Goes back to the heritage foundation..."Ronald Reagan and The Heritage Foundation. It's hard to tell the story of one without much of the other's. Heritage was President Reagan's favorite think tank, and Reagan was the embodiment of the ideas and principles Heritage holds dear.
Together, we blazed a new path for America.
The partnership began in 1980, when Heritage provided the president-elect's transition team with detailed policy prescriptions on everything from taxes and regulation to trade and national defense. The published version of these recommendations, the 1,100-page "Mandate for Leadership," was described by United Press International back then as "a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy." The new president used "Mandate" to help realize his vision of a world free of communism, an economy that didn't crush people's dreams with high taxes and regulations, and an America the world could admire once again. He gave copies to every member of his Cabinet. The result: Nearly two-thirds of "Mandate's" 2,000 recommendations were adopted or attempted by the Reagan administration.
As conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr., put it: "The foundation had a great hour when Ronald Reagan was elected president and found waiting for him three volumes of Heritage material designed to help him chart the nation's course in the right direction. Sixty percent of the suggestions enjoined on the new president were acted upon (which is why Mr. Reagan's tenure was 60 percent successful.)"
In his second term, Reagan turned again to Heritage for ideas-and adopted many of them. He recited 22 specific proposals from "Mandate for Leadership II" in his second inaugural address in 1985, prompting The New York Times to say, "While the wording of the president's speech and the foundation's document were different, many of the proposals were strikingly similar."
"Heritage advocated for pro-business policies, anti-communism and neoconservatism in its early years, but distinguished itself from the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) by also advocating for the Christian right. Through the 1970s, Heritage would remain small relative to Brookings and the AEI." https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/reagan-and-heritage-unique-partnership
"Since its founding, the Heritage Foundation has become “inextricably intertwined” with Republican administrations and lawmakers in Washington. Heritage brands itself as a beacon of the intellectual conservative establishment; in reality, it is an organization that regularly spouts hateful ideas on par with organizations like the Family Research Council (FRC), which has earned designation from the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Much like its peer groups, Heritage dedicates significant energy to extremist policy recommendations that hinder access to abortion and birth control and promote discrimination against LGBTQ individuals.
If you have been wondering where all these bizarre characters in the orange flambé's administration come from....look to the heritage foundation. https://pro-lies.org/the-heritage-foundation/
They are a 501(c) 3. How is that possible that they have such a huge tax deductible grip on our government? Most types of tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations are forbidden from contributing to political campaigns and may only do a limited amount of lobbying.
Sheldon Whitehouse \ During July 2016, Heritage was one of 32 free-market policy organizations that were denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by 19 Democratic senators. Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the campaign was aimed at passage of a Congressional resolution that would have called on the non-profit groups to cooperate with “active or future investigations” of their climate-policy positions that might be launched against them by federal or state law enforcement officials. Whitehouse accused Heritage and the other organizations of work that was creating a “filthy thing in our democracy.”
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
In August 2016, Heritage board member, co-founder and long-time president Ed Feulner was named as a member of the transition team for then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. After Trump’s election victory that November, Heritage continued to be an influence on the policy decisions throughout the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal reported that future Vice President Mike Pence was “a conservative close to Heritage” who “took control of the Trump transition effort days after the November election” and turned to Heritage to move quickly and “help bolster a thinly staffed transition operation to oversee the handoff between administrations."
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Heritage published Mandate for Leadership, a report with 321 policy reform recommendations for whoever became the new president. One year into the Trump administration, Heritage estimated the new administration had “embraced fully” 64 percent of the proposals. [63]
Also, during the 2016 campaign, Trump said he had asked Heritage and the Federalist Society to compile a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees for him to choose from if elected and given the opportunity to appoint new justices.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a major overhaul of the tax code promoted by Trump and enacted in late 2017, was created with the input of Stephen Moore (both a Heritage tax policy expert and Trump administration official). The Heritage 2017 annual report states that then-OMB director Mick Mulvaney “quickly called on us to help” when the administration began drafting its tax cut plan."
Dark monied, non-profits that control our government policies and employees that are guised as "think tanks" need to be re-thought. And their 501(c)3 status rescinded.
If Sheldon Whitehouse has them on his list of 32 enemies and Southern Poverty Law Center titles them a Hate Group. That is good enough. Enough. Break them.
