronger.
Again, these things are testable against the real world. Avoid “indoor philosophy”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/009400.php and dancing about with words.
Imagine, SAO, how much more powerful MM would be if it was transparent. And imagine how much more worthy of support the progressive movement would be if transparency was one of their cardinal virtues.
I blame Scoop.
A.L.
avedis – when you say ‘no, Grim, I don’t know what honesty is and I don’t think that most people do.‘ – are you serious?
A.L.
A.L., yes. I am serious.
Obviously there are black and white situations where a simple “yes” or “no” is required and only one of the two is answering truthfully and the other response is a blatant lie.
Beyond that, there are many many more situations in which what constitutes a “truthful” answer is more murky. Is ommission of relevant or qualifying information a “lie”? Where do we draw the line between what is relevant or qualifying? Would you draw the line in the same place I would?
Example; I met with the V.P. of another department last week to discuss a proposal. I was asked why I thought the direction I recommended would be the best choice. I answered truthfully as to the positive impact on the company’s bottom line, I addressed feasibility issues that came down in favor of my proposal as opposed to other options. What I did not mention was certain aspects of the proposed direction that favored me personally in the long run (career wise). Was I lying? Was I not being truthful? Hard to say, isn’t it? This sort of thing happens a billion times a day.
Sometimes we do not even know our own hearts and minds well enough to answer truthfully. “Why did you do this or that”? You answer as to your motives. Maybe, a few years down the road with the benefit of age and experience, you come to a different – maybe deeper – understanding of why you did what you did. Were you “lying” originally?
So the line between truth and lie is pretty fluid in many real life situations and when and where someone decides that the truth has not been told is really very much dependent on the individual judge.
Which brings us back to your original post. In my opinion, MM was honest in addressing the question of whether or not GS ran their organization. He clearly does not.
You, on the other hand claim that MM was *not* truthful because they did not disclose that GS has some form of affiliation through other organizations.
So, no, I don’t know what “honesty” is because you and I seem to be defining it very differently; totally different criteria.
avedis, the question wasn’t whether GS ran MM, it was whether he funded it. And that’s not a matter of opinion, or projection, but a simple fact.
One thing that I believe in is that there must be some armature of fact – which out to be empirically testable – that we can agree on in order to work together.
So if Soroa gave $20MM to Tides, and Tides gave $19MM to MM, there are facts that we can agree happened. Beyond that there are interpretations – did he direct Tides to give that money to MM? Was it an arbitrary decision by the Tides staff?
When you look at political corruption, you have a chain of facts – Councilmember Y voted for Developer X’s project and a week later,Developer X gave Councilmember Y’s wife a job.
Then you have interpretations – which may legitimately differ.
But hiding the facts in order to try and assure the most favorable interpretation is, to me fundamentally dishonest. Even if it makes my side look good.
A.L.
I must say that this discussion is breaking up the monotony of last minute tax preparation very nicely…….
“avedis, the question wasn’t whether GS ran MM, it was whether he funded it. And that’s not a matter of opinion, or projection, but a simple fact.”
Fact = GS did not fund MM.
“…..the question wasn’t whether GS ran MM…”
But
“Internet gossip Matt Drudge has claimed that Media Matters for America is a “Soros operation.””
MM was responding to Drudge’s scurilous allegations.
“When you look at political corruption, you have a chain of facts – Councilmember Y voted for Developer X’s project and a week later,Developer X gave Councilmember Y’s wife a job.”
Agreed.
“Then you have interpretations – which may legitimately differ.”
Sure. And that’s the problem. When you insist that answers move beyond the clearest black and white level you get to the level where it’s all about interpretation and spin and then the “truth” becomes a matter of opinion.
Point in case; Soros does *not* fund MM. Black and white.
Response at the interpretation level; Soros is involved with an organization that funds MM. What does it mean? Some would say nothing. Others would develop some kind of liberal conspiracy theory. How has the cause of “truth” been furthered by delving into the realm of the interpretive?
I mean how many of you guys here were interested in following the chain of funding involved in the “Swift Boat” campaign? But a lot of Kerry supporters saw a lot of meaning in that chain of funding. How did you like that?
Avedis:
But isn’t that AL’s point? Even if Mr. Soros isn’t “directly contributing” to MM, he’s a major player in the organization that is. It’s no different than Karl Rove directing contributors to fund the Swifties; stating that the Bush Campaign wasn’t “directly involved” in those attacks hardly undermines the point that they were, indeed, pulling the strings.
Having said that, I don’t see any evidence that MM is a “Soros Operation” (as if that were a bad thing), any more than the Obama Campaign is a “David Geffen Operation.”
avedis:
It was your tangent, not mine, and you’re still wrong. I don’t care how many horses and hutch bunnies you’ve raised, domesticated animals are not wild animals. Your statement about herd “societies” protecting their offspring is still false.
But let’s agree to disagree about critters, and talk about honesty, then. I don’t see why journalistic honesty is so much to ask; it’s fairly simple and an organization like Media Matters ought to be expected to abide by it.
If you want to talk about virtues, Plato says “Wisdom is the chief and leader: next follows temperance; and from the union of these two with courage springs justice.”
Justice includes honesty, because a man who lies to deceive acts unjustly, and fails to “give each man his due” (Thomas Aquinas). Someone who lies to conceal embarrassing connections lacks courage as well, and if the connection is with Soros they also lack wisdom. Their temperance we won’t even get into.
“But isn’t that AL’s point? Even if Mr. Soros isn’t “directly contributing” to MM, he’s a major player in the organization that is…..”
