Monday, November 18, 2013

A NETWORK OF KOCHSUCKER THINK TANKS PUSH AGENDA

FROM JONATHAN TURLEY'S BLOG


State Policy Network—The “PR Firm” for ALEC and a Right-Wing Agenda

Published 1, November 17, 2013 Media , Politics , Society , Uncategorized 65 Comments 
Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
A recent report published by the Center for Media and Democracy has alleged that there is a network of think tanks across this country that has been “quietly pushing the agenda of right-wing groups with funding from Koch brothers-affiliated organizations.” The umbrella organization that these sixty-four think tanks are collaborating with is called the State Policy Network (SPN)—“a nonprofit that nurtures conservative think tanks in all fifty states.”
From SPN’s website:
Founded in 1992 by Tom Roe at the urging of Ronald Reagan, State Policy Network is the only group in the country dedicated solely to improving the practical effectiveness of independent, non-profit, market-oriented, state-focused think tanks. SPN’s programs enable these organizations to better educate local citizens, policy makers and opinion leaders about market-oriented alternatives to state and local policy challenges.
According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s report, SPN and its “member think tanks” promote an “extreme right-wing agenda” that is much the same as that of “David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, Charles Koch’s Cato Institute, and Koch’s Citizens for a Sound Economy spin-off FreedomWorks–all of which happen to be associate members of ALEC.”
Lisa Graves, the director of the Center for Media and Democracy, claimed that the individual think tanks that are members of the SPN network “present themselves as ‘neutral, non-partisan groups, but are in fact part of a national network to project the voices and interests of some of the most powerful corporations and families in the country.’” During a conference call with reporters, Graves said that “these groups are extraordinarily influential.”
Media Matters reported that SPN is an active member of ALEC—and added that thirty-four of its members “are directly linked back to ALEC.” It was also reported that all of the think tanks in SPN’s network “push parts of ALEC’s agenda in their respective states.” SPN has also been a sponsor of ALEC’s annual meeting for the last three years.
From Media Matters:
According to the Center for Media and Democracy, SPN groups have drafted model legislation attacking worker and environmental protections in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington. The Center notes that the Arizona-based SPN affiliate, The Goldwater Institute, has three model bills on its website attempting to attack the Affordable Care Act at the state level, while another would treat any gun control legislation at the federal level as the “equivalent of a federal crime.” John Loredo, former Minority Leader of the Arizona House of Representatives, described the Goldwater Institute as “corporate mercenaries who push their agenda at every level of government.”
The Guardian recently reported that Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon, had done research on SPN and its affiliated groups. He found that they “were actively targeting the rights of often non-unionised employees.” Lafer said that his research “had uncovered attempts to expand the use of child labour, cut the minimum wage, reduce unemployment benefit, make it harder to sue employers for sex or race discrimination, or even to police wage theft where companies refused to pay workers over-time or any wages at all.”
At a gathering of GOP donors in San Francisco just days after President Obama had been re-elected, Grover Norquist told those in attendance that with the help of SPN Republican governors might be able to “turn their states into Texas or Hong Kong.” He added, “It’s a wonderful opportunity.”
In his article for The Nation titled The Right Leans In: Media-savvy conservative think tanks take aim and fire at progressive power bases in the states, Lee Fang wrote the following:.
These media-savvy organizations—which frequently employ former journalists to churn out position papers, news articles, investigations and social media content with a hard-right slant—bolster the pro-corporate lobbying efforts of the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Like ALEC, State Policy Network groups provide an ideological veil for big businesses seeking to advance radical deregulatory policy goals.
Lisa Graves was quoted by Politico as saying, “These aren’t just little think tanks that are doing nonpartisan research based on what’s happening in the state and really reflective of the culture of those states. These are a lot of groups that put together pretty cooked books on the issues they are peddling and have been criticized in state after state for how shoddy their research has been.”
Major Funders of SPN
The SPN network is said to have an annual “war chest” of more than $80 million, which comes from some well-known donors—including the Koch brothers, Philip Morris, Kraft Foods, GlaxoSmithKline, Facebook, Microsoft, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon. Other major donors: Roe Foundation, Bradley Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, Scaife Foundations, Walton Family Foundation, Art Pope, and Searle Freedom Trust.
The Center for Media and Democracy notes that “the largest known funder behind SPN and its member think tanks are two closely related funds — DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.” Mother Jones published an article about Donors Trust last February. Andy Kroll, the author of the article, called Donors Trust “the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement.”
Kroll:
Founded in 1999, Donors Trust (and an affiliated group, Donors Capital Fund) has raised north of $500 million and doled out $400 million to more than 1,000 conservative and libertarian groups, according to Whitney Ball, the group’s CEO. Donors Trust allows wealthy contributors who want to donate millions to the most important causes on the right to do so anonymously, essentially scrubbing the identity of those underwriting conservative and libertarian organizations. Wisconsin’s 2011 assault on collective bargaining rights? Donors Trust helped fund that. ALEC, the conservative bill mill? Donors Trust supports it. The climate deniers at the Heartland Institute? They get Donors Trust money, too.
Donors Trust is not the source of the money it hands out. Some 200 right-of-center funders who’ve given at least $10,000 fill the group’s coffers. Charities bankrolled by Charles and David Koch, the DeVoses, and the Bradleys, among other conservative benefactors, have given to Donors Trust. And other recipients of Donors Trust money include the Heritage Foundation, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the NRA’s Freedom Action Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, chaired (PDF) by none other than David Koch.
Media Mouthpiece for the Right-Wing Agenda
In February the Center for Public Integrity published an article by Paul Abowd titledDonors use charity to push free-market policies in states: Nonprofit group lets donors fly ‘totally under the radar’. Abowd reported that, in 2009, “a network of online media outlets began popping up in state capitals across the nation, each covering the news from a clearly conservative point of view. What wasn’t so clear was how they were funded.”
Michael Moroney, a spokesman for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity—the think tank that created the outlets, said, “The source is 100 percent anonymous.” According to IRS records, 95% of the Franklin Center’s 2011 revenue came from Donors Trust.
In 2011, Sara Jerving (PR Watch) wrote about the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity’s “rushing to fill the gap” in 2009 as newsrooms across the country were cutting staff “due in part to slipping ad revenue and corporate media conglomeration.” At the time her article was published, the aforementioned network had “43 state news websites, with writers in over 40 states.” Jerving said the network’s reporters had “been given state house press credentials” and that its news articles were “starting to appear in mainstream print newspapers in each state.” Jerving added, “The websites all offer their content free to local press — many of the news bureaus send out their articles to state editors every day. The sites also offer free national stories that media can receive daily by subscribing.”
