DLC's Progressive Policy Institute supported by Bradley Foundation

Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org
Fri Jul 6 12:33:56 PDT 2001


Again, from the Media Transparency site, found out that the DLC's Progressive Policy Institute think tank got financing from the Bradley Foundation, which has given $125,000 in recent years, with indications that Bradley and Olin Foundations gave a total of $300,000 to PPI over its history.

Some interesting discussion on Bradley here (with a bit of a summary below) http://www.mediatransparency.org/funders/bradley_foundation.htm

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation PO Box 510860, Milwaukee, WI 53203-0153 Phone: 414-291-9915; Fax: 414-291-9991 www.bradleyfdn.org by Phil Wilayto POSTED MARCH 21, 2000---With over $700 million in assets, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee,Wisconsin is the country's largest and most influential right-wing foundation. As of the end of 1998, it was giving away more than $30 million a year [The Bradley Foundation 1998 Annual Report.] Its financial resources, its clear political agenda, and its extensive national network of contacts and collaborators in political, academic and media circles has allowed it to exert an important influence on key issues of public policy. While its targets range from affirmative action to social security, it has seen its greatest successes in the areas of welfare "reform" and attempts to privatize public education through the promotion of school vouchers.

What Bradley Money Buys: Within Milwaukee, Bradley money goes to a host of local organizations and institutions, most of which are not political in character. Virtually all the cultural institutions and most of the local colleges receive grants. The money buys good will and helps secure the hometown base.The overall objective of the Bradley Foundation, however, is to return the U.S. - and the world- to the days before governments began to regulate Big Business, before corporations were forced to make concessions to an organized labor force. In other words, laissez-faire capitalism: capitalism with the gloves off. To further this objective, Bradley supports the organizations and individuals that promote the deregulation of business, the rollback of virtually all social welfare programs, and the privitization of government services. As a result, the list of Bradley grant recipients reads like a Who's Who of the U.S.Right. Bradley money supports such major right-wing groups as the Heritage Foundation, source of policy papers on budget cuts, supply-side economics and the Star Wars military plan for the Reagan administration; the Madison Center for Educational Affairs, which provides funding for right-wing research and a network of conservative student newspapers; and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, literary home for such racist authors as Charles Murray (The Bell Curve) and Dinesh D'Souza (The End of Racism), former conservative officeholders Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp and William Bennett, and arch-conservative jurists Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia.

Other Bradley grantees include the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation; the Hoover Institute on War, Revolution, and Peace; and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.There are the major conservative publications, such as The Public Interest, The National Interest,and The American Spectator. And there are organizations set up to play specific roles in promoting the right-wing agenda, such as the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that promotes privatization and deregulation, and the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a vehicle for building support for privitization in low-income communities..

In Conclusion... Bradley is certainly not the only conservative foundation promoting right-wing causes. It works in concert with a number of others to develop, maintain and promote a right-wing intelligencia that can play a major role in the manipulation of public opinion and the formulation of public policy. In fact, the Olin, Sarah Scaife, Smith Richardson and Bradley foundations are often called the "Four Sisters" for their tendency to fund similar conservative projects, publications and institutions. But Bradley, with the largest assets of the conservative foundations, with its national connections and a sharply focused political agenda, plays a leading role in the conservative movement.



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