Yeah, but, as you say, so what?
How does that “truth” enlighten us?
This whole discussion is about A.L. (and Drudge) using snide inuedo (i.e. GS is a member of an organization that…..) to sort of bring question upon MM’s independence, “true” mission, etc, etc.
Who gives a fat rat’s ass who funds MM?
If one is interested in the “truth” of this matter – as opposed to creating foggy implications spun in the direction of one’s chosing – then the question to MM should have been, “Does George Soro’s *direct* the content or focus of your material?”
And this is where MM should have taken a stance. They should have answered the repugnant Drudge’s lies with, “George Soros doesn’t (or does) direct X% of our material”. That is what was really at question here.
Actually, I think MM should have just ignored Drudge’s slime.
At any rate, they handle the situation differently than I would have. Still it seems a case of no harm no foul. I just object to what is here because I think that A.L. is not being truthful, and therefore is a big fat hypocrite. He is bringing up this story to slime MM without actually appearing to be sliming MM. That’s all.
“…Justice includes honesty…..” But not social justice???
“…because a man who lies to deceive acts unjustly….” Hmmm, so where is Drudge in all of this?
And still, it has not been proven that a thin dime of Soros money goes to MM and yet you are accusing MM of deception.
This is your idea of justice???
_”…Justice includes honesty…..” But not social justice???_
You ought to prefer that ‘social justice’ not include honesty, given your trouble defining what honesty might be. How shall I even consider your arguments on the score of social justice, if they are to be based in part on a virtue you say you’ve no notion how to define?
avedis:
Of course I haven’t uttered one word of hostility to this notion here, and neither has Armed Liberal. Unless you’re equating the soi-disant “progressives” of groups like MM with “social justice”, in which case I can’t find enough words to express my contempt. The punitive and authoritarian nightmare that the far left calls “social justice” is an obscene parody of justice.
Leaving MM aside, you have to agree that American society has done a vastly better job of grappling with these issues than the world in general has. We are limited less by generosity and resources than we are by fundamental disagreements – for example, we do not agree on the contents of the set (“Most Vulnerable Members of Society”).
Affirmative action has done well for middle class minorities, especially in the academic professions, but the people it has helped are not the most vulnerable. It’s done precious little for poor urban blacks, who have been steeped in a culture of victimhood and powerlessness by a left that simultaneously attacks the legitimacy of the democratic process and denies the possibility of economic advancement. Which is a most dishonest and unjust thing to do to people.
Big $$ for Progressive Politics
The Democracy Alliance is taking a page from the conservative Republican playbook by …
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061016/berman
Big $$ for Progressive Politics
by ARI BERMAN
[from the October 16, 2006 issue]
On December 13, 2004, a month after the re-election of George W. Bush, twenty-five of the wealthiest donors in the progressive community gathered at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington for an important strategy session. The group had collectively poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the effort to defeat Bush–and had nothing to show for it. Yet the despair of John Kerry’s defeat provided an urgent call to arms. “The US didn’t enter World War II until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor,” Erica Payne, a New York political consultant who helped organize the gathering, told the donors. “We just had our Pearl Harbor.”
The time had come for the donors to think differently about how to spend their money, just as conservatives had done forty years earlier when they launched a counteroffensive against liberalism and pushed the Republican Party far to the right. The meeting was led by Rob Stein, a former official in the Clinton Administration, who’d spent the last year and a half developing a PowerPoint presentation vividly mapping the rise of the conservative movement. He’d convened the meeting to encourage progressives to emulate the conservative funders by investing in the “guts” of politics–leaders and ideas and institutions that would last beyond one election. A month later the Democracy Alliance officially came into existence, as an exclusive collective of donors and one of the progressive community’s most ambitious undertakings yet.
Almost two years along, the Alliance’s 100 donors have distributed more than $50 million to center-left organizations and activists–a lot of money, yet still largely symbolic given the deep pockets of its members. Even as the donors pour millions into a new political infrastructure, however, problems have emerged that mirror many of the problems of the Democratic Party today and the progressive movement in general.
The first is determining what, exactly, the group stands for and wants to accomplish. Unlike the money guys who underwrote the right, members of the Alliance seem to lack strong ideological conviction about what the future ought to look like. And they do not have the militant perspective of outsiders eager to disrupt and overrun the party establishment. The right-wingers developed a core set of principles and stuck to them with an insurgent sense of persistence and aggressiveness. The wealthy liberals, in contrast, are still debating among themselves how to spend their money. Do Alliance members just want to be in the club or do they intend to change it? Do they want to stick with the party’s stars–Bill and Hillary Clinton and their cadre of influential aides, who are preaching “moderation”–or are they ready to listen to new voices? Are they really committed, and prepared, to fund long-haul change?
To its credit, the Alliance has largely ignored the 2006 elections in favor of developing a five-to-ten-year strategy. But the much bigger presidential election season just around the corner will test the donors’ long-term resolve. When the Alliance took an informal survey, the greatest fear among partners was that if a Democrat captured the presidency the organization wouldn’t survive. Rob Johnson, an early board member, says the tension in the Alliance is between “party subsidizers” and “climate changers”–those who want to fund organizations that work toward more effectively electing candidates versus those who aspire to change the fundamental nature of political debate with a stronger set of governing principles.
