Inside Scott Walker’s Secret Brain Trust

These days behind every great man is a great think tank. And Scott Walker is no exception.

The 2011 protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining overhaul made for an emotionally challenging day for one intern.

The intern in question was working for a conservative think tank called the MacIver Institute, and his superiors sent him up to the capitol with a video camera to tape the protesters at their wackiest.

When one protester spotted him and realized who he was with, he gave chase, yelling profanity.

“I felt bad,” said Brett Healey, the president of the MacIver institute, who relayed to me this tale - noting the intern escaped, unharmed and the protester apologized. “I didn’t want to have to call his mom and say, ‘Your son got into an altercation his first day.’”

After Democrats took full control of the state government in 2008, there was a Cambrian explosion of conservative organizations that have worked overtime to push the historically progressive state in a rapidly rightward direction.

And while Gov. Scott Walker’s ascent on the national political scene (and, of course, in the Republican presidential sweepstakes) has been quick, dramatic, and seemingly inexorable, he couldn’t have zipped to the top of the polls without the conservative groups that have propelled his rise and repelled his enemies.

Perhaps more than any other candidate eyeing the Oval Office, Walker has benefitted from home-state organizers and funders who have mastered the art of defending conservative and making their foes look like dopes. And the MacIver Institute has been right in the thick of it.

MacIver, along with a host of other conservative groups, is backed in part by the Bradley Foundation, which has built a tiny empire in the Midwestern state and had substantial influence on Walker’s conservative agenda.

Bradley-backed groups have helped expedite Walker’s ascent to power, and their success shows just how much clout wealthy donors and strategic activists can have on the way a state gets governed.

By the end of Election Night, Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle had cruised to re-election and his party controlled both chambers of the state legislature. One Wisconsin Democratic consultant said his party had a sort of embarrassment of riches; they’d had a great year in 2006 as well, so they found themselves with lots of power but (comparatively) little in the way of long-term strategy. Those were the salad days.

Around the time of the Tea Party wave, deep-pocketed Republicans started investing heavily in conservative infrastructure.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported in 2011, in an in-depth look at the organization, that the Bradley Foundation spent more than $350 million between 2001 and 2010 to support a host of philanthropic endeavors, including arts organizations and national policy groups. Recipients included the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and Reason magazine.

Conservative activists in Wisconsin have been beneficiaries of much of that largesse.

In the Badger State, the Bradley Foundation has helped fund MacIver, as well as Media Trackers -- a group that digs for dirt on Democrats -- and the Wisconsin Reporter, a conservative news site that is a project of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, according to Wisconsin-based Cap Times. Bradley also helps fund the Wisconsin chapter of American Majority, a conservative organization that trains activists on how to volunteer on campaigns, do issue advocacy, and run for office.

Matt Batzel, American Majority’s national executive director, said its Wisconsin chapter has had about 140 activist training sessions since 2010. Among the people they’ve trained, 128 have gone on to win races for local or state-level offices in the state.

Since they got hosed in 2008, conservative influence in the state has metastasized rapidly.

In 2010, Walker won the governorship, Republicans took control of the majority of the state’s congressional delegation, and Democrats lost both chambers of the state legislature.

Now, pretend you’re Scott Walker and you’ve just gotten inaugurated on a cold January day in 2011. You’re governing a state that birthed the modern labor movement and that’s been a stronghold for the blue collar Democrats for most of the modern era. You’re in power, but your situation is -- to put it lightly -- precarious. How do you govern? If you were a typical governor in a typical version of that scenario, you would govern very, very cautiously. You would tiptoe. You would hedge. You would compromise. You would be Mitt Romney.

But Scott Walker is not Mitt Romney. And a large part of the reason he implemented such a proactively conservative agenda -- defunding Planned Parenthood, dramatically curtailing public-sector unions’ power, passing Right to Work legislation -- is because of the conservative infrastructure that simultaneously pushed him in that direction and made that direction an easy way to go.

A few weeks after Walker won the race for governor, MacIver’s then-communications director, Brian Fraley, wrote an op-ed arguing for changes in the laws regarding public-sector unions and collective bargaining. That op-ed is widely seen as the blueprint for Act 10.

“We used to be a state where we make things,” wrote Fraley. “Now we are a state that makes excuses for why the government behemoth cannot be tamed. That must change.”

Just two months after Walker’s inauguration, he signed Act 10 and set off protests of Biblical proportions.

MacIver not only helped lay the policy groundwork for Act 10, it also helped manage its aftermath.

