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For decades, Charles Koch has been committed to radically changing American society into a libertarian paradise, free from taxes and regulations, in which the wealthiest oligarchs, like himself, can destroy the environment, exploit their workers, and reap astonishing profits.

His "Structure of Social Change," first introduced by his top strategist, Richard Fink in the late 1970s, was a plan to weaponize philanthropy by using three areas of influence that would, together, gradually push far-right economic ideas into the American mainstream. The strategy begins with the funding of free-market university programs, something the Charles Koch Foundation has done at hundreds of higher education institutions including George Mason University, Florida State, and Western Michigan University, to produce the "intellectual raw materials" for libertarian policies. Then, Koch and his wealthy allies fund think tanks and policy shops that would convert the academic literature into usable policy proposals, which, in the third stage, Koch-funded advocacy groups promote to government officials and the greater populace.

Koch's strategy has been a wild success, but it may not have been as effective without another avenue of influence: favorable media.

A CMD investigation has found that the family foundations of Charles Koch and a number of similarly-minded right-wing megadonors, along with two donor-advised fund sponsors that they use to shepherd their charitable contributions and receive special tax breaks, have donated at over $109 million to media operations since 2015, nearly all of them conservative.

DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund (DCF), the connected donor-advised fund sponsors, have sent more than $45.7 million of their clients' money to finance media nonprofits, including the Media Research Center, Real Clear Foundation, and the National Review Institute, since 2015.

Longtime right-wing funders such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, and the Charles Koch Institute have showered many of the same media groups with millions of dollars over the same period. The recipients range from the nonprofit behind The New Criterion, a magazine that runs lengthy think pieces from conservative intellectuals, to the libertarian Reason Foundation, to James OKeefe's far-right smear operation, Project Veritas.

The host of conservative media outlets have faithfully met the needs of their often billionaire funders. The Daily Caller, heavily funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, printsopinion piecesfrom senior fellows at the climate change-denying Heartland Institute claiming the idea that human-caused climate change is destroying the earth is a "delusion." The Media Research Center's CNS News site printsessaysby right-wing personality Ben Shapiro attacking critics of free-market capitalism. Reason.com promotesthe wonders of capitalismand makes podcastsextolling the legacy of the late David Koch, a longtime Reason Foundation trustee. Project Veritas attempts tosmearthe presidential campaign of economic populist Bernie Sanders andearns praisefrom President Donald Trump. The Motion Picture Institute produces films thatattack regulationand achildren's video seriesin which an economics professor who is affiliated withseveralKoch-fundedprogramsteaches kids about the value of free-market economics. And PragerU publishes five-minute videos attackingsocialism,climate science,socialized medicine, andthe leftin general.

The 21 conservative donor nonprofits researched by CMD for this report are:

The donors investigated by CMD provided more than half of the contribution revenue over the researched time period for several conservative news operations, including the Lucy Burns Institute and the American Media Institute.

Here are some of the biggest recipients of grants from these funders.

TheLucy Burns Institute, a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit and member of the right-wing State Policy Network, received the most money from these nonprofit donors out of all media recipients. From 2015-18, the Institute took in nearly $13.4 million, mostly from DonorsTrust and DCF but also from the Coors Foundation, Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust. The Institute's 2018 tax return is not yet publicly available, but grants from these six donors amounted to 76 percent of the Institute's contribution revenue from 2015-17.

The Lucy Burns Institute runs the mainstream political database Ballotpedia. Its president, Leslie Graves, is married to GOP operative, Koch and Tea Party allyEric O'Keefe, and Institute staff have beentrained by Koch institutions.

The Lucy Burns Institute Board of Directors has members who are fixtures in the Koch-backed conservative political movement. Director Tim Dunn, the founder and CEO of an oil and gas company in Texas, is chairman of theEmpower Texans Foundation, a group funded by DonorsTrust that has worked with Koch's Americans for Prosperity, and vice chairman of the Koch-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation. Board member Jack McHugh is senior legislative analyst at the Koch-backed Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Director Todd Graves is an attorney who represented the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a Koch network nonprofit whose leadership includes board member O'Keefe, the founder of the media group now known as theFranklin News Foundation, in Wisconsin's John Doe investigations. Plaintiffs in the case accused then-Gov. Scott Walker of illegally coordinating with the Wisconsin Club for Growth. Conservative nonprofits researched by CMD gave over $1.1 million to the Franklin News Foundation, which publishes conservative news wire and websiteThe Center Square, from 2015-18.