The heritage foundation has 5,000 employees. And they have mandates for the candidates they support. This is an interesting read from one of their authors titled, "The Southern Poverty Law Center Backs Woke History at James Madison’s Montpelier."
This foundation controls the narrative for the republican extremists and policies. They need to be held responsible for their dancing monkeys in our government.
They were connected and may still be. That would have to be researched. Here are some names of their 2021 Board of Trustees (recognize any of them?) :
Barb Van Andel-Gaby, Chairwoman
Michael W. Gleba, Vice Chairman
Kay Coles James
Larry P. Arnn
Edwin J. Feulner
Steve Forbes
Robert P. George
Ryan Haggerty
Price Harding
Virginia Heckman
Jerry Hume
Mark A. Kolokotrones
Edwin Meese III
Rebekah Mercer
The Hon. J. William Middendorf II
Abby Spencer Moffat
Nersi Nazari
Robert Pennington
Anthony J. Saliba
Thomas A. Saunders III
Brian Tracy
* I will tell you that Rebekah Mercer and her father, Robert, are really wealthy conspiracy theorists who funded Bannon, Conway and Brietbart, just for starters and as was revealed by Rachel Maddow years ago. Robert was some kind of computer wiz and made a fortune on something like algorithms which got us into a lot of the problems we are in now. Cambridge Analytica, considers itself a "private intelligence company." There was a Facebook scandal and they were supposed to shut down. Guess what little darlings on key figures in the UK-based Cambridge Analytica?
Alexander Nix (CEO)[1]
Julian Wheatland (CEO)[2]
Robert Mercer (investor)[3]
Rebekah Mercer (investor)
Steve Bannon (vice president, former)
Nice? The parent group still exists called SCL. I am sure that would be really worth investigating and see who runs it.
I read through the list earlier & refreshed myself on their history. Lots of suspect names on that list, starting w Meese, who should have been jailed for all his antics.
This is an excellent article from last year about THF, its founding & connections to ALEC, & its “massive campaign to draft and pass model legislation restricting voting access.”
Thank you for the roadmap of how “professional “ conservatives run the repubs. Especially supporting or creating candidates like Reagan and Trump who are actors : “Trump said he had asked Heritage and the Federalist Society to compile a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees for him to choose from if elected and given the opportunity to appoint new justices.” Who coached TFG to ask for a list? And Heritage is just a standout in the right wing march to take over the USA, making it a White Male Christian country. Add the Claremont Institute that pushed Eastman into the fray. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/claremont-john-eastman-trump/
And, Irenie, the huge list of white supremacist and hate groups, organized into specific categories on the Southern Poverty Law Center's website curdled my stomach. Truly. It was more horrendous than my weekly visits to faux news. But now I know better who is behind all this extremism. And the innocuous names they use like "Traditional American Values" which translates "white supremacy over all others. This is our real history that they do not want to look at. Because they keep "it" alive with their brainwashing.
Pensa_VT, yes, it’s enough to make us all sick. And it is making us sick. Or bringing out, giving permission to the basest and foulest impulses. It’s a tenet of Fascism to divide and conquer.To scapegoat and create enemies. If an American political party (repubs) can welcome Victor Orban to a party function or an American political party can gather in Orban’s Hungary, without public shock and uproar that tells us a continuing story of how creeping fascism can take hold without the general public noticing. We watched it happen Europe.
I just go and paste things from HCR to give them something to bite that is factual. I last from 3 pastes up to 15 pastes on a good day when my tolerance levels are high.
At least the kkk members had the courage to wear there despicable white hoods. These creatures hide behind super PACs so there dark money can do their dirty work.
The KKK wore their hoods to hide. Some were well known and others hidden in a community.
“For many years the KKK quite literally could get away with murder. The Ku Klux Klan was an instrument of fear, and black people, Jews and even white civil rights workers knew that the fear was intended to control us, to keep things as they had been in the South through slavery, and after that ended, through Jim Crow. This fear of the Klan was very real because, for a long time, the Klan had the power of Southern society on its side.” No courage. https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism
You bring up an interesting point. If we're going to examine the 501(c)3 status of these 'dark money' non-profits, we're going to have a long list... we'll have to include the churches (all of them). The SPLC Hate Group list could include some of them, too.