MacIver sent staff members out with cameras to cover the protests, chatting up activists and making YouTube videos of the more eyebrow-raising encounters.

A handful of MacIver videos went viral, got picked up by the Drudge Report, and nabbed national cable news coverage. One particularly popular video showed protesters writing fake doctor’s notes so their fellow activists wouldn’t get in trouble for skipping work.

Critics charged there were problems with the video, and Democratic state Sen. Chris Larson said it was “essentially made up.” But the push-back was powerless.

“‘There’s people giving out doctor’s notes at the protests -- that became the dialogue,’” Larson said. “It ended up changing the debate.”

Another MacIver viral video showed protesters wearing zombie face paint crashing an event where the governor was trying to address Special Olympics participants. Nick Novak, MacIver’s director of communications, said there were many other media outlets at the event. But they didn’t seem interested in the zombie attendees.

“It seemed we were the only ones who were actually covering that aspect of it,” Novak said.

The Wisconsin press corps has faced the same problems as other local newsrooms around the country: shrinking budgets, smaller circulations, and fewer reporters.

Conservative news-gathering groups like MacIver have moved into that vacuum and used their resources to push stories that reflect right-leaning values.

“The media capacity to look into a governor and hold him accountable is diminishing at the same time this right-wing capacity to influence the media is increasing,” said Robert Kraig, who heads the progressive Citizen Action of Wisconsin.

Media Trackers and Wisconsin Reporter, along with MacIver, have had impact. And their critics have noticed.

“If there was no Bradley Foundation, there would be no Scott Walker,” Larson said. “They have provided the insulation from criticism as well as the lubricant to move him forward over the last 20 years of his career.”

“There’s always a full-blown communication apparatus to defend whatever the governor is doing,” said Kraig. “They’ve given him a lot of cover, so he doesn’t have to be the only target.”

Scot Ross, who heads One Wisconsin Now, calls MacIver “a propaganda factory for the failed Walker policies that have put Wisconsin near the bottom of the Midwest in job creation.”

On the conservative side, activists and lawmakers are delighted with the work of MacIver and other Bradley-funded groups.

Republican state Sen. Leah Vukmir added that MacIver’s defense of Act 10 helped shore up support for the governor as energy on the left was growing for the recall.

“All the naysayers were saying that Act 10 was the worst thing in the world, that the sky was going to fall, and that there wouldn’t be enough teachers to teach classes, school sports would end,” Vukmir said. “They [MacIver] highlighted the positive things that were happening. Those weren’t easy to find in the beginning.”

“They’re kind of a combination of a think tank and media,” said state Representative Dale Kooyenga, a Republican. “They’re part of the whole messaging machine.”

He said that MacIver was instrumental in the efforts to change the tax code that were part of the governor’s 2013 budget. The think tank is also an energetic proponent of Right to Work policies like the one that Wisconsin adopted in March. Walker initially said he didn’t plan to push for Right to Work. But the state’s conservative legislature, with the vocal support of its conservative media establishment, pushed forward anyway.

“They can get these stories into the bloodstream, they can push reforms,” said Collin Roth, the managing editor of Right Wisconsin. “Right to Work was a perfect example.”

Others differ; Larson calls them “dangerous” and says they exist “solely to push corporate interests.”

And now that the governor is looking to cut funds for the University of Wisconsin system as part of his 2015 budget proposal, MacIver is again playing a key role as advocate and attack dog.

So it’s sort of understandable that anti-Walker protesters would chase around the MacIver Institute’s junior-level interns. MacIver -- with the help of Bradley Foundation funding -- has been an integral part of Wisconsin conservatives’ efforts to push Walker to the right and then to make his rightward migration politically safe.

2011 Wisconsin Protests and Aftermath

Be Prepared.

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John David Podesta... is the Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

"Podesta previously served as Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton and Counselor to President Barack Obama. He is the former president and now Chair and Counselor of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and is also a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He was a co-chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition Project."......

The Center for American Progress "The Center for American Progress (CAP) is a progressive public policy research and advocacy organization. According to CAP, the center is "dedicated to improving the lives of Americans through progressive ideas and action." The Center presents a liberal viewpoint on economic issues. It has its headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The president and chief executive officer of CAP is Neera Tanden, who worked for the Obama and Clinton administrations and for Hillary Clinton’s campaigns. The first president and CEO was John Podesta, who served as chief of staff to then U.S. President Bill Clinton. Podesta remained with the organization as chairman of the board until he joined the Obama White House staff in December 2013. Tom Daschle is the current chairman.