A secondary problem is the struggle these well-meaning wealthy Democrats have had in getting their own house in order. Since its inception, the Alliance has been unabashedly elitist, while also poorly run. The criteria for choosing winners have been maddeningly opaque and the grants themselves contradictory. Far from speeding up the funding of progressive organizations, the Alliance has slowed certain things down. To stabilize the organization internally after almost a year of early stumbles, the partners chose as its managing director Judy Wade, a member of the elite firm McKinsey & Company, consultants to multinational corporations. The appointment perhaps reflected the group’s uncertainty about its goals as well as the economic proclivities of its members. Wade normalized the Alliance operationally but further blurred its identity, increasing the likelihood that it will uphold the economic and political status quo.
“There’s a cautious pathway that traditional Democrats take, and it’s been hard to break that,” says Johnson. If partners propose to fund the liberal Campaign for America’s Future, they must also support its archrival, the DLC’s Progressive Policy Institute (neither has received funding so far). A newly elected board led by members of the Alliance’s progressive wing could make the group more adventurous. But an emphasis on collegiality indicates that risk aversion may well be the order of the day.
It’s too soon to draw any conclusions about the Alliance. But sixty interviews conducted over the past five months suggest that it’s not too early to worry that what began as a bold initiative may end up with as little to show as the earnest but largely ineffective philanthropy it was meant to supplant–which did good but didn’t alter power. Indeed, the Alliance could bolster a timid Democratic Party establishment instead of transforming it. Of all the lessons from the right, the Alliance has forgotten arguably the most important: It takes both money and conviction to achieve victory. “It doesn’t make sense to develop a strategy without a vision,” says James Piereson, longtime executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation, which was one of the key half-dozen funders on the right. “It’s a mistaken analogy that conservatives succeeded because of our tactics. I always thought conservatives were successful because of the ideas we were trying to sell.”
It Started With the Phoenix
The Democracy Alliance began in the offices of the New Democrat Network (NDN) and on the computer of Rob Stein, who’d served as chief of staff to Clinton’s Commerce Secretary Ron Brown. In 2002 and 2003 NDN, a creatively centrist Washington think tank, undertook a strategic review to figure out what the “higher purpose” of the organization and larger progressive movement should be. It called the effort the Phoenix Group, named after the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes and inspired by a character in a Harry Potter book. In the spring of 2003, NDN president Simon Rosenberg and Payne saw Stein’s PowerPoint presentation, which he’d titled “The Conservative Message Machine Money Matrix.”
“The narrative was not new,” Rosenberg says. “But the degree of research and how he pulled it all together was the best explanation I’d seen of how we are where we are today.” Namely, out of power. It wasn’t a question of money–the five largest liberal foundations outspent their conservative counterparts annually by a 10-to-1 ratio–but rather how it was being spent. Back in the 1960s and early ’70s, a handful of wealthy conservative businessmen like John Olin and Richard Mellon Scaife began generously bankrolling an array of policy centers, grassroots mass-based organizations, leadership institutes and intellectuals to beat back what the funders viewed as liberalism’s assault on traditional structures like the family, the free market and the military. Major Democratic Party fundraisers and large foundations like Ford and Rockefeller mounted no similar coordinated defense of liberalism. It was this problem that Stein hoped to address through his presentation.
Payne set up a series of meetings for Stein on the East Coast with prominent Democratic Party donors. Stein presented his research using a lexicon the millionaires and billionaires understood. He called the largest conservative donors “philanthropic venture capitalists.” The leaders of the conservative movement, such as Paul Weyrich and Grover Norquist, were “political investment bankers.” The presentation helped convince the wealthy liberals that the Republican Party’s recent successes were a logical outcome of determined movement building, not an accident of history.
During the fall of 2004, big donors were consumed with trying to oust Bush from office. But after Kerry’s defeat, the nascent Alliance moved full speed ahead, officially beginning its existence in January 2005. Only the most committed and well-to-do donors were accepted into the high-priced club. Those joining included billionaires George Soros, Peter Lewis and Herb and Marion Sandler; major Clinton fundraisers Mark and Susie Buell and Bernard Schwartz; New York venture capitalist and longtime Clinton supporter Alan Patricof; Hollywood celebrities Rob Reiner and Norman Lear; wealthy high-tech Californians such as Working Assets founder Michael Kieschnick; and the AFL-CIO and the SEIU.
Joining the Club
Members, known as “partners,” were required to pay a $25,000 entry fee, $30,000 in annual dues and a minimum of $200,000 per year to organizations recommended by the Alliance. The Alliance would not dole out money itself, but collectively the partners would meet twice a year through its auspices to decide which organizations to fund, forming working groups based on four priority areas: ideas, media, leadership and civic engagement. The working groups would present their recommendations to an investment committee made up of members of the board, who would pass them on to the entire group. Partners could then give money to the organizations they favored, voting with their checkbooks. An Alliance recommendation meant a valuable gold star for prospective progressive organizations. (The Alliance also put a premium on secrecy to protect the anonymity of its donors, actively discouraging members from speaking to the media and forcing grantees to sign nondisclosure agreements. Thus, of the dozens of partners and heads of organizations interviewed for this article, only a small number agreed to speak in detail on the record.)
In April 2005 fifty-plus partners arrived in Phoenix for a three-day conference. Stein, who announced at the outset of the 2004 Washington conference that he didn’t want to run the organization, led the meetings on an interim basis. Even before Phoenix it had been decided that the Alliance would represent an ideological big tent of centrist Democrats, progressive Democrats and even a few disaffected Republicans. As a result, partners and staff, few of whom had known one another before or had a long track record in politics, downplayed their differences and agreed to govern by compromise–never an easy thing, especially among the rich. “We need infrastructure,” says Rodger McFarlane, an adviser to Colorado multimillionaire Tim Gill, describing the views of the Alliance. “The right has taken over. That we agree on. Everything else is in play.”