Well, when I co-founded a a non-profit here in the northeast serving children in grief, I thought it was pretty clear that we not be involved politically. Otherwise we would have gone after the egregious No Child Left Behind which translated to All Children Left Behind because teachers cannot handle all the issues of grieving children impacted by death, 9/11, divorce, family substance abuse, foster and adoption issues and pet losses. If they cannot focus in the classroom, who can help them? Just one nurse and usually one school counselor for hundreds of children. Now add anxiety and grief due to mass shootings in schools.
Agreed, but I would add "hunger" to the list. When eldest daughter began her career, there were a glut of teachers in our area which pulled students from several suburbs, one which is very economically disadvantaged. She had to start as a credit recovery aide and kept a candy dish on her desk. Even with qualifying for free breakfasts and lunches, some teenaged boys coming for help were still hungry. I will never forget her telling me that one young man, when offered the candy dish asked "do you have any real food, like an apple that I could have?" She started picking up bags of fruit to bring to her office. And btw, she was paid <$30K/ yr (and was paying off her own student loans)
And for decades in many schools, especially rural or small districts, no nurses, no counselors, no librarians unless shared among several schools. And if I comment on No Child Left Behind, we’ll run out of space.
Having been involved many years ago in filing 501c3 paperwork, I do not understand how any clearly political work can be done by approved entities. The prohibitions were clearly stated in the application/approval guidance. To hear that these organizations are classified as apolitical, tax exempt, and for the public good is dismaying and should counter to their intended purpose.
The OP in this thread may have conflated 501(c)3s with 501(c)4s. The 4s have somewhat more leeway. My understanding is that they have to avoid electoral politics (e.g., supporting candidates), but they can lobby for legislation and do "educational" work in the public square. The NAACP is one, and I think the NRA is too.
Ironic that the Heritage cabal’s blueprint for affordable healthcare was repudiated after the ACA included the Heritage’s inclusion of a penalty for those not getting insurance. As a pro business group, they realized that no insurance company would take on pre-existing conditions without the ‘carrot’ of being quarantined healthy enrollees.
I refer to that group as a propaganda mill! No thoughts about helping Mom and Pop Mainstreet coming out of the faux ‘think’ tank!
I have been using "fascists" since election night, 2016. I got kicked off youtube back then.Now it will trend, thank you Biden for having a strong, quiet spine! We have needed Truth to be spoken.
I made a FB post in March 2016 comparing tRump to Hitler. Some saw it as a valid comparison but many were calling it hyperbole. THEY NOW STAND CORRECTED.
Facebook Timeline Post
Rob Boyte - March 1, 2016
FASCISM II - THE SEQUEL
DONALD TRUMP
Just a few months ago many of us thot that Donald Trump was a joke, a mediocre, boorish business man who dabbled in crap TV shows out of boredom. Now, he is becoming a frightening figure, not entirely by himself but because of his rabid following of ignorant, low-life fascists whom he is dangerously egging on with his hate rhetoric and failure to distance himself from known white supremacy hate groups.
Even the remaining sane Republicans are fearful that he will be their party's choice for POTUS in 2016. (Yes, there are sane Republicans. The ones who did not vote for McCain after he chose Sarah Palin as his Veep - one heartbeat away from the presidency). As we watch the increasing popularity of this crude demagogue appealing to the base prejudice that has never left the ignorant masses in America, those of us with a sense of history see where such dredged up hatred leads. Never say "It can't happen here" or "Never again." We are watching it happen again by the playbook.
I just hope in the end there are enuf sane ppl in America who get off their asses and vote for whomever the Democrats run in the general election to prevent a disaster for our nation and the world. Remember, no matter which political party you are affiliated with you can vote for any candidate running in the general election. Do The Right Thing.
I said the same thing right after he was voted in. Republicans told me I had to accept it and learn to live with it. I said I’d never be able to accept a fascist president. They thought I was being ridiculous. Now look at TFG! Total traitor!
For decades we of the left of center have called every conservative whose politics we didn't like a "fascist" without much regard for its actual, historical meaning -- pretty much the way the right uses "socialist" and "communist." In recent years, however, the right wing and the GOP have ticked more and more of the "fascist" boxes, to the point where the word really does apply. Unfortunately, it's been so overused that it's become almost meaningless.
