Soros Backing FCC Pressure Groups

Newsmax ^ | Jan. 3, 2004 | Staff

[Maria S]

They're known as the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” and they are pet projects of billionaire currency manipulator George Soros who coughs up big bucks to back their anti-business crusades.

Writing about the "Soros Agenda" today's Opinion Journal pinpoints the four groups, so known because they foresee every shattering disaster that will occur if some free enterprise market is deregulated. The self-proclaimed militant atheist and champion of free speech for himself but not for others is, the Journal explains "exploiting the loophole in campaign finance laws that lets billionaires donate however much they want to private political lobbies. The online Journal charges that Soros "made his money practicing capitalism but now spends it trying to give himself and his ideological allies an advantage over other voices. "

Among his benficiaries in this case are four closely coordinated groups, the Media Access Project (MAP), the Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Center for Media Education (which has morphed into the Center for Digital Democracy).

The Journal warns readers not to be conned "by their consumer-friendly names. All four organizations have long been mouthpieces of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. In the past three years they have bashed or knotted up many of the Bush Administration's major communications."

• The Media Access Project's boss, Andrew Schwartzman, is a leader of a campaign to gut FCC Chairman Michael Powell's rules raising ownership caps for broadcasters. The Journal discloses that MAP's revenue for fiscal 2001 was $526,000, and according to the Soros foundation Web site the billionaire gave the group $600,000 from 2000 to 2002.

• The Center for Digital Democracy is suing to block the FCC's new broadband rules that would free fast Internet access from the crushing regulations blocking it from widespread public use. The Center is run by Jeff Chester, who spun it off from the Center for Media Education. CME received a $90,000 donation from Mr. Soros in 2001-02.

• The Consumer Federation of America's research director Mark Cooper, "has a talent for churning out studies about how Mr. Powell's deregulation would "undermine democracy," The Journal writes, adding that his group took $80,000 from Mr. Soros in 2000.

• The Consumers Union, run by Gene Kimmelman, got $175,000 from 1999 to 2001 from Soros leftist largesse. The two groups teamed up last year to release a report blaming Mr. Bush and the FCC for widening the "digital divide."

Moreover, the Four Horsemen fight not only to control the airwaves - the Journal reports that a few "also played roles in promoting the campaign finance laws that have given Mr. Soros and his cash such a big political advantage. Combine their funding with the $1.7 million that Mr. Soros gave the Center for Public Integrity, the $1.3 million he gave Public Campaign, the $300,000 to Democracy 21, the $625,000 to Common Cause, and the $275,000 to Public Citizen -- and you can be forgiven for believing Mr. Soros got campaign finance passed all by himself. "

All of these groups share Soros's view that public policy should be decided by self-appointed elites such as themselves. Their own political success gives the lie to their contention that somehow Big Media dominate our public policy debates. And with the new limits on what other Americans can donate to political campaigns, and even on when they can run TV advertising, the Soroses of the world will wield even more influence. Which is, of course, their point.

As his power grows, the Journal says it hopes that the media will look even more closely at Soros views and those of his web of left-wing activists, and check the nearly 1,900 donations Soros made to various entities since 1999 now available at Soros's website.

[kylaka]

Fortunately for us, Soros' expiration date is fast approaching.

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[templar]

"exploiting the loophole in campaign finance laws that lets billionaires donate however much they want to private political lobbies.

It isn't a 'loophole' in the law, as such. It's the way the law was deliberately written, passed, and intended. People who run things don't generally place restrictions on themselves.

[Dark Wing]

fyi

[alloysteel]

Didn't FDR himself use the phrase, "malefactors of great wealth"? Of course, in those days, all holders of "great wealth" were invariably Republican. Not the "Bullmoose" Progressive Republicans as created almost singlehandedly by Uncle Teddy Roosevelt, but the Mark Hannah Republicans.

George Soros is as rapacious as the most conniving, cut-throat, totally self-absorbed "robber baron" that ever came out of the "Gilded Age" of transportation, steel and banking interests. And he made his money a great deal less honestly.

[MonroeDNA]

.