Here’s Who Funds the Right-Wing American Legislative Exchange Council

 

In a July interview with the Salt Lake Tribune preceding its annual meeting, Lisa Nelson, the CEO of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), claimed that her organization is fully transparent about its finances.

“We fill out the same 990 [tax form] that every other organization does…They’re available on our website.”

Asked if the tax records include “all the funders,” Nelson replied, “That goes through all our funding.”

The tax records do not include the identities of all of ALEC’s funders. In fact, they include no information whatsoever about its donors. As a nonprofit, ALEC is not required to disclose its donors’ identities to the public, and the 990s available through its website redact the sections that would disclose these funders, if ALEC wanted to.

The most recent 990 that ALEC makes available through its website is from 2018. However, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has obtained its 2019 tax return.

CMD has identified the donors behind over $15 million that ALEC raised from 2014-19, or roughly one-third of its contribution revenue.

Among the biggest donors are a handful of family foundations that disperse the wealth of right-wing oligarchs. The foundations of the Bradley ($3.9 million), Koch ($2.7 million), Searle ($1.7 million), Thomas W. Smith ($625,000), and Coors ($325,000) families donated $9.2 million during that time period, or 60% of the known donations to ALEC.

Other top donors to ALEC include both mainstream and ideological donor-advised fund sponsors. Sister funds DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, which political megadonors such as Koch and the Mercers have used to anonymously donate to right-wing organizations, combined to donate $2.8 million. Commercial donor-advised fund sponsors, including the Schwab Charitable Fund ($335,000) and the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program ($95,000), have also passed along their clients’ funds anonymously to ALEC.

Also high on the donor list are trade groups, including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America ($672,000) and the Edison Electric Institute ($85,000), as well as the foundation of the Tea Party-affiliated activist group FreedomWorks ($203,000).

The lion’s share of the remaining roughly $40 million million ALEC raised between 2014-19 likely came from ALEC’s corporate sponsors, the names of which are not disclosed. Companies such as AT&T, Comcast, ExxonMobil, Eli Lilly, Reynolds American, and UPS have funded ALEC in the past. Center for Political Accountability data show that Celgene and Pinnacle West Capital each gave ALEC between $10,000 and $22,000 in each of several recent years.

ALEC has raised between $8 million and $9 million in contribution revenue per year for the past several years, with another roughly $1 million coming from conferences, seminars, and membership dues. ALEC’s legislative members pay $100 per year in dues. Based on ALEC’s claim of 2,000 members, that would amount to $1.2 million over the six-year period. However, ALEC’s 2019 tax records show only $49,000 in membership dues, which means that ALEC is likely substantially inflating the number of legislative members.

More Lies From ALEC
Nelson's mischaracterization of its degree of transparency is one of several lies she has told the public in recent months.

As CMD exposed, Nelson falsely claimed that ALEC does not work on voting issues, while in reality ALEC has been working behind the scenes on voter suppression policies. And contrary to ALEC's assertion that, after blowback stemming from its work on racist voter ID laws and "stand your ground" gun law, it stays out of social issues, ALEC is working hard to attack critical race theory.

One ALEC donor of note is Thomas W. Smith ($625,000 from 2014-19), a Florida-based hedge fund founder who may be the biggest funder behind the anti-critical race theory movement, according to Popular Information. Smith is also one of the only known donors to the foundation behind The Federalist, a website that publishes far-right content including vigorous defenses of Donald Trump, coronavirus conspiracy theories, a slew of anti-critical race theory diatribes, and other racist posts that previously fell under a "black crime" tag.
https://www.datawrapper.de/_/YGybF/

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/.../heres-who-funds-the.../...

EXPOSEDBYCMD.ORG

Here's Who Funds the Right-Wing American Legislative Exchange Council - EXPOSEDbyCMD

Known Donors to ALEC, 2014-19

Donors to the American Legislative Exchange Council identified by the CMD gave roughly one-third of the group's contribution revenue during this time period.

 Page 1 of 4  

Donor	Amount
Bradley Foundation	$3,882,000
Charles Koch Foundation	$2,513,784
DonorsTrust	$1,946,321
Searle Freedom Trust	$1,699,500
Donors Capital Fund	$894,300
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America	$671,650
Thomas W. Smith Foundation/TWS Foundation	$625,000
Energy Foundation	$350,000
Schwab Charitable Fund	$334,850
Adolph Coors Foundation	$325,000
FreedomWorks Foundation	$203,050
Charles Koch Institute	$193,089
Allegheny Foundation	$170,000
American Legislative Exchange Council	$110,000
Sarah Scaife Foundation	$100,000

PAGE 2

Donor	Amount
Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program	$95,000
Edison Electric Institute	$84,875
CTIA-The Wireless Association	$84,000
Education Freedom Alliance	$77,800
Holman Foundation	$75,000
Alliance for a Free Society	$70,000
Retirement Security Initiative	$64,268
American Property Casualty Insurance Foundation	$58,750
Fidelity Charitable	$56,215
American Natural Gas Alliance	$55,000
Arizona State University Foundation for a New American University	$50,000
New Venture Fund	$50,000
American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers	$48,600
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation	$42,000
National Association of Broadcasters	$36,000

 

PAGE 3 

Known Donors to ALEC, 2014-19

Donors to the American Legislative Exchange Council identified by the CMD gave roughly one-third of the group's contribution revenue during this time period.