According to Jerving, the screening process for writers of these media outlets is not like that of other “journalistic outlets.” For example, she said the Wisconsin Reporterasked applicants “ideological questions.” She added that the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based school and resource for journalists, had reported that Wisconsin Reporter applicants were asked to answer questions such as the following: “How do free markets help the poor?” and “Do higher taxes lead to balanced budgets?”
Jerving wrote that the journalistic integrity of Franklin Center’s media sites had been called into question by media watchdog groups. She reported that “Laura McGann, assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, wrote in a 2010 piece in the Washington Monthly, that the Franklin Center sites are engaging in distorted reporting across the country. As often as not, their reporting is thin and missing important context, which occasionally leads to gross distortions.” Jerving said that McGann pointed out several instances where the center’s “Watchdog websites wrote stories that turned out to be misleading or untrue.” McGann also said, “This sort of misleading reporting crops up on Watchdog sites often enough to suggest that, rather than isolated instances of sloppiness, it is part of a broad editorial strategy.”
Despite the kinds of misleading stories published by the Wisconsin Reporter, it has “gained traction in the state.” Jerving said that its stories “have been picked up by a host of local media outlets in the state, such as La Crosse Tribune, Eau Claire’sLeader Telegram, Wausau Daily Herald, Steven’s Point Journal, Chippewa Herald, andBeloit Daily News.”
Excerpt from the Center for Media and Democracy’s report:
SPN works in parallel with the American Legislative Exchange Council, Alec, a forum that brings together largely Republican legislators and corporations to devise model bills that are used to attack workers’ rights in various US states.
Some of SPN members’ destructive agenda items include:
  • Education: Defund and privatize public schools through voucher programs, charter school expansion, and giving tax credits to corporations that fund private schools
  • Healthcare: Block access to affordable healthcare by working against the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion
  • Workers’ Rights: Restrict workers’ collective bargaining rights by pushing anti-worker measures such as so-called “Right to Work” and paycheck deception, and undermine public workers’ negotiated retirement security by switching to risky defined-contribution pension plans
  • Energy & the Environment: Oppose renewable, clean energy sources, while promoting fossil fuels and advocating for the repeal of pollution restrictions and environmental protections
  • Taxes: Create a tax system that benefits those at the very top and lowers taxes on corporations, while pushing measures such as flat or supposedly “fair” tax programs that cost workers more in marginal dollars, or replacing the income tax with a higher sales tax, all of which disproportionately raise the relative tax rate on middle and working class families
  • Government Spending: Cut government spending on essential services and public programs
  • Wages & Income Equality: Oppose raising the minimum wage, and in some cases urge the repeal of minimum wage, living wage, and prevailing wage laws
NOTE: Thanks go to Gene Howington for introducing me to the State Policy Network via The Guardian article–and for suggesting that I might be interested in writing a post on the subject.
SOURCES
Something Stinks at the State Policy Network (Center for Media and Democracy)
State Policy Network (Right Wing Watch)
The Koch brothers’ media investment [UPDATED] (Columbia Journalism Review)

65 Responses to “State Policy Network—The “PR Firm” for ALEC and a Right-Wing Agenda”

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  1. julieanneda1, November 17, 2013 at 9:00 pm
    The same is happening in the UK are any ties discernible between the funders?
  2. Annie1, November 17, 2013 at 9:22 pm
    So, we have unelected people writing laws and elected people acting as their toadies. For what price? What is a corporatocracy and a theocracy combined called? I ask because I don’t know which one, the Religious Right or Big Money Corporations are more desperate to turn our Representative Democracy into something else entirely. I find it amazing that the two seem to be working hand in hand. Ayn Rand the athiest influencing good Christian businessmen, how does this happen? How do they reconcile the two philosophies?
  3. Otteray Scribe1, November 17, 2013 at 9:46 pm
    julieanneda,
    The answer to your question is “yes,” There is credible support for common funding. Many of the super rich are more like multinational cartels than individual citizens of any given country. They don’t get screened by TSA, and in fact, get little hassle–if any–by customs. Their interests are not the same as ordinary citizens, and in fact, not necessarily the same as their governments. Governments are a means to an end. Mike Spindell has written about sociopaths and psychopaths, and his points are well taken. One of these days, I will try to summarize what is known about criminal personalities. Unfortunately, much of it sounds like the average CEO job description.
    I would try to find some sources, but my brain hung out a ‘closed’ sign an hour ago.
  4. Indigo Jones1, November 17, 2013 at 9:53 pm
    Private government = monarchy.
    Conservative = traditionalist, i.e., disenfranchise blacks, women, renters, wage labor, the poor to maintain social stability for an aristocracy. That’s the conservative policy direction in the US. In the absence of hereditary orders, we here have advocacy for an aristocracy of wealth.
    This was by design. None of the founders wanted democracy — except Jefferson who wasn’t even in the country when the Constitution was drafted and ratified.
    It makes no difference that the rhetoric of entrepreneurialism relates to an era that went extinct in the 19th Century, before organized industry (and hence the need for labor representation, since the interests of labor were left out of the Constitution by the “representatives” in Philadelphia, who by and large profited from capital exclusively, insofar as they owned labor, collected rent, or financed deals, or traded goods made by others).
    Hamilton’s argument against a Bill of Rights is telling:
    “It has been several times truly remarked that bills of rights
    are, in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects,
    abridgements of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of
    rights not surrendered to the prince. Such was MAGNA CHARTA,
    obtained by the barons, sword in hand, from King John…..”
    “I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and
    to the extent in which they are contended for, are not only
    unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be
    dangerous. ”
    – Federalist 84
  5. Elaine M.1, November 17, 2013 at 10:06 pm
    julieanneda,
    I just found this:
    The educational charities that do PR for the rightwing ultra-rich
    Billionaires control the political conversation by staying hidden and paying others to promote their brutal agendas
    By George Monbiot
    The Guardian, Monday 18 February 2013
    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/18/charities-pr-rightwing-ultra-rich
    Excerpt:
    Conspiracies against the public don’t get much uglier than this. As the Guardian revealed last week, two secretive organisations working for US billionaires have spent $118m to ensure that no action is taken to prevent manmade climate change. While inflicting untold suffering on the world’s people, their funders have used these opaque structures to ensure that their identities are never exposed.