The Center for American Progress runs a campus outreach group, Generation Progress, and a sister advocacy organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Citing Podesta's influence in the formation of the Obama Administration, a November 2008 article in Time stated that "not since the Heritage Foundation helped guide Ronald Reagan's transition in 1981 has a single outside group held so much sway".....

.......Some open government groups, such as the Sunlight Foundation and the Campaign Legal Center, criticize the Center's failure to disclose its contributors, particularly since it is so influential in appointments to the Obama administration.

In March 2008, ThinkProgress, CAP's blog outlet, posted that John McCain had plagiarized from a 1996 speech by Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer. However, it was revealed that McCain had used similar lines in a speech during 1995 and ThinkProgress retracted the error the next day.

In October 2010, ThinkProgress posted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was bypassing campaign finance laws by using foreign money to fund campaign attack ads. FactCheck.org called it "a claim with little basis in fact", while the New York Times wrote, "[T]here is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents".

CAP was criticized by several Jewish organizations after some employees "publicly used language that could be construed as anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic". Bloggers associated with CAP published several posts using phrases such as "apartheid" and "Israel-firsters", causing NGO Monitor, the American Jewish Committee, and the Anti-Defamation League to label them anti-Israel and call on CAP to disassociate themselves from these statements. Officials at CAP said the “inappropriate” language came only in personal tweets—not on CAP’s website or its ThinkProgress blog. The Tweets were deleted, and the authors apologized.

....The Center for American Progress is a 501(c)(3) organization under U.S. Internal Revenue Code. In 2013, CAP received $42 million from a variety of sources, including individuals, foundations, labor unions, and corporations. From 2003 to 2007, CAP received about $15 million in grants from 58 foundations. Major individual donors include George Soros, Peter Lewis, Steve Bing, and Herb and Marion Sandler. The Center receives undisclosed sums from corporate donors. In December 2013, the organization released a list of its corporate donors, which include Walmart, CitiGroup, Wells Fargo, defense contractor Northrup Grumman, America's Health Insurance Plans, and Eli Lilly and Company.

In 2015, CAP released a partial list of its donors, which included 28 anonymous donors accounting for at least $5 million in contributions. Named donors included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates, which each gave between $500,000 and $999,999. CAP’s top donors include Walmart and Citigroup, each of which have given between $100,000 and $499,000.".....

Hillary's campaign chairman, John Podesta is a HUGE GREEN environmentalist activist. [And we all know this isn't about saving the Earth.]

April 16, 2015: - Mother Jones: Here's What Green Activists Think About Hillary Clinton ".......None of the biggest national environmental organizations—such as the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and League of Conservation Voters (LCV)—signed the letter to Clinton, nor did those three groups respond to queries for this story. "National [green groups] have their own dance to do with Democratic candidates," says one environmentalist who asked not to be named discussing other organizations. Withholding criticism allows for friendlier relations with—and, they hope, better access to—Clinton, and more influence over policy development in her campaign and in a future White House. The big groups might believe that this will ultimately mean better outcomes for climate policy than public confrontation. After all, if the Democratic frontrunner tells environmentalists to take a hike and wins without them, then they're really doomed.

Whatever the reason, Clinton was warmly received when she spoke at an LCV dinner in New York last fall. Upon Clinton's campaign announcement on Sunday, LCV issued a cautiously optimistic statement that listed her climate bona fides from her time in the Senate and State Department while noting that she must lay out specific climate action plans in her campaign platform. The group praised Clinton for having supported cap-and-trade and an international climate accord, but one could detect a hint of uncertainty from LCV as to how much Clinton will emphasize climate. "We welcome Secretary Clinton to the Presidential race, and encourage her to build on her long record of environmental leadership by making climate change a top priority of her campaign," said LCV President Gene Karpinski.

He should have been pleased to see what Clinton campaign chair John Podesta tweeted on Sunday:

John Podesta - Helping working families succeed, building small businesses, tackling climate change & clean energy. Top of the agenda. #Hillary2016

As ThinkProgress's Judd Legum noted, to make climate and clean energy one of the campaign's top three issues would be unprecedented for any major party nominee. "The Podesta tweet is a sea change, that would not have happened in 2008," says Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesperson for 350."......

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March 11, 2015: - Mother Jones:Scott Walker Is the Worst Candidate for the Environment - "Scott Walker is killing it with Republicans. The Wisconsin governor is one of his party's rising stars—thanks to his ongoing and largely successful war against his state's labor unions, a fight that culminated Monday with the signing of a controversial "right-to-work" bill.