In those early days, much of the focus–and most of the problems–were internal, as chairman of the board Steven Gluckstern, a retired investment banker from New York, searched for a leader of the group. Meanwhile, for would-be recipients, the process of applying for money was bewildering: completely secret and seemingly changing all the time. Four days before the first round of funding, the board offered the plum $400,000-a-year title of managing director to Robert Dunn, president emeritus of Business for Social Responsibility. When Dunn declined they turned to Judy Wade, who’d been encouraged to run by former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, although she had no prior experience in politics.
At an October 2005 meeting at the Château Élan Winery & Resort in Atlanta, Alliance partners agreed to give $28 million to nine groups. A few were smaller, edgier, more progressive organizations, like Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal watchdog that made headlines by drafting an ethics complaint against Representative Tom DeLay. But the bulk of the money went to familiar names on the DC circuit, like the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank run by Podesta, and Media Matters for America, which monitors right-wing media and media bias, headed by former conservative journalist David Brock.
The small number of groups chosen, some of whom were already well funded, and the secrecy of the process infuriated organizations excluded from the club. No one knew exactly why the nine groups had been picked. Funding progressive infrastructure was all well and good, but no one bothered defining precisely what “progressive” meant. The partners themselves, with their business backgrounds, focused on the process by which groups were funded, not what they would do with the money. “There was an almost complete lack of actual substance,” one adviser to a major donor said of the Atlanta meeting. The groups were selected to mirror the right but were far less anti-establishment than their conservative counterparts.
In preparation for the second round of grants, the Alliance began to open up. Wade normalized the selection process so that groups could apply for grants. To appease angry partners, she decided that funding would be determined by a changing menu of issue areas, not based on gaps compared with what the right has funded.
From a morale perspective, the next gathering, in Austin, Texas, the following May, was notably more successful than the one in Atlanta. Leaders of the progressive movement, like labor leader Andy Stern, were invited for panels on economics, foreign policy and media. Heads of organizations mingled freely with partners. And the groups themselves were noticeably more diverse than the initial gathering in Phoenix, where sixteen of seventeen presenters were white males. “I’ve made it a mission to hate the Democracy Alliance,” the head of one prospective organization told me, “and I was pleasantly surprised.”
The funding choices themselves presented more of a mixed bag. As a result of inside maneuvering by partners to fund their favorites, less money went to more groups–$22 million to sixteen organizations, with much of it only for one year. Grassroots organizations working on racial and economic justice issues that probably would have been overlooked in the first round, such as the Center for Community Change, USAction and ACORN, made the cut. On the other hand, the issue areas targeted for spring funding–voter mobilization (known as “civic engagement”), youth outreach, Hispanic media and religious left activism–while all deserving, seemed chosen specifically to coincide with upcoming elections. And some of the larger groups funded, such as EMILY’s List and the Sierra Club, hardly needed the money. The Alliance was created to think long-term and to fund gaps in progressive infrastructure. But with two major elections coming up, short-term electoral needs were bubbling to the surface.
Asurprise guest at the meeting was Bill Clinton, whose agenda seemed to be protecting his wife. But things didn’t work out quite as planned. When Guy Saperstein, a retired lawyer from Oakland, asked Clinton if Democrats who supported the war should apologize, the former President “went fucking ballistic,” according to Saperstein. Forget Hillary, Clinton said angrily during a ten-minute rant; if I was in Congress I would’ve voted for the war. “It was an extraordinary display of anger and imperiousness,” Saperstein says.
The willingness to challenge Clinton at least temporarily reassured progressive Democrats that partners in the Alliance had a spine and wouldn’t be a front group for “Hillary ’08.” But Clinton’s response was a not-so-subtle warning to partners to avoid divisive issues, like the war, that might harm his wife in the next presidential election. Hillary herself has had a number of one-on-one sit-downs with members of the board, as has Howard Dean.
A month after the Austin meeting, a group of partners from the Alliance’s progressive wing were elected to the board on an informal reform slate. They included Gara LaMarche of Soros’s Open Society Institute, Anna Burger of SEIU, Drummond Pike of the Tides Foundation and Rob McKay, Taco Bell heir and president of the McKay Family Foundation. Many of these foundations have been at the forefront of funding progressive initiatives, like the campaign in California to pass a living wage. At a July retreat in Boulder, Colorado, McKay and Burger were elected chair and vice chair of the board. “This is the first really elected board,” says Burger, a longtime union organizer. “It gives it legitimacy. People will feel more comfortable acting.”
Unclear Priorities
But if McKay and Burger are to move the Alliance toward more effective progressive funding, they will have to rethink its priorities, starting with how many groups it funds and for how long. For the first round of grants, Alliance staff repeatedly stressed the importance of following four basic funding principles: Give organizations enough money to compete with conservatives; fund organizations over the long haul so they can achieve financial security and give them flexibility about how they use the money; make sure the groups work together; and urge the groups to use the money to affect public policy or engage with the political process.
In the second round of funding, however, the Alliance fell into the common liberal trap of needing to be all things to all people. After two grant cycles the Alliance is overextended. Wade says she hopes the Alliance, in conjunction with other funding coalitions, will eventually be able to direct an ambitious $500 million annually in grants. But with twenty-five groups under its tent, the Alliance will have to keep growing, by either recruiting new partners or convincing existing ones to give more, to be able to continue to fund those groups it has already agreed to assist. As a consequence, Alliance partners have cut back on some key priority areas, such as foreign policy, economics and media, in preparation for its third round of funding in Miami this November.