    The two organisations – the Donors’ Trust and the Donors’ Capital Fund – were set up as political funding channels for people handing over $1m or more. They have financed 102 organisations which either dismiss climate science or downplay the need to take action. The large number of recipients creates the impression of many independent voices challenging climate science. These groups, working through the media, mobilising gullible voters and lobbying politicians, helped to derail Obama’s cap and trade bill and the climate talks at Copenhagen. Now they’re seeking to prevent the US president from trying again.
    This covers only part of the funding. In total, between 2002 and 2010 the two identity-laundering groups paid $311m to 480 organisations, most of which take positions of interest to the ultra-rich and the corporations they run: less tax, less regulation, a smaller public sector. Around a quarter of the money received by the rightwing opinion swarm comes from the two foundations. If this funding were not effective, it wouldn’t exist: the ultra-rich didn’t get that way by throwing their money around randomly. The organisations they support are those that advance their interests.
    A small number of the funders have been exposed by researchers trawling through tax records. They include the billionaire Koch brothers (paying into the two groups through their Knowledge and Progress Fund) and the DeVos family (the billionaire owners of Amway). More significantly, we now know a little more about the recipients. Many describe themselves as free-market or conservative thinktanks.
    Among them are the American Enterprise Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council, Hudson Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Reason Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity, Mont Pelerin Society and Discovery Institute. All pose as learned societies, earnestly trying to determine the best interests of the public. The exposure of this funding reinforces the claim by David Frum, formerly a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, that such groups “increasingly function as public relations agencies”.
    One name in particular jumped out at me: American Friends of the IEA. The Institute of Economic Affairs is a British group that, like all the others, calls itself a free-market thinktank. Scarcely a day goes by when its staff aren’t interviewed in the broadcast media, promoting the dreary old billionaires’ agenda: less tax for the rich, less help for the poor, less spending by the state, less regulation for business. In the first 13 days of February, its people were on the BBC 10 times.
  6. Tard.Detector1, November 17, 2013 at 10:24 pm
    Ah yes, those evil libertarians up to their mischief again… We can not have that.
    The simple truth is that these corporate funded monsterous creations are usurping the political process from BOTH sides of the aisle (& often with little core difference between the outcomes to the Everyman). As long as we continue to treat corporations as natural “People” and accord them the same constitutional protections – this is the result – from both sides, from all sides. You make the individual constituent, even in the collective, virtually irrellivant because he (they) can never compete with the funding that the corporate donor can generate, and this the power that corporate donor can wield.
    It is an exceedingly Simple and yet incontrovertible economic fact.
    Once we allowed and accepted this corporate corruption of our political process we assured an infective process that would be virtually incurable through the normal political processes that it has corrupted. And even now, we can see the machine taking all the steps that are necessary to protect itself from the final recourses that the founding fathers left open to the people should the oppression of government become intolerable. The rise of the warrior cop culture, the militarization of all federal, state and local agencies with even a modicum of police power, the pervasive surveillance state, the preparations to shut down the Internet and other forms of communication to stop dissent or insurrection, the loss of liberties, the preparations by the government to deal with a rise in domestic terrorism that is an emergency of their own creation. Domestic Drones… Do I even need to go on?
    The corporate funded and driven perversion of our government is gearing up to protect itself from the same “people” it is supposed to be “by, for, and of”…
    Don’t for a minute think that this expose is a simple creature of the Right Wing, there are equal machines operating on the left (Bloomberg & his buddies anybody?) – and they are just as committed to protecting there money and controlling the people as the Koch brothers are.
    And don’t for a minute think that because they use a “Libertarian” label that they are libertarian in their agenda. Libertarians are no more for corporate control in government or anything else than they are for government control of their lives.
  7. Gene H.1, November 17, 2013 at 10:31 pm
    “Libertarians are no more for corporate control in government or anything else than they are for government control of their lives.”
    You should tell that to the fairly regular cadre of self identifying libertarians parading through here who bemoan every attempt to regulate corporations, TD.
    Excellent column, Elaine. Truly one of your top shelf entries.
  8. Tard.Detector1, November 17, 2013 at 10:34 pm
    As far as religion and power goes – these people use religion the same way that people in power have always used religion, as a means to their ends. If the polls showed that a majority of American worshipped the Flying Spaghetti Monster – you would have to stand away from the doors lest you be trampled by the rush of politicians looking to demonstrably convert.
    You can tell by their actions exactly how pious & religious most of these politicians are (NOT!) but religion has always been an easy way to curry favor with a large segment of people, to exploit the us vs them mentality that politicians and the power hungry LOVE. So religion, whatever the dominant form is in most of the country, will always be a tool of the savvy politico regardless of their personal belief systems (which seem to be dominated by power and greed if history and experience is much of a teacher)
  9. Tard.Detector1, November 17, 2013 at 10:44 pm
    Yes, I do understand that libertarians come in different flavors. Some bemoan government control of anything – including corporations.
    Others (I would like to think the enlightened) see corporations as artificial constructions on par with government and just as big (or bigger) threat to fundamental liberty, and thus needing the same sorts of checks and balances (I.E. Regulations) established as we would have for government to prevent Corporations from abusing their power and thus the people.
    Methinks it is the corrupting influences of such as the Koch Bros. et al who are responsible for the numbers of misinformed libertarians in the first category.
    Of course – that’s just my opinion, I do understand that there are many who would argue with me. Those are the people I would call “wrong” lmao…
  10. pete1, November 17, 2013 at 10:50 pm
    great post, Elaine
    i’m going to read up a bit more on this. although the part “Founded in 1992 by Tom Roe at the urging of Ronald Reagan” sounds like they’re trying to tie it to the corpse of saint ronnie.
  11. rafflaw1, November 17, 2013 at 11:01 pm
    Another good job Elaine. Follow the money and you will find a lot of creepy crawling creatures involved in stealing from the poor and giving it to the rich.
  12. Elaine M.1, November 17, 2013 at 11:09 pm
    Lee Fang exposes the State Policy Network & corporate domination of public policy
    4/9/13
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/09/1200332/-Lee-Fang-exposes-the-State-Policy-Network-corporate-domination-of-public-policy
    Excerpt:
    The decline of media outlets doing serious journalism has created a supreme opportunity for this coalition of groups. Into the void created by the demise of major newspapers and the investigative reporting they do, SPN-affiliated think tanks have rushed to own that space. The result is that we can no longer trust much of what we read in the media:
    As Joe Strupp of Media Matters has reported, the Franklin Center’s stated mission is to take advantage of cutbacks at local papers: “Cash-strapped and under-staffed, local and regional newspapers often can’t provide the real information that voters need to make good decisions.” Strupp, who interviewed several local editors who reluctantly run the center’s syndicated content, noted that some stories covered by the group—including one claiming that a union traded free barbecue for votes in Wisconsin—turned out to be false…
    *
    Their domination of the mediasphere includes the creation of media wire services to disseminate their propaganda. It’s revolutionary and unmatched by anything being done by the left:
    MediaTrackers.org sites and news outlets mirroring Wisconsin Reporter now exist in states across the country, augmenting the advocacy of the expanded Americans for Prosperity and SPN chapters. “There’s no counterweight,” says Lisa Graves, head of the Center for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group in Madison. Graves notes that Wisconsin Reporter, among the other Franklin Center news sites set up in more than two dozen states, has acted as a syndication service, providing right-leaning news coverage to local media. “There’s no progressive wire service,” she adds.