Brent Bozell'sMedia Research Centerwas also a major recipient of right-wing foundations' cash from 2015-18, scoring nearly $11.2 million from nine nonprofits tracked by CMD. The family foundation of Breitbart financier Robert Mercer gave $7 million to the Center from 2015-17, and DonorsTrust ($1.3 million) and the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($1.3 million) have given large amounts since 2015. The nine donors provided 27 percent of the Media Research Center's contribution revenue from 2015-17.

The Media Research Center, which operates conservative sites such as CNSNews.com and Newsbusters and bills itself as a media watchdog, is a huge favorite of right-wing politicians and media personalities. In its2018 annual report, the Center boasts of accolades from the likes of Vice President Mike Pence, Trump fanatic and Fox News host Sean Hannity, and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The Center's work is "a fundamental element of my show prep daily; they always have been and they always will be," said talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Libertarian think tank the Reason Foundation received close to $9.6 million from eight nonprofits researched by CMD, including $3.8 million from the Searle Freedom Trust and nearly $1.7 million from the two Charles Koch nonprofits, from 2015-18. The late David Koch was a Reason trustee.

The Reason Foundation publishes Reason Magazine and Reason.com, which includes podcasts and a video series by libertarian media personality John Stossel.

Right-wing propaganda organizationProject Veritas, the group that took down ACORN and smeared Planned Parenthood, receives nearly one-third of its contribution revenue from DonorsTrust. From 2015-18, DonorsTrust funneled over $7.8 million to Project Veritas, accounting for 31.3 percent of its contribution revenue. The Bradley Impact Fund added $31,000 during that time period.

James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas attempt "stings" on Democratic politicians, liberal nonprofits, and media companies, most of which fail to prove anything close to the malfeasance O'Keefe hopes to expose. Perhaps most notably, the group tried to lure Washington Post reporters into writing about a woman who pretended to have had an underage affair with Alabama Senate candidate and right-wing extremist Roy Moore, but the reporters were able to sniff her out.

The American Media Institute bills itself as an independent investigative news service, but from 2015-16, Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, the John William Pope Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation gave it nearly $6.1 million, which was more than two-thirds of its total revenue. The following year, the Institute's revenue dropped significantly, from $5.5 million in 2016 to $577,000 in 2017.

According to Media Matters, the Institute has "duped" mainstream news outlets into publishing its stories, which included one critical of the Clinton Foundation that originally didn't meet the standards of its publisher,Fusion.

The Real Clear Foundation, which funds investigative reporting for the site RealClearPolitics.com, is almost entirely funded by seven conservative nonprofits researched by CMD. DonorsTrust is the biggest donor, having given $3.8 million from 2015-18, and other contributors include Donors Capital Fund ($1 million), the two Charles Koch foundations ($458,000), the Ed Uihlein Foundation ($250,000), and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation ($100,000). The Koch total includes a$375,000 consulting contractpaid by the Charles Koch Institute in 2018.

The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) funds much of the content of the Daily Caller website, a site that has several ties to white nationalists and was co-founded by now-Fox News host Tucker Carlson with $3 million from right-wing donor Foster Freiss. As of 2018, Carlson was secretary of the DCNF board of directors.

Charles Koch Foundation officialsmay express concernover the site's extremism, but the foundation is DCNF's biggest donor-by a mile. The Koch Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute combined to give over $3.3 million to the Daily Caller News Foundation from 2015-18, representing 37 percent of the group's contribution revenue during that time period. Including grants from DonorsTrust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and others, conservative nonprofits researched by CMD provided the DCNF with 58 percent of its donation revenue.

Charles Koch alleges he is not a fan of Trump, butDaily Caller and other Koch grant recipientshas often been generous to the president. In fact, Daily Calleraccepted an estimated $150,000from the 2016 Trump campaign to rent its email list. Recently, reporting revealed that Trump family friend Tom Hicks, Jr. said last year that the Daily Caller editorcould be counted onto advance Trump's personal political goals regarding Ukraine.

An anti-Muslim nonprofit led by Daniel Pipes, the Middle East Media and Research Institute is another favorite of right-wing megadonors. The Institute, an organization at the "inner core" of the nation's Islamophobia network that "attempts to portray Muslims and Arabs as being inherently irrational and violent," according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, took in $5.1 million-or 23 percent of its contribution revenue-from four conservative foundations from 2015-18: Sheldon and Miriam Adelson's family foundation ($4 million), DonorsTrust ($564,800), the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($450,000), and the Bradley Foundation ($70,000).