Of these, the media cutbacks are the most problematic. Conservatives have aggressively recruited and funded an array of authors, scholars and publications who have formulated controversial ideas. Then they marketed those ideas, through media, to wider audiences with the goal of changing public policy. To date the Alliance hasn’t been deeply involved in idea creation in the same way conservatives have been, but at least initially it expressed interest in funding better ways of getting a progressive message out.
At the first meeting in Phoenix, Alliance partners agreed that funding media would be a front-and-center priority. Instead, says one early member of the media committee, “it keeps getting shuttled to the back, over and over.” Partly that was because at the beginning of the process few members were familiar with progressive media. In time, the media committee developed a plan to fund bloggers, investigative reporting and media reform efforts. Now, in the run-up to Miami, says another media committee member, that plan has been slashed in half. Media Matters did receive an $11 million commitment over three years–but it only tracks right-wing media rather than producing original content. Air America Radio was supposed to receive between $5 million and $8 million from the Alliance, but after months of negotiations it still has received no money. Other efforts, such as The American Prospect magazine and the start-up Progressive Book Club, are also in limbo.
A funding shortfall only partially accounts for the Alliance’s inattention. There are philosophical reasons as well. Idea creation takes time, media development is expensive and both are risky. And the Alliance is highly risk-averse.
Many of the right’s premier ideas–welfare reform, rolling back détente with the Soviet Union, school vouchers–started off as a “riverboat gamble,” as former Senate majority leader Howard Baker labeled Ronald Reagan’s massive 1981 tax cut. “We did a lot of things at the beginning that we didn’t know would work,” says the Olin Foundation’s Piereson. “If we needed a consensus it would’ve never gotten done.” A conference of law students and professors partly underwritten by Olin in 1982 launched the Federalist Society, the right’s premier legal organ. A $25,000 grant to the obscure social scientist Charles Murray led to his influential book on welfare reform, Losing Ground. And so on.
Risk aversion is also reflected in the Alliance’s preference for underwriting organizations that won’t upset the economic status quo. Podesta’s CAP has been keen to avoid trade and globalization issues that separate the party elite from the rank-and-file Democratic base. While CAP won a $5-million-per-year commitment from the Alliance over three years, the unabashedly progressive Economic Policy Institute received a small, $250,000 planning grant. (The other economic organization funded generously by the Alliance, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, does research on issues like poverty in a nonpartisan fashion.)
The same topics that are off-limits in the Democratic Party–US policy on Israel, the bloated military budget, the role of big money in both parties, the grip of corporations–are shunned by the Alliance. Groups like MoveOn.org that target corporate Democrats, as the Club for Growth does to moderate Republicans, are brushed aside. “MoveOn.org scares a lot of these people,” says an important partner.
Alliance staff originally conceived of an “innovation fund” to funnel smaller amounts of money (between $25,000 and $250,000) to newer ventures, such as the blogs and MeetUp-type gatherings, at the discretion of the managing director. That concept, too, has yet to get off the ground. Instead of directing the fund Wade, with her McKinsey background, appointed yet another committee to oversee it, reinforcing the inside joke that the Alliance at times resembles a “let’s have a meeting about having a meeting” self-parody. The inability to move quickly and take risks in areas like media has persuaded a number of progressive donors to stay out of the Alliance, most notably Silicon Valley venture capitalists Andy and Deborah Rappaport, whose New Progressive Coalition is specifically aimed at finding and funding under-the-radar policy entrepreneurs and down-ballot candidates at the state and local levels. Joining the Alliance, Deborah Rappaport says, “would have constrained our ability to jump on new things as they appear.”
McKay says he’d like the Alliance to be more decisive, but it’s hard to tell whether that’s possible. Taking a chance isn’t easy when you need to get approval from 100 millionaires and billionaires. “It’s tough to herd cats,” former Alliance chair Steven Gluckstern liked to say, “but herding fat cats is harder.”
Between 1972 and 1999, conservatives created at least sixty new organizations with mission statements modeled after that of the Heritage Foundation, a radical think tank at the time of its founding: “free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.” When pollster Celinda Lake asked a group of white Midwestern swing voters in 2004 what conservatives stood for, most of them repeated those catchphrases. When she asked the same question about liberals, half the voters responded, “I don’t know.”
In its early stages the Alliance, following the lead of Heritage, attempted to hammer out a mission statement for the organization. A year later the document is still a work in progress. Wade says the goal of the Alliance is to strengthen democracy. “That means an actively engaged citizenry…real solutions to critical issues…and a democracy not dominated by the far right,” she says. Laudable goals, but hardly a road map for changing public policy. “There are pragmatists and there are activists,” partners say Wade frequently tells them, “and I’m a pragmatist and that’s where this organization should be.” Needless to say, the early conservative activists, whether at National Review or on Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign, couldn’t have disagreed more.
The irony is that as the Alliance attempts to articulate its agenda, the old phase of conservative philanthropy–rich families like Olin and Scaife funding political change–is coming to an end and the conservative movement and Republican Party are running empty on ideas. Signature proposals, such as privatizing Social Security (and everything else) or eliminating the Education Department, have been widely discredited. “Obviously the left, if they can get themselves in position, can make a move,” says Piereson.