    Some of the groups working together in this network will be familiar, of course: ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Others like the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Free State Foundation, MediaTrackers.org, and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity are probably not so familiar. These groups often do the dirty work for their corporate sponsors, spending their contributions on “issue” campaigns that, at the end of the day, fatten their bottom lines.
  13. Elaine M.1, November 17, 2013 at 11:14 pm
    IS IKEA THE NEW MODEL FOR THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT?
    POSTED BY JANE MAYER
    11/15/13
    http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/11/is-ikea-the-new-model-for-the-conservative-movement.html
    Excerpt:
    In every state in the country, there is at least one ostensibly independent “free-market” think tank that is part of something called the State Policy Network— there are sixty-four in all, ranging from the Pelican Institute, in Louisiana, to the Freedom Foundation, in Washington State. According to a new investigative report by the Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal watchdog group, however, the think tanks are less free actors than a coördinated collection of corporate front groups—branch stores, so to speak—funded and steered by cash from undisclosed conservative and corporate players. Although the think tanks have largely operated under the radar, the cumulative enterprise is impressively large, according to the report. In 2011, the network funnelled seventy-nine million dollars into promoting conservative policies at the state level.
    Tracie Sharp, the president of the S.P.N., promptly dismissed the report as “baseless allegations.” She told Politico, “There is no governing organization dictating what free market think tanks research or how they educate the public about good public policy.”
    But notes provided to The New Yorker on what was said during the S.P.N.’s recent twenty-first-annual meeting raise doubts about Sharp’s insistence that each of the think tanks is, as she told me, “fiercely independent.” The notes show that, behind closed doors, meeting with some eight hundred people from the affiliated state think tanks, Sharp compared the organization’s model to that of the giant global chain IKEA.
    At the annual meeting, which took place in Oklahoma City this past September 24th through 27th, Sharp explained what she called The IKEA Model. She said that it starts with what she described as a “catalogue” showing “what success would look like.” Instead of pictures of furniture arranged in rooms, she said, S.P.N.’s catalogue displays visions of state policy projects that align with the group’s agenda. That agenda includes opposing President Obama’s health-care program and climate-change regulations, reducing union protections and minimum wages, cutting taxes and business regulations, tightening voting restrictions, and privatizing education. “The success we show is you guys,” she told the assembled state members. “Here’s how we win in your state.”
    Sharp went on to say that, like IKEA, the central organization would provide “the raw materials,” along with the “services” needed to assemble the products. Rather than acting like passive customers who buy finished products, she wanted each state group to show the enterprise and creativity needed to assemble the parts in their home states. “Pick what you need,” she said, “and customize it for what works best for you.”
    During the meeting, Sharp also acknowledged privately to the members that the organization’s often anonymous donors frequently shape the agenda. “The grants are driven by donor intent,” she told the gathered think-tank heads. She added that, often, “the donors have a very specific idea of what they want to happen.” She said that the donors also sometimes determined in which states their money would be spent.
  14. Felix1, November 17, 2013 at 11:40 pm
    If you didnt look at the names and parties you would think Obama was part of ALEC
  15. Otteray Scribe1, November 18, 2013 at 12:10 am
    Felix,
    We will know more once he leaves office and we learn who he decides to go to work for. Hopefully, he will sit at home to write books and play a little golf. However, my concern is his interests will take a different turn.
  16. rafflaw1, November 18, 2013 at 1:20 am
    Felix,
    I don’t understand why you compare ALEC to Obama? ALEC is all about doing everything it can its power to stop any Obama program or legislation. Are you talking about the Obama Administration controlling their message too?
  17. Felix1, November 18, 2013 at 2:33 am
    Coke vs Pepsi
    While ALEC is an evil entity, Obama is no better. They just represent different sides of Wall Street.
  18. RobinH451, November 18, 2013 at 2:58 am
    i’ve been saying this for many years now.. @ rafflaw no alec isnt fighting against obama he is their stooge its who they all hide behind. just as every potus since eisenhower. like everything else they only give the illusion of opposing obama. its how they keep the people divided….
    what is left out of this article is any and every think tank out here is under the direction of tavistock. they make no moves with consent and directions from tavistock and the u.n. thats been a well known fact for years also.. or maybe i should say its been a well known fact to those of us called conspiracy theorist. another word made up by tavistock to keep the people from seeing the truth.
    there will be no ceo(potus) after obama at least not for long… having a ceo for every country goes against the one world agenda they spent 100s of years implementing.. What we are currently seeing is the last stages of the agenda and that is why they no longer care who knows what… They ( screwillionaires) dont feel they have to hide, lie, or fake terrorist attacks anymore.. There are now only 4 countries in the world that doesnt have a rothchild bank installed. there were 5 #5 being syria but recent actions and attacks against syria has ensured that a rothchilds bank will be installed very soon…
    It is now time for them to enforce the 4 countries left. and just as with syria they can do it quietly or thru wars and terror attacks but do it they will. and these think tanks will continue to shape public opinion to fit their agenda
  19. Oky11, November 18, 2013 at 4:15 am
    RobinH45,
    I was thinking today if my property was free of that parvo (sic) dog deasease crap & if I could start raising dogs again.
    Ya know German Shepards are very smart, they deserve a speical owner that knows who they are, but with some people well, maybe Jesus loves them & will bring them a Blue Healer instead!
  20. lottakatz1, November 18, 2013 at 4:28 am
    TD: “Don’t for a minute think that this expose is a simple creature of the Right Wing, there are equal machines operating on the left (Bloomberg & his buddies anybody?) – and they are just as committed to protecting there money and controlling the people as the Koch brothers are.”