President Biden's use of "semi-fascist" is having an impact, to judge by how ballistic the Republicans are going about it -- because President Biden, unlike many of us, is not given to overstatement and hyperbole. I'm planning to take my cue from him and continue using the word "fascist" when it really applies, not just when I'm trying to describe some generic right-winger's disgusting politics.
It is, and that's why it's so frustrating and infuriating that the word has lost so much meaning and impact when it accurately describes what so much of the GOP is up to. I've compared it elsewhere to the boy who cried "Wolf!" The wolf was real, but people had heard him cry "Wolf, wolf, wolf!" so often that they shook their heads and went back to whatever they were doing. What matters in the end is less the truth of what you say than how people hear it.
I've used that term to their Republican faces. Gets a strong reaction, but the truth sometimes hurts, yes? No more Mr. Nice Guy, as Alice Cooper would say.
Biden has been doing a great job and now he says flat out that the opposition is no longer Republican but fascists. Speaking the truth is essential and now the DOJ must speak by issuing indictments. Investigations, hearings are good but the indictments are due ASAP.
No 'semi' about it. They are fascists.
My thoughts exactly, have been for decades, Karl Rove or Newt? Or Rupert? Goes back to Ronnie and Rupert, I think…
Goes back to the heritage foundation..."Ronald Reagan and The Heritage Foundation. It's hard to tell the story of one without much of the other's. Heritage was President Reagan's favorite think tank, and Reagan was the embodiment of the ideas and principles Heritage holds dear.
Together, we blazed a new path for America.
The partnership began in 1980, when Heritage provided the president-elect's transition team with detailed policy prescriptions on everything from taxes and regulation to trade and national defense. The published version of these recommendations, the 1,100-page "Mandate for Leadership," was described by United Press International back then as "a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy." The new president used "Mandate" to help realize his vision of a world free of communism, an economy that didn't crush people's dreams with high taxes and regulations, and an America the world could admire once again. He gave copies to every member of his Cabinet. The result: Nearly two-thirds of "Mandate's" 2,000 recommendations were adopted or attempted by the Reagan administration.
As conservative commentator William F. Buckley, Jr., put it: "The foundation had a great hour when Ronald Reagan was elected president and found waiting for him three volumes of Heritage material designed to help him chart the nation's course in the right direction. Sixty percent of the suggestions enjoined on the new president were acted upon (which is why Mr. Reagan's tenure was 60 percent successful.)"
In his second term, Reagan turned again to Heritage for ideas-and adopted many of them. He recited 22 specific proposals from "Mandate for Leadership II" in his second inaugural address in 1985, prompting The New York Times to say, "While the wording of the president's speech and the foundation's document were different, many of the proposals were strikingly similar."
"Heritage advocated for pro-business policies, anti-communism and neoconservatism in its early years, but distinguished itself from the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) by also advocating for the Christian right. Through the 1970s, Heritage would remain small relative to Brookings and the AEI." https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/reagan-and-heritage-unique-partnership
"Since its founding, the Heritage Foundation has become “inextricably intertwined” with Republican administrations and lawmakers in Washington. Heritage brands itself as a beacon of the intellectual conservative establishment; in reality, it is an organization that regularly spouts hateful ideas on par with organizations like the Family Research Council (FRC), which has earned designation from the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. Much like its peer groups, Heritage dedicates significant energy to extremist policy recommendations that hinder access to abortion and birth control and promote discrimination against LGBTQ individuals.
If you have been wondering where all these bizarre characters in the orange flambé's administration come from....look to the heritage foundation. https://pro-lies.org/the-heritage-foundation/
They are a 501(c) 3. How is that possible that they have such a huge tax deductible grip on our government? Most types of tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations are forbidden from contributing to political campaigns and may only do a limited amount of lobbying.
Sheldon Whitehouse \ During July 2016, Heritage was one of 32 free-market policy organizations that were denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by 19 Democratic senators. Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the campaign was aimed at passage of a Congressional resolution that would have called on the non-profit groups to cooperate with “active or future investigations” of their climate-policy positions that might be launched against them by federal or state law enforcement officials. Whitehouse accused Heritage and the other organizations of work that was creating a “filthy thing in our democracy.”