Other recipients of funding by the 21 groups that CMD researched include far-right propaganda video operationPrager University Foundation($4.2 million), theNational Review Institute($2.8 million), the American Enterprise Institutes magazine, National Affairs (over $1 million), theAmerican SpectatorFoundation ($663,000), and neoconservative magazineCommentary, Inc. ($125,000).

The Center for American Greatness, an extremist, pro-Trump group that has publishedalt-right-style posts online, has on staffa former Trump officialand an editor who won fellowships from the Earhart and Bradley foundations. The group earned its 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax status from the IRS in July 2017. The following year, DonorsTrust gave the Center for American Greatness $538,000, with the Bradley Foundation and Thomas W. Smith Foundation adding $150,000 and $50,000, respectively.

The Bradley Foundationwebsitedetails an additional $3 million that it gave to media groups such as the Center for American Greatness and Encounter for Culture and Education, the conservative publisher of Encounter Books, in the first nine months of 2019.

Read more:
Right-Wing Megadonors Are Financing Media Operations to Promote Their Ideologies - PR Watch

Joe Biden doesnt sound very moderate when he says there is no room for compromise on transgender equality.

It is the civil rights issue of our time, he tweeted last week, elevating it above womens equality, racial equality, and even climate justice, an issue he once told us was an existential threat.

The tweet was rather baffling, other than as an exercise in identity pandering.

Maybe Biden thought he could win over a segment of the 0.3 percent transgender voters who are irate that Bernie Sanders accepted an endorsement from libertarian podcaster and pronoun purist Joe Rogan.

But, by trying to outwoke Sanders on gender fluidity, Biden is empowering a tyrannical micro-minority determined to overturn biological reality and crush dissent.

Exhibit A is Denver Post columnist Jon Caldara, fired for writing that there are only two sexes, identified by an XX or XY chromosome.

They is singular and up is down, wrote Caldara in a Jan. 7 column criticizing The Associated Press Stylebook, the language-usage bible for reporters, which has decreed that gender is no longer binary and that they can be used as a singular pronoun.

Two weeks later, he slammed a Colorado law which requires controversial sex-education content in schools.

Democrats dont want education transparency when it comes to their mandate to convince your kid that there are more than two sexes, even if its against your wishes, he wrote.

This was the last straw for his editors. After writing a weekly column for four years, he was shown the door.

Caldara is no social conservative. He supports-same sex marriage and doesnt like Donald Trump. But, like Rogan, he is a libertarian who objects to compelled speech and inaccurate pronouns.

So, it doesnt matter how the Denver Post tries to spin it, his firing is an attack on free speech by the very institution entrusted to defend it.

The paper has been opaque about its reasons, alluding only to disrespectful language in an editors note last week. But any fair reader of the statements of biological reality which Caldara reposted on social media would be hard pressed to find disrespect. Clearly, his editors thought his words were fine when they published them.

But the Denver Post is a shadow of its former self. Under the oppressive ownership of a hedge fund, it lacks the institutional courage required to stand against the transgender bullying which attacks any expression deviating from gender fluid orthodoxy.

The papers disintegrating backbone follows the decline of a free press all over the country, as Google and Facebook siphon away news revenue, and fake news muscles in.

Alden Global Capital took control of the Denver Post in 2010 and runs it through its subsidiary, Digital First Media, which has bought up some of the biggest newspaper chains in the country, including the McClatchy and Gannett organizations. It controls dozens of newspapers, from California to Massachusetts, and has stripped them to the bone.

Its no scoop to understand that hedge funds with an appetite for extracting remnant value from failing newspapers have no interest in freedom of speech or the constitutional value of the Fourth Estate, let alone the importance of objective truth.

And the last thing woke capital wants is to be targeted by transgender activists. No special interest group is more relentless in crushing dissent around the world, using character assassination as a weapon.

When you have no commitment to free speech, surrender to bullies is the logical path of least resistance.

This may also explain Joe Bidens trans-virtue signaling last week, to counter suspicions about his Catholic background and past cordiality toward Mike Pence.