    *
    How about some specificity and cites because I grow weary of the unsubstantiated ‘both sides do it’ false equivalency. Social justice, a strong (organized) and thriving worker class, progressive taxes and well regulated business’ do not benefit the capital class. I do not hear those advocate’s voices let alone hundreds of those voices speaking from the same talking points. I do not see states, even blue states, organizing themselves around a slate of similar liberal principles and goals. I don’t see the equality you mention.
  21. lottakatz1, November 18, 2013 at 4:31 am
    Lost a posting.
  22. RTC1, November 18, 2013 at 8:00 am
    Excellent posting, Elaine, the importance of airing this issue cannot be overstated. The incredible amount of wealth arrayed against democracy around the world is astounding. There is no time to waste if it’s going to be combated.
  23. Dredd1, November 18, 2013 at 8:29 am
    “think tanks” (what warmongers do when they wake up) …
    These freedom subverting groups think tanks when they wake up and put on theirwar on democracy uniforms each day.
    Thanks for exposing them Elaine M.
  24. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 8:35 am
    The Lewis Powell Memo – Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy
    Blogpost by Charlie Cray
    August 23, 2011
    http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/the-lewis-powell-memo-corporate-blueprint-to-/blog/36466/
    Excerpt:
    Forty years ago today, on August 23, 1971, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., an attorney from Richmond, Virginia, drafted a confidential memorandum for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that describes a strategy for the corporate takeover of the dominant public institutions of American society.
    Powell and his friend Eugene Sydnor, then-chairman of the Chamber’s education committee, believed the Chamber had to transform itself from a passive business group into a powerful political force capable of taking on what Powell described as a major ongoing “attack on the American free enterprise system.”
    An astute observer of the business community and broader social trends, Powell was a former president of the American Bar Association and a board member of tobacco giant Philip Morris and other companies. In his memo, he detailed a series of possible “avenues of action” that the Chamber and the broader business community should take in response to fierce criticism in the media, campus-based protests, and new consumer and environmental laws.
    Environmental awareness and pressure on corporate polluters had reached a new peak in the months before the Powell memo was written. In January 1970, President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which formally recognized the environment’s importance by establishing the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Massive Earth Day events took place all over the country just a few months later and by early July, Nixon signed an executive order that created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Tough new amendments to the Clean Air Act followed in December 1970 and by April 1971, EPA announced the first air pollution standards. Lead paint was soon regulated for the first time, and the awareness of the impacts of pesticides and other pollutants– made famous by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book, Silent Spring – was recognized when DDT was finally banned for agricultural use in 1972.
    The overall tone of Powell’s memo reflected a widespread sense of crisis among elites in the business and political communities. “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack,” he suggested, adding that the attacks were not coming just from a few “extremists of the left,” but also – and most alarmingly — from “perfectly respectable elements of society,” including leading intellectuals, the media, and politicians.
    To meet the challenge, business leaders would have to first recognize the severity of the crisis, and begin marshalling their resources to influence prominent institutions of public opinion and political power — especially the universities, the media and the courts. The memo emphasized the importance of education, values, and movement-building. Corporations had to reshape the political debate, organize speakers’ bureaus and keep television programs under “constant surveillance.” Most importantly, business needed to recognize that political power must be “assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be used aggressively and with determination – without embarrassment and without the reluctance which has been so characteristic of American business.”
    Powell emphasized the importance of strengthening institutions like the U.S. Chamber — which represented the interests of the broader business community, and therefore key to creating a united front. While individual corporations could represent their interests more aggressively, the responsibility of conducting an enduring campaign would necessarily fall upon the Chamber and allied foundations. Since business executives had “little stomach for hard-nosed contest with their critics” and “little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate,” it was important to create new think tanks, legal foundations, front groups and other organizations. The ability to align such groups into a united front would only come about through “careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and united organizations.”
    Before he was appointed by Richard Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court Powell circulated his call for a business crusade not only to the Chamber, but also to executives at corporations including General Motors. The memo did not become available to the public until after Powell’s confirmation to the Court, when it was leaked to Jack Anderson, a syndicated columnist and investigative reporter, who cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity.
    Anderson’s report spread business leaders’ interest in the memo even further. Soon thereafter, the Chamber’s board of directors formed a task force of 40 business executives (from U.S. Steel, GE, ABC, GM, CBS, 3M, Phillips Petroleum, Amway and numerous other companies) to review Powell’s memo and draft a list of specific proposals to “improve understanding of business and the private enterprise system,” which the board adopted on November 8, 1973.
    Historian Kim Phillips-Fein describes how “many who read the memo cited it afterward as inspiration for their political choices.” In fact, Powell’s Memo is widely credited for having helped catalyze a new business activist movement, with numerous conservative family and corporate foundations (e.g. Coors, Olin, Bradley, Scaife, Koch and others) thereafter creating and sustaining powerful new voices to help push the corporate agenda, including the Business Roundtable (1972), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC – 1973), Heritage Foundation (1973), the Cato Institute (1977), the Manhattan Institute (1978), Citizens for a Sound Economy (1984 – now Americans for Prosperity), Accuracy in Academe (1985), and others.
    Because it signaled the beginning of a major shift in American business culture, political power and law, the Powell memo essentially marks the beginning of the business community’s multi-decade collective takeover of the most important institutions of public opinion and democratic decision-making. At the very least, it is the first place where this broad agenda was compiled in one document.
  25. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 8:53 am
    “State Policy Network”: The Right-Wing Think Tanks Spinning Disinformation and Pushing ALEC’s Agenda
    4/4/13
    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/04/1199252/–State-Policy-Network-The-Right-Wing-Think-Tanks-Spinning-Disinformation-and-Pushing-the-ALEC-Agen
    Excerpt:
    Trying to Change the Law, but Reporting Little or No Lobbying. Like ALEC, SPN and its affiliates seek to change state laws, but report little or no lobbying. That means that corporations and individuals (like Koch Industries and others) that fund their operations can get a tax write-off for funding SPN efforts. See the SourceWatch article on the SPN Agenda for more.
    SPN Funders Help Some Interests Get Multiple Votes on ALEC Bills. The relationship between SPN affiliates and ALEC is strong and is funded by some of the same donors. That means that some corporate interests like the Kochs get, in effect, multiple votes to change the law on ALEC task forces, where corporate lobbyists and special interest groups like SPN operations vote as equals with elected officials behind closed doors. A particular ALEC task force may have multiple Koch-funded operations — including a lobbyist from Koch Companies Public Sector, a special interest representative from an SPN operation like the Goldwater Institute, and reps from national Koch-controlled or fueled groups like David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Charles Koch-founded Cato Institute, along with the Heritage Foundation, a long-time ally of the Koch agenda. Through ALEC, SPN helps write templates to change state laws; then ALEC members vote in secret for those bills; and then SPN supports the introduction or adoption of those bills as law, sometimes with help from David Koch’s AFP echo chamber in a state.