The Bush era has jolted liberal philanthropists into action. No matter what the Alliance does, the impetus behind it will find other outlets. State-based donor collectives modeled after the Alliance have started in Washington, California, Ohio, Wisconsin and Colorado. Donors disaffected with the Alliance, like the Rappaports, have created their own organizations. Together these endeavors can create a market for entrepreneurs shopping ideas, just as conservatives did forty years ago. The notion of doing what wasn’t getting done–thinking broadly, taking gambles, going beyond electoral politics and cultivating ideas and institutions and leaders–drew many of the partners to the table in the first place. Perhaps the best plan for the Alliance’s future is remembering why it was started–and why conservatives won.
M.P. & G.W.,
fascinating….simply fascinating perspectives.
I ask again, can anyone prove that MM received a thin dime of Soros money?
If not, then why is anyone accusing them of dishonesty? Their statement should be taken at face value. Afetrall, GS is not shy. He definitely funds so called liberal org.s. If he wanted to fund or control MM he would have directly handed MM the money.
To the extent that this answers my original question [#1], it appears that Media Matters is not a tool of George Soros.
Right?
Right, Beard.
Was there seriously any question?
I just find it interesting to probe the mindset of those that try to imply their spin without material evidence while, simultaneously, deploring the lack of “truth”.
Beard –
“Tool of George Soros” is rhetoric, so is calling it a “Soros Operation”.
Media Matters responded to this, however, by stating “Media Matters has never received funding from progressive philanthropist George Soros” which is false no matter how one spins it.
When they last answered this charge two years ago, they said “Media Matters for America has never received funding directly from George Soros” which was evasive but less of a literal falsehood.
Discount every single association that A.L. lists, if you wish. Media Matters gets funding Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s Tides Foundation, which is heavily funded by Soros. This multiplication of institutes and foundations doesn’t fool anybody, but let’s assume they do it for legal and tax purposes and not to deceive the public.
Media Matters, however, is deceiving the public by lying about their funding – and why? Soros is a “progressive philanthropist”, they say, so what’s their problem?
Piffle. Is the point here to play a trivial game of “Gotcha!”, or to find out whether a particular organization is a tool of some wealthy individual? My impression was that the latter is the real issue, and the answer is No.
I support a number of organizations (albeit at many orders of magnitude smaller amounts). Quite possibly some of them support Media Matters. If Media Matters is asked, “Do you get money from Beard?”, are they supposed to track down the funders of the funders who provide part of their support? Would you ask the same of organizations whose political aims you agree with? (Let’s not forget the Golden Rule here.)
If you think there’s something nefarious going on, lay it out, and we’ll debate it, and possibly get to the root of it. If not, forget it.
(Personally, if I were looking for nefariousness, I would spend my time sniffing around “Richard Mellon Scaife”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Mellon_Scaife before “George Soros”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros , even from a totally non-partisan perspective.)
Beard –
First of all, association with Soros is significant enough for Media Matters to have attempted to deny it repeatedly. Money is fungible. X gives to Y gives to Z; Z is receiving funds from X, no one is fooled.
I was just waiting for somebody to say, “Yeah, but what about Richard Mellon Scaife?” I take that a signal that your argument is demolished, and you are changing the subject to “So what, everybody does it.”
Alas, this entire thread has now been rendered irrelevant by the Mickey Kaus Razor: Anything containing the words “Richard Mellon Scaife” is not worth reading.
Hello? Is there a duck that falls from the ceiling as soon as someone says the magic word? And that ends the current conversation? Hadn’t heard that rule around here, but there’s a lot I don’t know.
If the magic word is “Richard Mellon Scaife”, then you could have saved yourself a lot of trouble, since I mentioned him in my comment [#1], albeit as a cheap shot off to the side of my main point.
The point is: What’s the big deal here? Yes, Media Matters could have handled this question more smoothly, and it would be nice if they shape up their act in the future. It’s worthwhile for us wise folks in the blogosphere to conclude that honesty is a Good Thing. And then to spend several hours discussing what honesty might be, really. Fine. An enjoyable past-time for all concerned.
But is there anything more than that? Is there a scandal here? Whether GS has funneled money to them or not, and whether they have bobbled the answer to the question or not. Sure doesn’t look like it to me, but perhaps you’ve seen something I’ve missed.
If not, perhaps we should all go see whether Alberto Gonzales can keep his job.
Beard, I’m not suggesting there is a scandal. I do think that the lack of candor on the part of MM – who devote themselves to slagging lack of candor on the part of other people – limits their effectiveness. And I do think that the ‘progressive left’ figures that I know undervalue honesty and honorable dealings – which again limits their effectiveness.
See my old post on moral warfighting and counterinsurgency by Boyd; the exact same issues apply in politics.
A.L.
A.L.
Thanks. Point me to that old post, and I’ll try to take a look at it.
(Having just finished the weekly “throwing out the mail” ceremony, I’m about to do the weekly “swearing off blogging” ceremony, in the hopes that either of them will have useful effect. So it goes.)
Cheers,
B.
> it was progressives, liberals and democrats mostly that desegrated the South
No, it wasn’t. The bulk of the votes came from Repubs. Yes, they were joined by significant numbers of dems, but the vast majority of the opposition was by dems.
One of the Dems who filibustered the various civil rights acts is still in the Senate – Robert “sheets” Byrd.
Another, Fulbright, is B Clinton’s acknowledged mentor.
It’s not surprising that Dems fought to preserve segregation – they created it. Wilson segregated the US Military and Jim Crow was a Dem invention.
The segregated south was run by Dems – Repubs had no political presence until after the civil rights acts.
“Tool of George Soros” is rhetoric, so is calling it a “Soros Operation”.’
There we go again with the semanatics game.