Now (for the moment, anyway), he's a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. At the Conservative Political Action Conference a couple weeks ago, he polled a close second to three-time winner Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), beating the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush by a significant margin.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that none of the prospective GOP presidential candidates are exactly champions of the environment. Probably the least bad is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who at least acknowledges that climate change is real and caused by human activity. Walker just might be the worst. He hasn't said much about the science of global warming. (In the video above, you can watch him tell a little kid that his solution to the problem will center on keeping campsites clean, or something.) But his track record of actively undermining pro-environment programs and policies while supporting the fossil fuel industry is arguably lengthier and more substantive than that of his likely rivals.

"He really has gone after every single piece of environmental protection: Land, air, water—he's left no stone unturned," said Kerry Schumann, executive director of the Wisconsin League of Conservation Voters. "It's hard to imagine anyone has done worse."

Here's a rundown of Walker's inglorious history of anti-environmentalism........."

THIS JUST IN---Hillary "said" she plans to raise more than a billion dollars to fund her campaign....with no challengers, as yet.

(Funny....Obama "said" the same thing back in 2012----said he was so popular that a billion dollars poured in to aid his reelection. Except that later on, the billion dollar Obama "said" he was forced to borrow money in order to continue his campaign.)

In Hillary's case, money keeps pouring into her $2.5 Billion Super-Pac (AKA the Clinton Foundation). As long as she's in the race, foundation donors are ponying up----lying in wait for Hillary to be coronated.

BTW, remember that Hillary was accumulating her $2.5 billion 2016 campaign war chest AT THE SAME TIME the viscous Clinton machine was rolling over anyone who dared to challenge her.

Americans should be asking---why does this political retread need a $2.5 billion war chest......when the job she's after is worth maybe $2 million w/ perks and free plane rides.

April 16, 2015: WSJ: Clinton Foundation to Keep Foreign Donors"..............The new rules for the Clinton Health Access Initiative, an affiliated but separate charity, were expected to be somewhat less restrictive than the new Clinton Foundation rules, and hadn’t been completed on Wednesday. Officials said the missing disclosure was an oversight.

Ethics experts had recommended the foundation forego all foreign donations. Robert Walker, the former nonpartisan chief counsel and staff director of the Senate and House ethics committees, said the foundation likely will need to go further than its current plan. “The only effective step would be for the foundation to cease accepting donations from foreign governments,” Mr. Walker said. “It is inevitable that the foundation will, sooner rather than later, decide to forego accepting donations from foreign governments, except for those pledges already on approved multiyear cycles.”

Under the new rules, approved countries would be allowed to renew multiyear pledges, or make additional contributions to new programs, an official said. Such funding would support economic development or climate-focused work of the Clinton Climate Initiative, the Clinton Development Initiative, which focuses on Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania, and the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership.............."

___________

If you can't access that link (subscription) just cut and paste the title into your search engine and click on the first link that comes up.

WHEW, THAT'S A RELIEF---The Clinton Foundation is operating under new rules (/SNIX): approved countries would be allowed to renew multiyear pledges, or make additional contributions to the Foundation's new programs. Such funding would support (1) economic development, (2) climate-focused work of the Clinton Climate Initiative, (3) the Clinton Development Initiative, which focuses on Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania, and, (4) the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership.............."

Here's a peek at how the "dead broke " Clintons got their hands on billions of dollars......b/c being president and Secretary of State has an astoundingly good monetary return....if you're greedy, a con artist and a hardened criminal

Hundreds of millions flow into the Clintons tax-exempt entities which the greedy Clintons calculatedly morphed into hundreds of separate fund-raising machines.

Earlier, a NYT's expose chronicled the shady financing of the tax-exempt money machine----The Clinton Global Initiative foundation.

CLINTON GLOBAL INITIATIVE web site
you can peruse 276 web pages of obscure programs
all of them vehicles to raise money
all of them expecting payback w/ Hillary in the WH.

1271 Avenue of the Americas 42nd Floor
New York, NY 10020
212-348-8882

WEB SITE http://www.clintonfoundation.org/clinton-global-initiative

=====================================================

The newly-minted "Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Family Foundation"
gives them even more fund-raising capabilities......w/ a friendly "family"
aura. The Clintons love to crow about their do-goodism and are more
than willing to make a buck on it.

"Smile everybody. Another $100 million came in today."

My point exactly---raising and not spending campaign money stinks of massive money laundering.

