More Right Wing Shenanigans of Deception

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Yesterday we told you about the Franklin Center For Government and Public Integrity, the group behind the website behind that sketchy poll of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposals. But the trail doesn't end there. Turns out, there is another group that's behind the Franklin Center: the conservative, Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance.

The groups share a conservative philosophy and opaque financing, and it turns out that the Alliance is behind another conservative group making its presence felt in Wisconsin these days: American Majority, the organization behind last Saturday's pro-Walker counter-rallies in Madison.

The Franklin Center, which received 501 ©(3) charitable tax exemption status from the IRS in June 2009, says on its website that it "operates independently from any organization." But the center's president, Jason Stverak, told the Springfield State Journal-Register in 2009 that his group had received a "sponsorship grant" from the Alliance. And the Franklin Center has close personal ties to its parent group. Stverak, who bills himself as an "expert in non-profit journalism," previously worked as Regional Field Director for the Alliance. Another Franklin staffer, Elizabeth Hillgrove, once spent her Koch Summer Fellowship at the Alliance.

While the Franklin center says it aims to train journalists to become "thorough, unbiased and accurate" reporters, the Alliance is an organization that helps "individuals and organizations working to promote free-market principles and policies," according to its website. Its Chairman and CEO is Eric O'Keefe, a private investor from Wisconsin who has previously served on the Board of Directors of Wisconsin Club for Growth. According to his bio on the Alliance's website:

Under his leadership, the Sam Adams Alliance (SAM) has established some of the most active and respected organizations in the freedom movement. Most recently, SAM set up American Majority to train potential candidates and campaign organizers and the Franklin Center, which helps train and place investigative journalists in non-profit organizations.

While he appears to no longer work for the Alliance, IRS documents reviewed by TPM show that the group's president in 2008 was John Tsarpalas, a former Executive Director of the Illinois Republican Party.

Meghan Tisinger, director of communications for the Franklin Center, told TPM that the Alliance served as the Franklin Center's "sponsoring organization" until Franklin obtained its 501 ©(3) status.

"We are grateful for their support as we got off the ground and remain fans of their work," Tisinger said. "We're happy to collaborate with them on occasion to promote projects and other work that advance our shared goals."

According to Tisinger, there is no longer a regular financial relationship between the two groups.

(In an interview with The Dallas Morning News in October 2009, Drew Ryun, the brother of American Majority president Ned Ryun and then the group's national director, said that "above 75 percent" of the group's funding at that time came from the Alliance.)

What's unclear in all this is where the money comes from. Both the Franklin Center and the Alliance decline to reveal their donors' identities. The Franklin Center's website states that the group "honors and respects the wishes of its numerous supporters and donors and that is why we adhere to a policy of keeping our donors identity confidential."

In documents filed with the IRS and the Illinois Attorney General, the Alliance states that it "declines to provide specific identifying information on its donors on the grounds that such disclosure may chill the donors' first amendment right to associate in private with the organization." The most recent filings TPM could find were for 2008. The documents show that the group's total revenue rose from $1.87 million in 2007 to $4.22 million in 2008. At the same time, the group reported that the kind of support it was receiving changed. In 2007, the group reported $1.82 million in "gifts, grants, contributions, and membership fees received." That number fell to $507K in 2008. The Alliance's big revenue bump in 2008 came by way of $3.72 million in "other income" that the group reported without including any other details.

Documents filed with the Illinois Attorney General provide just one small additional clue. The "Notes to Financial Statements" section of the filing reveals that the Alliance received 88% of its contributions from a single multi-donor foundation.

The Alliance did not respond to several requests for comment from TPM.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/the_group_behind_the_group_behind_that_sketchy_wis.php?ref=fpa

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

GASP!

Hey Steven, Wisconsin is broke. It is obvious the unions don't care, but WHO is supposed to "pay" when the state "saves money"?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

So, centers named for the founder fathers are bad, and ones with misleading, socialist, or commie names are good. Thanks for the clarification.

The Alliance did not respond to several requests for comment from TPM.

I guess the Koch Brothers' caller ID has Soros on "Ignore".

[Ban Hammer 13,352]

I guess the Koch Brothers' caller ID has Soros on "Ignore".

[james&olya 1,121]

Is it necessary to being free speech that it also can be anonymous? I find it hard to accept that not only are corporations suddenly on par or even above living, breathing humans in regards to free speech, but that this extends to money given by anonymous corporations to be spent on political issues! I hope that we soon are rid of the corporate shills that have managed to get themselves onto the highest court in this great country. To have bill of rights protections one should be required to have a heart and a navel!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Is it necessary to being free speech that it also can be anonymous? I find it hard to accept that not only are corporations suddenly on par or even above living, breathing humans in regards to free speech, but that this extends to money given by anonymous corporations to be spent on political issues! I hope that we soon are rid of the corporate shills that have managed to get themselves onto the highest court in this great country. To have bill of rights protections one should be required to have a heart and a navel!