“Rhetoric”? It looks like a *lie* to me.
How sleazy; your guy lies and it’s not a lie, it’s rhetoric. The other guy tells the truth and you, with no evidence whatsoever,say that he is unthruthful.
I’m still waiting…tell me how much Soros money went to MM.
Misleading. Yes, Southern Democrats tried to preserve segregation, but when Lyndon Johnson took sides with the northern Democrats (and some Republicans), he got the Voting Rights Act passed. He knew he was going to lose the South for the Democratic Party, and that’s just what happened.
Over the next decade or so, many of those Southern Democrats moved to the Republican party, and the Republicans got the white vote in the South ever since.
If the story worked the way you tell it, Andy, why is it that Blacks aren’t a Republican voting block?
Read about it “here”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964. Once you break it down by region (Northern vs Southern), Democrats in each region supported it significantly more strongly than Republicans.
What is interesting in all of this is the role MM had in Imus’s firing. Apparently they’ve had people monitoring him for about a year, waiting for some comment they could use to get him. The comment (one of many nasty comments the guy had made over decades) was reviewed by a Media Matters staffer. Newsweek article “here”:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18110453/site/newsweek/
Money Quote:
“In fact, unknown to Imus, one of his most loyal listeners in Washington, D.C., was watching, and taping, the show every day for just that reason: to make a record of everything Imus said. But 26-year-old Ryan Chiachiere wasn’t a fan, and he wasn’t tuning in to be entertained. Chiachiere is one of a handful of young activists who spend their days wading through hours of radio and cable shows for Media Matters for America, a liberal group whose sole purpose is rooting out and “correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.” Wired on coffee, Chiachiere was watching a recording of Imus’s show when he noticed the “hos” remark.”
“It was a big hit at the group’s morning meeting. The Rutgers players weren’t well-fed journalists or posturing politicians, public figures who could fend for themselves. They were just a hardworking team of young women who had done nothing to draw his ire but play college basketball while being black. “They weren’t involved in any barroom brawls. They weren’t part of this conversation and they didn’t ask for this,” says Jeff Greenfield, now of CBS, a political analyst and longtime Imus guest who says he appreciated the “weird” mix of high and low. “It was a crude slur, and it was also cruel. That’s what tipped this whole thing over.”
The group posted a video clip of the exchange on its Web site and put it up on YouTube. It sent e-mails to journalists and civil-rights and women’s groups.
———————-
Ponder that. Imus is gone because MM sent e-mails out to it’s connected people who got the message to do what they were told. WHY did those emails generate action when say “Americans for Goodness” would not?
Soros money. Connections.
Some theorists believe Soros/MM/Clintons alliance wanted Imus gone because he hated Shrillary. Others that Dems feared Imus and other centrists making fun of their idiot ideas the way “Governor Moonbeam” doomed Jerry Brown. [Thank you Mike Royko].
Nevertheless, MM and Soros are likely shooting themselves in the foot. One rule for race baiters and bigots like Sharpton and Jackson or rappers, quite another for someone like Imus.
MM and Soros extended middle finger to White Guys. Not that I like, ever listened to, or would defend Imus remarks. But I’ve heard and seen worse in Rap Videos.
MM only matters because Soros means you can’t ignore them. It’s not just the money but the connections meaning you can’t ignore them without serious consequences to your career.
Now MM and Sharpton/Jackson say they are going after Fox News, Limbaugh, etc. No chance. Imus was vulnerable because he was a centrist/liberal.
Beard –
The key quotes from Boyd are:
“Heavy reliance upon moral (human values) instead of material superiority as basis for cohesion and ultimate success.”
and my favorite
“Break guerillas moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-temp/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort.
*If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides.”
The post is “here”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/003902.php
I’ll point out that our record on this level in Iraq is not nearly what it needs to be.
A.L.
avedis –
I hate to call anybody hopeless – especially after the No Child Left Behind act – but you are hopeless. Cold Fusion hopeless. Land War in Asia hopeless. Watching the Skies for UFOs hopeless. John Edwards hopeless …
avedis, my last to you on this – if Drudge called it a “Soros operation” and Brock had said:
“We got about 15% of our operating budget lat year from ‘blabla’ foundation, and I’m aware that Soros has provided 45% of the funding for that foundation.
Other than broad strategic presentations that led to the funding decision, we have no ongoing contact with the management of the ‘blabla’ Flundation, or their sister foundation, the ‘duhduh’ Foundation, to whom we’ve applied for funding. We understand that Mr. Soros and his familt have also contributed that that foundation.
Other than having breakfast – along with thirty others – at Davos with Mr. Soros last year, I’ve never met the man.
So to call us a ‘Soros operation’ is factually inaccurate and foolish.”
He’d have slammed the issue into the ground and gained credibility.
How does his answer match up to that?
A.L.
A.L., the standards (#60) you have called for MM to meet in their response to Drudge’s spew are beyond what is required and indeed beyond what is normally provided.
MM simply does not have to provide any more information than they already did. There is no reason – at this time – to believe that MM has lied. They Soros did not fund them and there is no proof that he did. Your assertion that their failure to provide more information than necessary seems – to me – to be a shabby attempt by you to bring question upon MM via inuendo.
Furthermore, the standards of extra-normal disclosure that you have proposed are well beyond what is feasible in the real world. “We got about 15% of our operating budget lat year from ‘blabla’ foundation, and I’m aware that Soros has provided 45% of the funding for that foundation.” How the hell would MM know how much money Soros donated to ‘blabla’ foundation?