But, if the leading moderate of the Democratic presidential field is promising to make transgender ideology his human-rights priority, we should understand what that means, for womens sports, for schools, for prisons, for the military, for language.

If there is to be no compromise on transgender rights, then the rights of women and girls will have to be sacrificed.

Does Biden not care, for instance, about the right of biological females to compete in team sports on a level playing field, rather than against transgender athletes with all the natural physiological advantages that come from being born male?

How about the right of girls to preserve their modesty in single-sex locker rooms? Or the right of students not to be confused in sex-ed classes by radical gender theory which disputes the biological reality of two sexes.

Like every other minority, transgender people should be protected from discrimination, as our laws demand. But if you take him at his word, what Biden is advocating is the forceful restructuring of society according to the irrational demands of a subsection of a tiny minority. Its no way to win an election.

Boys death avoidable

The twitter feed of Thomas Valvas mother makes for sinister reading now that we know her accusations of abuse ended with the 8-year-olds death allegedly at the hands of his cop father.

New York City police Officer Michael Valva and his fiance, Angela Pollina, have been charged with second-degree murder over the autistic boys death, after he was forced to sleep outside in in a freezing garage.

But if anyone had listened to the boys Polish-born mother, he might still be alive.

For two years, Justyna Zubko-Valva has been posting heartrending videos and credible evidence of harm to her three sons on twitter.

She even posted letters from teachers saying the boys were starving and filthy.

Why were her complaints to authorities unanswered? Something is very wrong with a child-welfare system which ignores a mothers fears.

Your excuses dont fool anyone, Eric

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams doesnt fool anyone when he says his Martin Luther King Day rant about gentrification wasnt a racial slur against white people.

The crowd only started cheering when he said: Go back to Iowa! You go back to Ohio! New York City belongs to the people that was here and made New York City what it is.

It was a dog whistle about majority white states, and he disgraced his office when he chose to stoke division rather than promote healing at a time when New York is suffering from a plague of anti-Semitic attacks. Some perpetrators have tried to justify their hate crimes using the same excuse, that they are being alienated from old neighborhoods.

I tried to give Adams a chance last week to explain, but he dodged requests for an interview.

I never once mentioned race, he finally said in an e-mail through a spokesman yesterday.

Cleveland, Ohio, for example, is majority-black. I have always felt gentrification is not about race, but attitude.

Unconvincing from a wannabe mayor of this melting pot.

See more here:
Joe Biden's bias comes through in trying to outwoke competition: Devine - New York Post

In just over a month voters will decide who they want to see on the ballot in the 2020 general election. Early voting for the March 3 primary will begin in the middle of February and run up until Saturday, Feb. 29.

Heres everything you need to know about when, where and how to vote:

Where:

Two polling locations will be open for early voting, the Market Place Shopping Center, 1740 E. Dixon Blvd near Hobby Lobby and Bargain Hunt and the Kings Mountain Fire Museum, 269 Cleveland Ave.

How long do I have to vote?

Polls will open Thursday, Feb. 13, and will remain open every weekday through the 28th. Saturday, Feb. 29 will be the final day of early voting. Polls will open from 8 a.m.-7:30 p.m. every day except for Feb. 29, when they will close at 3 p.m.

Do I need to register?

The deadline to register to vote or to make any changes to current voter registration is Feb. 7. Voters will be allowed to same-day register and vote during the early voting period.

Do I need an ID?

A federal district court has temporarily blocked North Carolinas voter photo ID requirement from taking effect. Unless the courts direct otherwise, this means that voters will not be required to provide photo ID when they vote in the primary election on March 3.

Registration information:

All Cleveland County registered voters are eligible to participate in the upcoming Presidential Preference and Primary Election. Three parties - Republican, Democrat, Libertarian conduct semi-closed primaries. Two parties - Green, Constitution conduct closed primaries.

This means that if you want to vote for a particular candidate, you must pick which primary you wish to participate in. Registered Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Green Party and Constitution Party voters must all vote for their parties only.

Unaffiliated voters will choose one party to vote for in the primary election.

Who is on the ballot?

Depending on which primary you choose, your ballot could have as many as 13 races to vote in or as few as one. Green, Libertarian and Constitution party primaries only decide who they want to see on the presidential ballot later this year. Republican and Democrat voters will decide which candidates get to appear in presidential, school board, county commission, governor and other state and federal ballots in November.

Sample ballots are available at the Cleveland County Board of Elections.