    SPN Funders Have Included Some of the Richest and Most Ideological Families in the Country. Fueling SPN-related efforts is a bevy of right-wing billionaires and foundations beyond the Koch brothers and including the Bradley Foundation, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund (large donor-directed funds), the Olin Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation (the Amway fortune), the Coors-related Castle Rock Foundation and the Adolph Coors Foundation, the McCamish Foundation, the JM Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. SPN-related activities are also funded by the Roe Foundation, the charitable arm that is part of the legacy of Thomas Roe, the man who helped launch SPN over two decades ago, after telling one of his allies, “I’m going to capture the states,” just like Ronald Reagan was going to capture the U.S.S.R.
    SPN’s Legislative Agenda Is Frequently Buttressed by Its Forays as “Press” and the Echoes of Its Allies in the Growing Right-Wing State “Press” Corps. As CMD was one of the first to document, SPN groups like the Goldwater Institute are hiring people to act as reporters, and the legislative agenda of SPN is increasingly echoed by the growing right-wing infrastructure of groups that pose as press. Some even get their stories or “reports” picked up as news and delivered to state newspapers as a “wire” service like the Associated Press, as with the Franklin Center’s Watchdog.org groups and the Ryun brothers-allied “American Majority” and “Media Trackers” operations.
  26. davidbluefish1, November 18, 2013 at 9:44 am
    Elaine, great and scary stuff. The MSM has been reduced to a profit generating branch of MEGA Corp entertainment.
    ” The umbrella organization that these sixty-four think tanks are collaborating with is called the State Policy Network (SPN)—“a nonprofit that nurtures conservative think tanks in all fifty states.”
    Reducing labor costs and outsourcing production of product works well for these Goliaths of Snews.
    When a story breaks, the toadys of network nimbobs, simply call the “Manipulated Snews Mall”
    The stores shelves of the mall are stocked with canned gossip and sleaze, instant controverseroni, microwavable dissension, and bottled BS blather. Chuck Todd and David Gregory have in-house credit, as a matter of “fact” they are both platinum card holders.
    On the loading dock (unloading dock) in the back of the MSM, ones sees the politicians, corporations, lobbyists, and snake oilers, eagerly pushing their product into the welcoming caverns of Faux reality.
    The owners of this mall are genius. The suppliers pay them to sell their product, the buyers pay them to use their product, the owners not only earn double profit, but the use of the product itself multiplies their wealth. …. Brilliant and it is all done in plain sight.
  27. davidbluefish1, November 18, 2013 at 9:48 am
    Doggone it, word press seems to have put me on their “mess with him list”
    I am going have to start to copy and paste before I post. WP didn’t use to be this delicate.
  28. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 9:49 am
    The Right-Wing Network Behind the War on Unions
    Inspired by Ronald Reagan and funded by the right’s richest donors, a web of free-market think tanks has fueled the nationwide attack on workers’ rights.
    —By Andy Kroll | Sun Apr. 24, 2011
    http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/state-policy-network-union-bargaining
    Excerpt:
    From New Hampshire to Alaska, Republican lawmakers are waging war on organized labor. They’re pushing bills to curb, if not eliminate, collective bargaining for public workers; make it harder for unions to collect member dues; and, in some states, allow workers to opt out of joining unions entirely but still enjoy union-won benefits. All told, it’s one of the largest assaults on American unions in recent history.
    Behind the onslaught is a well-funded network of conservative think tanks that you’ve probably never heard of. Conceived by the same conservative ideologues who helped found the Heritage Foundation, the State Policy Network (SPN) is a little-known umbrella group with deep ties to the national conservative movement. Its mission is simple: to back a constellation of state-level think tanks loosely modeled after Heritage that promote free-market principles and rail against unions, regulation, and tax increases. By blasting out policy recommendations and shaping lawmakers’ positions through briefings and private meetings, these think tanks cultivate cozy relationships with GOP politicians. And there’s a long tradition of revolving door relationships between SPN staffers and state governments. While they bill themselves as independent think tanks, SPN’s members frequently gather to swap ideas. “We’re all comrades in arms,” the network’s board chairman told the National Review in 2007.
    Occasionally, SPN think tanks boast of their clout. Such was the case when the Tennessee Center for Policy Research bragged on its website recently that it “leads the charge against teachers’ union” and “laid the groundwork” for the bills now in the Tennessee legislature to restrict, and possibly eradicate, bargaining for public school teachers. More often, though, the fingerprints of SPN’s members are less apparent…
    In Iowa, Republican Gov. Terry Branstad cited research (flawed, it turned out) by SPN’s Public Interest Institute in his January 2011 budget address to justify curbing the state’s collective bargaining law for public workers. (Last month, the GOP-controlled Iowa House passed a bill limiting bargaining rights, but the measure died in the Democratic-controlled Senate.)
    In Michigan, as Mother Jones previously reported, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, an SPN member, published a list of four policy recommendations that would give unelected “emergency managers” more power to go into municipalities and wipe out union contracts and fire local elected officials, all in the name of repairing broken budgets. All four ended up in Governor Rick Snyder’s “financial martial law,” as one GOP lawmaker described it. The bill was signed into law in March.
    The Nevada Policy Research Institute (NPRI) has for more than a decade bashed the Silver State’s efforts to pass collective bargaining laws and accused unions of trying to “monopolize the public sector.” In March, Nevada Republicans, citing NPRI data, introduced a bill of their own to weaken bargaining rights. There, as in other states considering similar measures, GOP lawmakers called on an SPN staffer to testify on the bill, which he did favorably.
    In California, where a Republican lawmaker introduced a bill in February to repeal collective bargaining on retirement benefits for public workers, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) has churned out a steady stream of reports and op-eds claiming that teachers unions use collective bargaining to “neuter school board authority, protect bad teachers, restrict principals, emphasize seniority over performance, and limit teacher evaluation and accountability.” That is, bargaining is to blame for just about everything that’s gone wrong. A 2003 PRI paper recommended that policymakers “streamline or repeal” collective bargaining for teachers.