Given the often extensive chain of funding that is often involved in these types of organizations and networks (ahem,,,,both “liberal” and “conservative”) do you really want to hold an organization at the end of the chain responsible for knowing all of contributers, the amounts contributed and the %s of budgets of each organization comprised by the donation of each member of the chain – start to finish?
What about anonomous donations?
There is no way most organizations could have the time or resources to accurately identify each person who may have donated money to some org that in turn donated to some org that in turn donated to them.
Held to your standard they would have to.
And God forbid they missed someone or didn’t get the amount or % down right because then you’d be leaping upon them – if they were liberals that is – and you’d be screaming “GOTCHA!” and accusing th org of dishonesty, etc
So you are completely unrealistic.
I’m primarily on the side that argues that this is (at most) a tempest in a teapot. However, AL is right about what would have been a classy response. Yes, this is infeasible to do all the time, and someone could potentially exploit it to do what amounts to a “denial of service” attack if an organization were obliged to respond each time.
However, as someone who has run an organization (small) from time to time, I can tell you that this is by far the best way to respond to potential critics. Demonstrate clearly that you are far more on top of the issue than the person who asked the question in the first place.
Do this in response to a few questions, and your reputation will be good enough that you don’t have to do it very often. People come to know what sort of operation you run.
So, yes, that’s the way to run an organization, and give a response. And Media Matters didn’t do it, that time, in response to that question. How big a deal is that? Not very, in my opinion.
If there’s a real scandal underneath, provide the evidence.
> it was progressives, liberals and democrats mostly that desegrated the South…
A lot of the leading cadre and activists in the civil rights movement had backgrounds in the anti-Stalinist left. Bayard Rustin in the Socialist Party(briefly in the Young Communist League, quit when the Communist Party attacked Socialist A. Phillip Randolph (“Fascist or, “Social Fascist, ” a lovely Stalinoid phrase) who had called for a March on Washington in 1941 to pressure FDR to desegregrate the armed forces. James Farmer of CORE, another anti-Stalinist Socialist.
Internally, these folks battled constantly pro-Communist “progressives” like Anne Braden of the SCEF. (The house of the Braden’s was firebombed by racists, btw.) Returning the favor, btw, Maoist lunatics in the “October League, ” of red-diaper baby Mike Klonsky, destroyed Braden’s SCEF in the mid-70’s. A factor in that typical left-wing sectarian circus was when the October League attacked a CPUSA cadre on the board of SCEF as a revisionist, ‘right opportunist’ counter-revolutionary. Heh.
Beard, agreed. The classy response would be to reveal that Soros is a member of an organization that funds an organization.
Also, agreed that this is a tempest in a teapot.
However, at bottom, A.L.’s demands are a slippery slope (as you – I think – recognize). Furthermore, I strongly suspect that A.L.’s motives are not pure because he tends to pooh pooh similar examples of “connections” between various “conservative” nepotisms.
I mainly object to A.L.’s post on the the ground that I do not see him applying his standards across the board. Also, I see this instance as a thinly veiled attack on MM by A.L.. A.L. plays under the guise of being a concerned liberal, offering constructive criticisms of liberalism when, in reality, he is a die hard conservative that, ostensibly, believes in gay rights and a few other fruity causes (and apparently moral relativism concerning sex with 12 year olds). His “constructive critiques are nothing more than one sided attacks. Afterall, when was the last time he had anything bad to say about neoconservatives, Bush, Cheney, et al???
avedis, I answer this issue all the time – “why don’t you join the rest of us and just criticize the conservatives?” I do…I wrote about issues of justice, the environment, and redistribution in ways that seriously torque off mainstream conservatives. But mostly I’m unhappy about how my team is doing – both in terms of being less successful then they should be, and in terms of what they’re doing with the success. My hope is that my (admittedly small) voice is one of many that help convince the liberal powers-that-be to do things somewhat differently.
When I start dinging conservatives all the time, it’ll be fair to assume that I’ve changed teams.
Hope that helps.
A.L.
Ok, whatever you say, A.L..
So can we talk about AIPAC sometime?
>#54 from Andy Freeman at 4:57 am on Apr 16, 2007
>> “it was progressives, liberals and democrats mostly that desegrated the South”
>No, it wasn’t. The bulk of the votes came from Repubs.
*WRONG.* The bulk of votes came from DEMOCRATS:
The Senate version, voted on by the House:
Democratic Party: 153-91 (63%-37%)
Republican Party: 136-35 (80%-20%)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
If you’re referring to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the bulk of the votes came from Democrats. Democrats also composed higher percentage of the opposition, about 17% higher than the opposition from the Republican Party. This stands to reason as the Democrats held majorities in both houses of congress at the time. As such, basic math tells you that “the bulk” of the votes could not possibly come from the the Republicans.
Were the national Democrats more successful at getting opposition Republicans to vote in favor of the act than they were with southern Democrats? Yes. But this doesn’t change the basic fact (and basic math) that “the bulk” of the votes came from Democrats.
I’ll assume that Andy Freeman is not being dishonest, but is simply operating from a position of ignorance in the area of history, or math, or both.
It should also be noted that much of the bigot-wing of the southern Democratic Party has now migrated to the GOP. I know. I live in Georgia. But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and tell me that I’m wrong and that my eyes are lying to me.
AIPAC………….AIPAC…………………..AIPAC……..echo echo AIPAC echo echo
I guess nothing to see there….not like the classless MM………..maybe Katzman wouldn’t approve of AIPAC revelations…………….where does his funding come from anyhow?
Direct question: Who funds this blog?
Answer please.