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
In August 2016, Heritage board member, co-founder and long-time president Ed Feulner was named as a member of the transition team for then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. After Trump’s election victory that November, Heritage continued to be an influence on the policy decisions throughout the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal reported that future Vice President Mike Pence was “a conservative close to Heritage” who “took control of the Trump transition effort days after the November election” and turned to Heritage to move quickly and “help bolster a thinly staffed transition operation to oversee the handoff between administrations."
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Heritage published Mandate for Leadership, a report with 321 policy reform recommendations for whoever became the new president. One year into the Trump administration, Heritage estimated the new administration had “embraced fully” 64 percent of the proposals. [63]
Also, during the 2016 campaign, Trump said he had asked Heritage and the Federalist Society to compile a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees for him to choose from if elected and given the opportunity to appoint new justices.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, a major overhaul of the tax code promoted by Trump and enacted in late 2017, was created with the input of Stephen Moore (both a Heritage tax policy expert and Trump administration official). The Heritage 2017 annual report states that then-OMB director Mick Mulvaney “quickly called on us to help” when the administration began drafting its tax cut plan."
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/heritage-foundation/
Dark monied, non-profits that control our government policies and employees that are guised as "think tanks" need to be re-thought. And their 501(c)3 status rescinded.
If Sheldon Whitehouse has them on his list of 32 enemies and Southern Poverty Law Center titles them a Hate Group. That is good enough. Enough. Break them.
Whitehouse for the White House?
I’ve never understood why he is so poorly utilized. He’s brilliant.
Yes, Whitehouse is brilliant. I want to see his little whiteboard lectures everywhere a la the Lincoln Project.
The heritage foundation has 5,000 employees. And they have mandates for the candidates they support. This is an interesting read from one of their authors titled, "The Southern Poverty Law Center Backs Woke History at James Madison’s Montpelier."
https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/commentary/the-splc-backs-woke-history-james-madisons-montpelier
This foundation controls the narrative for the republican extremists and policies. They need to be held responsible for their dancing monkeys in our government.
“The Disney version of history…” Perfect.
Except even Disney is too “woke” for them now.
Dancing monkeys! Indeed!
You are so good, Pensa! Am I right that the Heritage Foundation is the 'baby' of the Kochs? Talk about Fascism!
THF has received donations from Koch organizations.
They were connected and may still be. That would have to be researched. Here are some names of their 2021 Board of Trustees (recognize any of them?) :
Barb Van Andel-Gaby, Chairwoman
Michael W. Gleba, Vice Chairman
Kay Coles James
Larry P. Arnn
Edwin J. Feulner
Steve Forbes
Robert P. George
Ryan Haggerty
Price Harding
Virginia Heckman
Jerry Hume
Mark A. Kolokotrones
Edwin Meese III
Rebekah Mercer
The Hon. J. William Middendorf II
Abby Spencer Moffat
Nersi Nazari
Robert Pennington
Anthony J. Saliba
Thomas A. Saunders III
Brian Tracy
* I will tell you that Rebekah Mercer and her father, Robert, are really wealthy conspiracy theorists who funded Bannon, Conway and Brietbart, just for starters and as was revealed by Rachel Maddow years ago. Robert was some kind of computer wiz and made a fortune on something like algorithms which got us into a lot of the problems we are in now. Cambridge Analytica, considers itself a "private intelligence company." There was a Facebook scandal and they were supposed to shut down. Guess what little darlings on key figures in the UK-based Cambridge Analytica?
Alexander Nix (CEO)[1]
Julian Wheatland (CEO)[2]
Robert Mercer (investor)[3]
Rebekah Mercer (investor)
Steve Bannon (vice president, former)
Nice? The parent group still exists called SCL. I am sure that would be really worth investigating and see who runs it.
I read through the list earlier & refreshed myself on their history. Lots of suspect names on that list, starting w Meese, who should have been jailed for all his antics.
Thank you for the trouble to post this, Pensa. It's discouraging, to say the least. While I recognize a few names, now I worry about those I don't!
This is an excellent article from last year about THF, its founding & connections to ALEC, & its “massive campaign to draft and pass model legislation restricting voting access.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/heritage-foundation-dark-money-voter-suppression-laws/
Many thanks. The audacity and malicious intent of the "way right" is just chilling.
Heritage is a loathsome organization, but I'm not sure they're wrong on this, having just skimmed it.
And real historians have slammed the NYT's 1619 project.