    When SPN think tanks are not providing conservative lawmakers with ammo, they’re providing them with cover as they take on organized labor. In Wisconsin, as Republican Gov. Scott Walker weathered criticism and sinking approval ratings for his anti-union “repair” bill, the MacIver Institute and Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, both SPN members, rushed to his defense. MacIver lauded Walker’s controversial bill as a “step in taming the behemoth” of big government caused by public-sector unions. Meanwhile, a staffer for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (and former Wisconsin legislative aide) defended Walker’s bill in an error-riddled New York Times op-ed as “fiscally modest, but politically bold.” As tens of thousands poured into the streets of Madison to oppose Walker’s bill, MacIver even cut a video that dismissed the pro-labor protesters as radicalized communists and socialists.
  29. Anonymously Yours1, November 18, 2013 at 11:19 am
    Well…. If you want rules in football….. You might start with the owners …. BUT THEN AGAIN…. it’s too simple…..
  30. Bouise1, November 18, 2013 at 2:32 pm
    Elaine,
    I was bone tired yesterday by the time you posted this incredible column and decided to wait till today to take it all in.
    (You know, my dear, you have combined your years of experience as a teacher, librarian, poet, and now, in your retirement, become one hell of an investigative reporter. Rock ‘n Roll!)
    I do believe you have found the mother nest of vipers where all the coordination and web-weaving takes place. You have managed to pull all the reports together … all those little dots of light … creating one, huge spotlight that illuminates how a distinct minority actively attempts to negate the rights of the majority.
    (I, of course, paid particular attention to ” … while another would treat any gun control legislation at the federal level as the “equivalent of a federal crime.” as the group I work with has long known that all the mischief starts at the state level and works its way up. I have emailed your column to all of them.)
    Well done, Elaine. Honest to God, well done.
  31. Hubert Cumberdale1, November 18, 2013 at 2:35 pm
    Sorry, I have to chuckle at this article. In a overwhelmingly dominated left-wing media that’s constantly pushing agendas in every chance it gets, and even pushing agendas on our children in public schools, it’s amusing to read about ==shudder== a “right wing agenda”. (gasp!)
  32. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 2:51 pm
    Hubert,
    Sorry, I have to chuckle. We have corporate-controlled MSM in this country. We have corporate-driven school reform too.
  33. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 4:13 pm
    OUTMATCHED
    Conservatives’ support for state-based think tanks is paying off in regressive legislation. Liberals are scrambling to keep up.
    PATRICK CALDWELL
    3/7/13
    http://prospect.org/article/outmatched
    Excerpt:
    In early December, the Michigan Legislature met for a lame-duck session that should have been uncontroversial—just a bit of housework before the next body convened in 2013. Instead, the GOP majority used the period to enact a dream list of conservative priorities: abortion-rights restrictions, a phaseout of the personal–property tax, reductions to welfare. Its crowning achievement was the passage of a right-to-work bill prohibiting unions from collecting mandatory dues.
    It seemed unfathomable that Michigan, once the cradle of a thriving and unionized American workforce, could have turned overnight into a right-to-work state. But then many traditions have been upended since the 2010 midterm elections in which Republicans took control of both legislative chambers in 26 states. (Though a few states flipped sides in the November election, that number still holds.) Longtime progressive and purple states, newly under Republican control, have turned into Texas-lite. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker and the Republican legislature stripped public employees of collective-bargaining rights. In Maine, Governor Paul LePage and a Republican-held legislature cut health benefits for the poor. Early this year, Republicans in North Carolina (a state under Republican control for the first time in more than a century) approved cutting unemployment benefits by a third.
    Several groups can be thanked for the rightward swing in state policy. Progressives have lately focused much of their attention on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded alliance that crafts model policy and even bills for state legislators (it had done so in secret for almost three decades until Freedom of Information Act requests revealed the extent of its work in 2011). But in Michigan’s case and others, key policy ideas had been incubating for years—sometimes decades—across a more loosely knit but effective web of conservative think tanks working at the state level.
    Sitting atop this coalition is the State Policy Network (SPN), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. “We’re a service organization dedicated to encouraging state-focused think tanks,” Meredith Turney, the group’s director of strategic communications, said by e-mail, “so we spend most of our time in the states, not D.C.” Thomas Roe Jr.—a member of Ronald Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet” of informal advisers, longtime board member for the Heritage Foundation, and founder of his own think tank, the South Carolina Policy Council—started the organization in 1992.
  34. pdm1, November 18, 2013 at 5:43 pm
    Elaine, thanks for your usual good work. And as usual. it has its usual effect on me – massive depression. Their agenda, so clearly laid out, is straightforward and simple. What I don’t get is why is it so clear to me, a very ordinary person with a very ordinary education, that this agenda will ruin my children, my grandchildren, and the country and yet so many others buy the ALEC plan. I am left thinking it must be something hard-wired in our brains and it will be game over when they eventually outnumber us. I won’t be around for “game over” but I wonder – will we (our kids and their kids) be able to reverse the outcome.
  35. pdm1, November 18, 2013 at 5:47 pm
    OT
    For those interested in the interaction between the Pentagon and the White House. This is a terrific article – even though it was published in Politico (but was written by an Obama appointee.
  36. pdm1, November 18, 2013 at 5:56 pm
    Elaine, did you read about the Boeing machinists vote? It could cause Boeing to move the production of the 777x (the gulf states are buying them by the thousands!) out of Seattle and into……?
  37. pdm1, November 18, 2013 at 5:57 pm
    Help. Comment in limbo. Thanks.
  38. rafflaw1, November 18, 2013 at 6:02 pm
    Blouise,
    Professor Turley won’t like it, but I think you should copyright “the mother nest of vipers” phrase! :)
  40. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 6:46 pm
    Blouise,
    The good sisters knew how to handle raff!
  41. Gene H.1, November 18, 2013 at 7:58 pm
    Blouise,
    Unless you’ve made a staggering biological discovery, I’d just like to point out that there are no known web weaving members of the viper family. :mrgreen:
  42. rafflaw1, November 18, 2013 at 8:57 pm
    Elaine,
    You are right! They just called my Mom! :)
  43. Blouise1, November 18, 2013 at 9:15 pm
    Gene,
    Picky, picky
    I stuck in web-weaving and then thought to myself, Gene’s going to witch at me about that but what the heck … I’ll be prepared. Here’s a bunch of pit vipers weaving their nasty web of plans to suborn the Constitution
  45. Gene H.1, November 18, 2013 at 9:18 pm
    Vroom, vroom. :D
  46. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 9:22 pm
    Blouise,
    Does that snazzy sports car have a custom-made vinshield viper?
  47. Blouise1, November 18, 2013 at 9:25 pm
    raff,
    Is it true that there is a chair in the hall outside of every classroom in your elementary school with an engraved bronze plaque reading: “Lawrence E. Rafferty Sat Here” ?