Obama's obsessive non-stop fund raising among the smug/stupid Democrat elite is beginning to look sinister. Even the name of his new MIA Ebola czar--Ron Klain-- mysteriously disappeared from the web site of Democrats' shady mega-funder "The Democracy Alliance".

Could this be a WH/Democrat Ponzi scheme in progress?

While they bash Wall Street publicly, leaders of the Democrats' mega-funder "The Democracy Alliance" have quietly recruited venture capitalists, bankers and hedge fund moguls -- along with union bosses and red-diaper trust fund babies -- to fund their takeover goals. .... $230,000 public school union dues go to the Democrats' "Democracy Alliance."

"The Democracy Alliance" does not itself raise and spend a great deal of money. Rather, being a partner in the Alliance requires one to contribute large amounts to other left-wing groups. The Alliance evaluates left-wing organizations on various criteria, and makes recommendations to its members as to where they should put their money. Currently, the Alliance lists 21 groups in its “Aligned Network”:

<><> America Votes, American Constitution Society, Black Civic Engagement Fund, Brennan Center, Catalyst, Center for American Progress, Center for Community Change, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Common Purpose Project, Fund for the Republic, Latino Engagement Fund, Media Matters for America, New Media Ventures, New Organizing Institute, Organizing For Action, Progressive Majority, Progress Now, State Engagement Initiative, State Voices, Women’s Equality Center and Youth Engagement Fund.

==============================================

T/D/A just purged the name of Obama's Ebola Czar, Ron Klain, off its website--Klain is connected to the left-wing "The Third Way."

==================================================

The most interesting of the T/D/A documents that have come to light is the one that contains T/D/A’s “investment recommendations” for 2014. Not only does it list the recommended organizations, but it rates each organization in several categories, sets out the group’s budget for 2014, and shows how much of that budget should be contributed by the 100 members of the "Democracy Alliance." One category in which T/D/A rates the organizations is “Collaboration,” as T/D/A believes that all left-wing groups should coordinate their activities for maximum political impact.

Opportunistic pols like Harry Reid have denounced Charles and David Koch, and others, who contribute to conservative causes as “shadowy,” “secretive” people who dare infest politics with “dark money.”

In that context, it is worth noting that most of the groups to which The Democracy Alliance, and its elite liberal members, contribute are 501(c)(4)s that do not disclose their donors.

===============================================

ANALYSIS Buncha sap-happy Dummy/dopes are feeding the Democrats' Democracy Alliance lotsa money---thinking its safe.....going to a "good thing."

That's exactly how Madoff operated. Money-laundering, tax evasion was part of the Madoff mix---helping billionaire investors, foundations, and tax-exempts break the law in a seemingly legal way.

Madoff helped himself to the untraceable money in the process.....and got himself in trouble. When he went to jail for 125 years, investigators found Ponzi King Madoff had stashed billions offshore---into a labyrinth of financial entities.

COLLUSION AND CONSPIRACIES GALORE Some $8.9 billion was funneled to Madoff through a dozen so-called feeder funds based in Europe, the Caribbean and Central America......a labyrinth of hedge funds, management companies and service providers that, to unsuspecting outsiders, seemed to compose a formidable system of checks and balances.

But the purpose of this complex financial architecture was just the opposite: the feeder funds provided different modes for directing money to Madoff in order to avoid scrutiny.

Dummycrats apparently took notes.

Coincidence?

Buried at the end of a very long article- just before the full text of his letter:

FAA investigating Florida mailman's landing of gyrocopter on U.S. Capitol lawn "...............At the root of Hughes' disdain is the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, in which the court decided campaign contributions were a form of "political speech" and struck down limits on how much corporations and unions could give to political contenders. The decision changed the game. Campaign spending went through the roof. In Hughes' mind, there was a parallel spike in favor-dealing and the government is now practically owned by the rich. Hughes likes to point out that nearly half the retiring members of Congress from 1998 to 2004 got jobs as lobbyists earning some 14 times their congressional salaries.

But nobody seems to care.

Hughes thinks the answers are out there, and they're nonpartisan. He points to reform thinkers like political activist Cenk Uygar and Harvard legal theorist Lawrence Lessig, who launched a political action committee to end political action committees. The motto: "Embrace the irony."..........................

.....LETTER....

.....Sincerely,

Douglas M. Hughes

www.TheDemocracyClub.org

_______________

The Democracy Club

I find it extremely interesting that Mr. Hughes chose to do this after Hillary launched her 2016 presidential campaign and near the end of Obama's 2 terms.

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