Maybe you could cite some of those "real historians"? It would help to know what their objections are.
I queried Sean Wilentz of Princeton after reading this article.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sean-wilentz-fires-back-on-the-1619-project-and-the-climate-of-anti-history/
He wrote back: "Well, the National Review's politics are not at all my own, but the piece notes as much. Otherwise, it's pretty fair.
There's also my essay, which will allow readers to judge for themselves, at
https://www.opera-historica.com/pdfs/oph/2021/01/05.pdf
Thank you for the roadmap of how “professional “ conservatives run the repubs. Especially supporting or creating candidates like Reagan and Trump who are actors : “Trump said he had asked Heritage and the Federalist Society to compile a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees for him to choose from if elected and given the opportunity to appoint new justices.” Who coached TFG to ask for a list? And Heritage is just a standout in the right wing march to take over the USA, making it a White Male Christian country. Add the Claremont Institute that pushed Eastman into the fray. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/24/claremont-john-eastman-trump/
And, Irenie, the huge list of white supremacist and hate groups, organized into specific categories on the Southern Poverty Law Center's website curdled my stomach. Truly. It was more horrendous than my weekly visits to faux news. But now I know better who is behind all this extremism. And the innocuous names they use like "Traditional American Values" which translates "white supremacy over all others. This is our real history that they do not want to look at. Because they keep "it" alive with their brainwashing.
Pensa_VT, yes, it’s enough to make us all sick. And it is making us sick. Or bringing out, giving permission to the basest and foulest impulses. It’s a tenet of Fascism to divide and conquer.To scapegoat and create enemies. If an American political party (repubs) can welcome Victor Orban to a party function or an American political party can gather in Orban’s Hungary, without public shock and uproar that tells us a continuing story of how creeping fascism can take hold without the general public noticing. We watched it happen Europe.
Yes, we did. The blinders of so many today about learning history and what is happening in current regimes is cultivated. I mean "cult-ivated."
Weekly visits to Fox News. I have tried and cannot endure more than two minutes.
I just go and paste things from HCR to give them something to bite that is factual. I last from 3 pastes up to 15 pastes on a good day when my tolerance levels are high.
At least the kkk members had the courage to wear there despicable white hoods. These creatures hide behind super PACs so there dark money can do their dirty work.
The KKK wore their hoods to hide. Some were well known and others hidden in a community.
“For many years the KKK quite literally could get away with murder. The Ku Klux Klan was an instrument of fear, and black people, Jews and even white civil rights workers knew that the fear was intended to control us, to keep things as they had been in the South through slavery, and after that ended, through Jim Crow. This fear of the Klan was very real because, for a long time, the Klan had the power of Southern society on its side.” No courage. https://www.splcenter.org/20110228/ku-klux-klan-history-racism
You bring up an interesting point. If we're going to examine the 501(c)3 status of these 'dark money' non-profits, we're going to have a long list... we'll have to include the churches (all of them). The SPLC Hate Group list could include some of them, too.
Well, when I co-founded a a non-profit here in the northeast serving children in grief, I thought it was pretty clear that we not be involved politically. Otherwise we would have gone after the egregious No Child Left Behind which translated to All Children Left Behind because teachers cannot handle all the issues of grieving children impacted by death, 9/11, divorce, family substance abuse, foster and adoption issues and pet losses. If they cannot focus in the classroom, who can help them? Just one nurse and usually one school counselor for hundreds of children. Now add anxiety and grief due to mass shootings in schools.
Agreed, but I would add "hunger" to the list. When eldest daughter began her career, there were a glut of teachers in our area which pulled students from several suburbs, one which is very economically disadvantaged. She had to start as a credit recovery aide and kept a candy dish on her desk. Even with qualifying for free breakfasts and lunches, some teenaged boys coming for help were still hungry. I will never forget her telling me that one young man, when offered the candy dish asked "do you have any real food, like an apple that I could have?" She started picking up bags of fruit to bring to her office. And btw, she was paid <$30K/ yr (and was paying off her own student loans)
And for decades in many schools, especially rural or small districts, no nurses, no counselors, no librarians unless shared among several schools. And if I comment on No Child Left Behind, we’ll run out of space.