    That’s what Gene told me. He said they were called the Lawrence E. Rafferty Chair of Hall.
  48. Blouise1, November 18, 2013 at 9:26 pm
    Elaine,
    vinshield viper
    lol … that was excellent!
  49. Gene H.1, November 18, 2013 at 9:29 pm
    To be fair, raff, I only told Blouise that out of jealousy. I myself have only one memorial chair at my former high schools. True, it’s in the principal’s office, but compared to a whole section of seating? I must confess I was a little . . . green with envy. :mrgreen:
    It’s not easy being green.
  51. Gene H.1, November 18, 2013 at 9:32 pm
    But really, one needs a car like that if one is to catch moose and squirrel.
  52. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 9:35 pm
    Ted Cruz and Koch brothers embroiled in shadowy Tea Party scheme
    Meet the right-wing group masquerading as a mainstream nonprofit — but pushing extremist laws across the country
    JOSH EIDELSON
    11/15/13
    http://www.salon.com/2013/11/15/ted_cruz_and_koch_brothers_embroiled_in_shadowy_tea_party_scheme/
    Excerpt:
    While SPN is no household name, CMD notes it has at least one celebrity alum: former SPN-affiliated think tank fellow and current filibustering Sen. Ted Cruz, the co-author of a 2010 paper for Texas Public Policy Foundation arguing the Affordable Care Act violated the 10thAmendment. That paper notes that the TPPF is working with partners to develop an “Interstate Compact for Health Care Reform,” which it says would provide that member states “may opt out of Obamacare entirely …” The San Antonio Current noted that a “Health Care Compact Act” echoing Cruz’s concept is among the model legislation pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative group whose members include major companies and scores of state legislators. CMD notes that the same year Cruz issued that report, the Koch-backed Donors Capital Fund provided his think tank a $65,300 grant “for the organization’s project, Turning the Tide Unifying the States to Oppose Federal Overreach.”
  53. Otteray Scribe1, November 18, 2013 at 9:44 pm
    Here is something you don’t see every day. According to Wikipedia this critter doesn’t exist. At least not around here. This was emailed to my daughter by her boyfriend. One of his friends got this photo about five miles from our house. Automatic camera from a tree stand. This was about a week or ten days ago.
  54. pete1, November 18, 2013 at 9:57 pm
    oh lord! black panthers in north carolina. was the tree stand near a polling site?
  55. Gene H.1, November 18, 2013 at 10:06 pm
    Holy crap, OS.
    That’s about as bad an invasive species problem as one can get. The good news is is that there is enough game in your area to keep it fed. I just hope a human doesn’t do something stupid. It could be a cougar though. Black cougars have been reported (very rarely) in the wild, but none has ever been bred in captivity, captured or photographed. If so, that could be the first photograph of one ever of a black cougar. Your guy should have a zoologist check out that photo. It might be valuable in more ways than one.
  56. Otteray Scribe1, November 18, 2013 at 10:20 pm
    Gene,
    AFIK the scientists at East Tennessee State University and Appalachian State over in Boone are studying it. Cougars are making a serious comeback in the Blue Ridge, and several local experts are saying that is a melanized cougar. They are supposed to be extinct in the Blue Ridge. I have seen several normal fawn colored cougars in our area, one of them crossing the road right in front of my car. When the kitty cat is seven feet from nose to tail, we don’t need Nal to help us find the kitteh. Her friend did not say exactly where his tree stand is set up, but if you want to look on Google Earth or Maps, it is between Hampton and Roan Mountain, Tennessee, and apparently closer to Hampton than the Roan Mountain community. This is seriously rugged and heavily wooded countryside.
    In addition to the big cats, black bear are becoming numerous enough they are becoming pests….very dangerous pests.
  57. Gene H.1, November 18, 2013 at 10:51 pm
    OS,
    The black bears are making a comeback around here too. I did hear about a cougar siting too, but it was in Vernon Parish (considerably south/southwest of us). But I really do have a hard time thinking of bears as pests. They’re just being bears. It’s usually a human to blame when something goes wrong. However, I agree on the dangerous part. I’ve heard W&F rangers say black bears are particularly dangerous because they don’t give warning behaviors. They just attack when they decide to attack.
  58. Otteray Scribe1, November 18, 2013 at 11:22 pm
    Gene,
    At least three black bears were found in people’s back yards in our town. A few months ago, somebody saw three bears scrambling up a cutbank beside one of the highways about a mile down the road from where we live.
    Youngest was coming home from work at the sheriff’s department one morning. She was working 6P to 6A, and on the way home she came upon one of the State Troopers and the highway department guy with the pickup truck who picks up roadkill. This time the roadkill was a four or five hundred pound bear. The wrecker had already picked up the car that hit it. She said the Trooper and the highway department guy were trying to figure out how to get that bear into the back of his truck. Not exactly something he could pick up with his snow shovel.
  59. Elaine M.1, November 18, 2013 at 11:32 pm
    Sounds like it’s time to write a screenplay titled “The Invasion of the Bear Snatchers.”
  60. lottakatz1, November 19, 2013 at 12:35 am
    Elaine, excellent article. Maddow did about 20 minutes this evening on the new front in discouraging people to sign up for the ACA and guess what/who? The SPN thanks to the Koch brothers. Well done Ms.Elaine.
  61. lottakatz1, November 19, 2013 at 12:42 am
    Raf and the sisters: As a horror fan, and one that will tolerate some low quality horror vids, it has always amazed me that a horror/supernatural themed movie set in a crumbling Catholic school populated by ghost or un-dead sisters wielding rulers has not as yet been done. I wait patiently for the glorious day it is made and released direct-to-DVD. :-)
    [American Horror Story series II does not count; that was an Asylum.]
  62. Blouise1, November 19, 2013 at 12:44 am
    Elaine,
    Annie wants the Almond Tort recipe. I will be getting it out for Thanksgiving but told her I’d mention it to you in case you can get to it sooner. (I have my granddaughter for the next four days)
    I told her to keep checking this thread
    Thanks
  63. Blouise1, November 19, 2013 at 12:46 am
    lotta,
    nightmare time for me ;)
  64. rafflaw1, November 19, 2013 at 12:49 am
    Blouise and Gene,
    I don’t think they every memorialized anything in my name at my catholic grade school. And since it is now closed, any evidence is long gone! Some of the good Benedictine Sisters taught at my wife’s high school and I think I frightened them when I came to pick her up or visit at her school!
    Lotta,
    Some days in grade school I was a victim of the zombie nuns coming at me with yard sticks and hardwood pointers!

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