Here's from a report on NPR about the Citizen's United SCOTUS decision and disclosure:

In January, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in a case called Citizens United that effectively rewrote campaign finance laws. Corporations and unions, the court ruled, have the same free speech rights as individuals and can spend as much as they would like to influence public debate.

Like individuals, they are still restricted on how much they can donate to individual candidates, but they can run unlimited ads on issues or ads that attack candidates for one position or another.

Regulations also allow them to hide the source of that spending, and, well, that all contributes to what promises to be record spending for a midterm election.

......

Corporations and unions cannot give money directly to candidates and the national party committees. They never could, and they still can't. That was not part of the Citizens United case. CONAN: But it's not effectively, this is not about contributions to candidates. It's about contributions that affect the national debate.

OVERBY: Right. What the decision did was open the doors for the corporations and the unions to be full-throated participants in the political campaigns. They can run ads that say, you know, vote for Joe Dokes, he's a hero, and vote against John Smith. He's a crook.

CONAN: That sort of thing.

OVERBY: Yeah.

CONAN: And have we seen an actual effect from this?

OVERBY: That's a great question. We've seen a little bit. The classic example is the ad, excuse me, the ad that a group in Minnesota put up supporting the Republican candidate for governor there. And the ad had money financing it from Target and Best Buy, among other corporations.

And Target got a huge amount of grief for this. The candidate has very conservative social views that are pretty dissonant with Target's marketing image of being sort of hip, urban, you know...

CONAN: The old Target image, yes.

OVERBY: Precisely. Yes. Target was not the one that put the money in. It was Target that was interested in a better business climate, which this guy is promising to give to Minnesota.

CONAN: And there are any number of circumstances, though, where people say we can't identify who is funding these ads.

OVERBY: Right. The Target case is noteworthy because the group that they gave to is a political committee that has to disclose, under federal and state law. There is a lot of money flowing now into what are called 501©(4) groups -sorry for that - advocacy groups that are not considered political committees in the federal election law.

They're not political committees, but they are playing politics extremely vigorously this cycle.

CONAN: And as we look at these various groups, what's the difference between these kinds of ads and the ads that we saw - for example, well, the Swiftboat ads that everybody denounced as factually challenged a few years ago in the John Kerry campaign? They weren't what's the difference between those and these?

OVERBY: Legally, the difference is that Swiftboat Veterans was a political committee, had to disclose its donors. And under the Citizens United decision, they can use Swiftboats could use that corporate money, if it were around now, to say, you know, John Kerry lied about his military record - which is what they said - so you should vote for George Bush. They could add that.

I see. And before, they could only say John Kerry lied about his military record, and therefore is not trustable, or something like that.

OVERBY: Exactly. And the...

CONAN: Just to go back one more time before we get a lot of emails - widely disproven. Okay.

OVERBY: Yes, okay. I'm not talking about content here. I'm just talking about message. The thing about this nuance in the message is that even most candidate ads don't say vote for or vote against. So, in a way, what the decision mainly does is it gives corporations a higher comfort level in getting involved in this.

They're not as close to some legal line that they might accidentally go over, and the corporate counsel might view this less skeptically now.

CONAN: And as we see how this money is flowing in, is it going well, tracing the money, for one thing. Do these committees and groups, after the election, have to disclose who funded what?

OVERBY: Some of them do. Some of them don't. The advocacy groups, the 501©(4)s, don't. A 501© organization, under federal tax law, basically does not have to disclose its donors. There are very few exceptions to that.

And so a group like Americans for Job Security, for instance, which is a ©(4), we don't know who's funding it. It's been around for several election cycles. We don't know who funded it then. We don't know who's funding it now.

CONAN: And by the way, when you refer to these groups by those numbers, those abstruse-sounding numbers, this refers to their tax status.

http://www.npr.org/t...oryId=130514366

Edited February 27, 2011 by 8TBVBN

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Steven, are you REALLY that ignorant of what the decision 'did.'

If you want to be upset, then be upset with your beloved Democrats for not putting forth new legislation to close that gap while they had power still... They had a damn year to get it done. Instead they decided to rape the American people with their debacle of a Health care bill.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Steven, are you REALLY that ignorant of what the decision 'did.'

If you want to be upset, then be upset with your beloved Democrats for not putting forth new legislation to close that gap while they had power still... They had a damn year to get it done. Instead they decided to rape the American people with their debacle of a Health care bill.

You know how it is. When the Democrats had unobstructed control of the Government, they were extolling the virtues of the democratic process. Now, all they do is complain about the same process. Same argument over and over: Unions good. Corporations* bad.

*Nasty little secret

Edited February 27, 2011 by Some Old Guy

[slim 1,525]

NPR = Wikipedia.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Wisconsin is broke. It is obvious the unions don't care,

How can you say that in light of the fact that the unions have given in on the financial demands of the governor already?