Read more from the original source:
Six things to know about the primary election - Shelby Star

Many Americans have been highly critical of the War on Drugs and the mass incarceration that it has brought and they include not only liberals and progressives, but some right-wing libertarians as well (from former Texas Rep. Ron Paul to 2012/2016 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson to the staff at Reason Magazine). However, U.S. Attorney General William Barr has been moving in the opposite direction, calling for expanded mandatory minimum sentences at the federal level for crimes involving fentanyl. And Nancy Gertner, a professor at Harvard Law School and former U.S. district judge, asserts in a Washington Post op-ed that Barrs ideas on drug policy are horribly misguided and that the War on Drugs has failed miserably.

According to the 73-year-old Gertner, Barrs ideas come as no surprise in light of his long record of hawking incarceration as a solution to our drug crisis. Indeed, Barr was very much the drug warrior when, in the early 1990s, he served as U.S. attorney general under a previous Republican president: George H.W. Bush.

We have seen this movie before, Gertner laments. It does not end well.

Gertner explains how fentanyl differs from other drugs and how it is governed under federal law in the U.S.

Illicit analogues are synthetic compounds that are substantially similar to Schedule I or II substances in chemical structure, Gertner notes. Some analogues are dangerous substances with a substantial potential for misuse. Others are benign or helpful. For example, naloxone, a life-saving antidote to opioid overdoses, is an analogue of morphine, a powerful opioid. Scientists believe that an antidote for fentanyl overdoses could well be within the substances scheduled under a proposal pending in Congress.

Gertner adds, The only way to tell how a drug will act in the body is through pharmacological research to measure its effect. Barrs proposal omits that crucial step, enabling federal prosecutions in cases involving substances with no scientific research confirming the drugs physiological effect.

The Harvard law professor goes on to assert that while the opioid epidemic must be dealt with, mass incarceration isnt the way to go about it.

We must do everything we can to stop the opioid epidemic, but not with the failed policies of the past, Gertner stresses. The opioid epidemic persists despite decades of the punitive approach Barr touts. Since 2014, federal prosecutions for fentanyl have increased more than 4700%. In recent decades, such an approach has resulted only in mass incarceration a nearly 790% increase in the federal prison population from 1980 to its peak in 2013, disproportionately impacting people of color.

Gertner praises two Republican senators, Ohios Rob Portman and West Virginias Shelley Moore Caputo, for introducing language intended to exclude the application of mandatory minimums for fentanyl analogues. The House should follow their lead.

The law professor wraps up her op-ed by emphasizing that the War on Drugs will not make fentanyl-related problems any better only increase the number of inmates in federal prisons.

Gertner asserts, Barr is waging the same failed war. He seeks to extend mandatory minimums without regard to their impact on people of color, let alone whether they will make our communities safer. They will not.

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Harvard law professor: AG Barrs drug policies echo failed policies of the past and will not end well - AlterNet

Republican Party Chairs in the 27th Congressional District today chose state Sen. Chris Jacobs, R-Buffalo, as its candidate in an upcoming special election to fill the Congressional seat previously held Chris Collins until he resigned before pleading guilty to inside trading charges.

Said Jacobs in a statement: Governor Cuomo is doing all he can to hand this seat to the Democrats, but Im prepared for the fight. ... Well win this race by focusing on strengthening the future of Western New York by creating an environment for job growth, defending our borders and preserving our shared values and ideals.

Party chairs met today at Byrncliffe Resort in Varysburg, Wyoming County.

Jacobs will face Democrat Nate McMurray and Libertarian Party candidate Duane Whitmer in an election expected to be on April 28, though the date has not officially been announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Jacobs was among multiple candidates who had previously sought to replace Collins in the 2018 general election after Collins indictment and the former congressman candidacy was uncertain. Collins ultimately remained in the race and narrowly defeated McMurray in the 2018 general election.

Collins was sentenced Jan. 17 to 26 months in federal prison.

The winner of the special election will hold the office for only a short time. The seats full two-year term will be up again during Novembers general election. If multiple Republican candidates were to seek the office in the general election, that would result in a party primary in June in which registered Republicans would choose the candidate.

The fork ratings are based primarily on food quality and preparation, with service and atmosphere factored into the final decision. Reviews are based on one unsolicited, unannounced visit to the restaurant.

Read the rest here:
Republican Party chairs chose Jacobs as 27th District Congressional candidate - The Daily News Online