Having been involved many years ago in filing 501c3 paperwork, I do not understand how any clearly political work can be done by approved entities. The prohibitions were clearly stated in the application/approval guidance. To hear that these organizations are classified as apolitical, tax exempt, and for the public good is dismaying and should counter to their intended purpose.
The OP in this thread may have conflated 501(c)3s with 501(c)4s. The 4s have somewhat more leeway. My understanding is that they have to avoid electoral politics (e.g., supporting candidates), but they can lobby for legislation and do "educational" work in the public square. The NAACP is one, and I think the NRA is too.
❤️❤️❤️
The 501(c)4s also bear scrutiny. Last I looked, I think the NRA had 501(c)4 status.
Ironic that the Heritage cabal’s blueprint for affordable healthcare was repudiated after the ACA included the Heritage’s inclusion of a penalty for those not getting insurance. As a pro business group, they realized that no insurance company would take on pre-existing conditions without the ‘carrot’ of being quarantined healthy enrollees.
I refer to that group as a propaganda mill! No thoughts about helping Mom and Pop Mainstreet coming out of the faux ‘think’ tank!
❤️
That’s what I was going to say! Can we start using the term out right in public?
I have been using "fascists" since election night, 2016. I got kicked off youtube back then.Now it will trend, thank you Biden for having a strong, quiet spine! We have needed Truth to be spoken.
I made a FB post in March 2016 comparing tRump to Hitler. Some saw it as a valid comparison but many were calling it hyperbole. THEY NOW STAND CORRECTED.
Facebook Timeline Post
Rob Boyte - March 1, 2016
FASCISM II - THE SEQUEL
DONALD TRUMP
Just a few months ago many of us thot that Donald Trump was a joke, a mediocre, boorish business man who dabbled in crap TV shows out of boredom. Now, he is becoming a frightening figure, not entirely by himself but because of his rabid following of ignorant, low-life fascists whom he is dangerously egging on with his hate rhetoric and failure to distance himself from known white supremacy hate groups.
Even the remaining sane Republicans are fearful that he will be their party's choice for POTUS in 2016. (Yes, there are sane Republicans. The ones who did not vote for McCain after he chose Sarah Palin as his Veep - one heartbeat away from the presidency). As we watch the increasing popularity of this crude demagogue appealing to the base prejudice that has never left the ignorant masses in America, those of us with a sense of history see where such dredged up hatred leads. Never say "It can't happen here" or "Never again." We are watching it happen again by the playbook.
I just hope in the end there are enuf sane ppl in America who get off their asses and vote for whomever the Democrats run in the general election to prevent a disaster for our nation and the world. Remember, no matter which political party you are affiliated with you can vote for any candidate running in the general election. Do The Right Thing.
I said the same thing right after he was voted in. Republicans told me I had to accept it and learn to live with it. I said I’d never be able to accept a fascist president. They thought I was being ridiculous. Now look at TFG! Total traitor!
For decades we of the left of center have called every conservative whose politics we didn't like a "fascist" without much regard for its actual, historical meaning -- pretty much the way the right uses "socialist" and "communist." In recent years, however, the right wing and the GOP have ticked more and more of the "fascist" boxes, to the point where the word really does apply. Unfortunately, it's been so overused that it's become almost meaningless.
President Biden's use of "semi-fascist" is having an impact, to judge by how ballistic the Republicans are going about it -- because President Biden, unlike many of us, is not given to overstatement and hyperbole. I'm planning to take my cue from him and continue using the word "fascist" when it really applies, not just when I'm trying to describe some generic right-winger's disgusting politics.
Exactly! It’s not just slinging mud. It’s a real threat to democracy!
It is, and that's why it's so frustrating and infuriating that the word has lost so much meaning and impact when it accurately describes what so much of the GOP is up to. I've compared it elsewhere to the boy who cried "Wolf!" The wolf was real, but people had heard him cry "Wolf, wolf, wolf!" so often that they shook their heads and went back to whatever they were doing. What matters in the end is less the truth of what you say than how people hear it.
I've used that term to their Republican faces. Gets a strong reaction, but the truth sometimes hurts, yes? No more Mr. Nice Guy, as Alice Cooper would say.
Biden has been doing a great job and now he says flat out that the opposition is no longer Republican but fascists. Speaking the truth is essential and now the DOJ must speak by issuing indictments. Investigations, hearings are good but the indictments are due ASAP.