  Page 3 of 4  

Donor	Amount
The Seattle Foundation	$32,500
National Federation of Independent Business	$30,000
Institute for Justice	$29,000
Ed Uihlein Family Foundation	$25,000
Foundation for the Carolinas	$25,000
NCTA-The Internet and Television Association	$22,880
Wodecroft Foundation	$22,500
Dabney Point Fund	$20,000
Conservative Energy Network	$17,000
Job Creators Network	$15,000
Mississippi Power Foundation	$15,000
American Institute of Architects	$14,500
International Franchise Association	$14,500
American Gaming Association	$12,000
Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibly	$12,000

 PAGE 4 

Donor	Amount
Bradley Impact Fund	$10,500
American Petroleum Institute	$10,000
Conservative Energy Network	$10,000
Wisconsin Bankers Association	$10,000
National Christian Foundation	$8,500
Roe Foundation	$8,500
Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce Foundation	$6,500
Florida Internet and Television Association	$6,500
Dupage Community Foundation	$5,000
TOTAL	$15,348,432

 

 

Millions of Students Are Quietly Being Taught the Koch Brothers’ Whitewashed Version of Black History

By

Michael Harriot

3/14/18

 

Cash-strapped social studies teachers across America have discovered an exciting new resource that provides lesson plans, study materials and even seminars geared toward elementary, middle and high school students.

The lessons are extremely detailed and come with suggestions for activities, multimedia and additional reading. More importantly, unlike many educational tools, most of these materials are provided free of cost. There’s only one catch:

It’s right-wing brainwashing.

These free resources are part of an effort by the innocuously named Bill of Rights Institute to brainwash students into buying the far-right narrative on history, politics and economics. The charitable organization describes itself as “a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization that works to engage, educate and empower individuals with a passion for the freedom and opportunity that exist in a free society.”

What it really is, is an education arm of a network of right-wing charities funded by the ultraconservative Koch brothers in conjunction with a number of other conservative philanthropic individuals and organizations. It takes millions of dollars in donations and claims to have taught the Bill of Rights to more than 5 million students and 50,000 teachers, including directly training 22,000 educators through its constitutional seminars.

The lessons stress limited government, religious freedom, free-market economics and—worst of all—a revisionist version of the history of slavery that paints it as a necessary evil to further freedom and democracy.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock (which—if you have—I can’t blame you; it might offer good protection in the upcoming nuclear holocaust with North Korea), you know the Koch brothers.

Charles and David Koch are the billionaire owners of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the country. Tied at No. 8 on Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world, the brothers are worth an estimated $60 billion apiece and use their funds to further their conservative agenda.

Who are the Koch brothers?

David and Charles Koch are two of the richest men in American and they largely shy away from the…

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According to the New York Times, the Kochs planned to spend close to a billion dollars on the 2016 election cycle, more than the entire Republican National Committee. Their investment led to Republican majorities in the House and Senate, their hand-picked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the election of a little-known reality-TV star named Donald J. Trump.

But it is the Koch brothers’ quiet philanthropic efforts that garner them the most bang for their buck. They use foundations and corporations to funnel their money to organizations under the cover of anonymity.

Take, for instance, the DonorsTrust Foundation and the Donors Capital Fund. Conservative Transparency reports: The Koch network has provided DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund with most of its backbone; it is widely noted that DT & DCF are a part of the “Koch Network.” In 2014 (the latest year available), all but one of the contributions to the Bill of Rights Institute came from either the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, DonorsTrust or the Donors Trust Capital Fund.

The Bill of Rights Institute is funded by the Koch brothers ... tax-free.

So what does the Bill of Rights Institute teach?

Almost every lesson plan stresses the conservative idea of the limited role of government, best explained by this quote from the lesson on “The Limited Role of Government”:

Perhaps the most definitive limitations on government are found in the Bill of Rights. A firewall protects a computer from outside attempts to harm it, so too does the Bill of Rights guard fundamental rights, natural and civil. In fact, far from most Americans’ popular understanding of the Bill of Rights as a “giver” of rights (ask most Americans where they get their right to free speech and the answer will almost always cite the First Amendment), it is actually the “limiter” of government authority.

According to the lesson plan titled “Health Care and the Bill of Rights,” it “focuses on the health care law from multiple constitutional perspectives.” Here are the “multiple” constitutional perspectives:

• Religion: The lesson includes two articles examining cases where the Affordable Care Act is said to violate religious freedom.
  
• Expression: Asks if it is a violation of the First Amendment to require restaurants to include calorie counts.
  
• Personal liberty: Students get to read about the ACA’s abortion coverage.
  
• Criminal procedure: How you might be criminalized if you don’t purchase health care.
  
• Federalism: How Obamacare is indicative of big government.
  

In the lesson on Roe v. Wade, the only quote from the Supreme Court decision included in the material is from the dissenting opinion about the value of life. BRI has videos instructing teachers how to teach the Second Amendment. It selectively plucks excerpts from the Constitution to teach lessons on the Defense of Marriage Act and Affirmative Action, not to mention the very special lesson on the late, great Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

But it is BRI’s view of slavery and discrimination that is most troubling. A homework help video titled “Slavery and the Road to the Civil War” was so inaccurate, it was removed from the organization’s website. To be fair, not all of the lessons are as blatant as the one that describes the raid on Harpers Ferry this way: “John Brown deceived himself through self-righteousness, thinking he could end slavery in the United States by freeing and arming slaves to launch a racial war in the South.”

An extended tutorial on “Slavery and the Constitution” spends a lot of time explaining why the Founding Fathers shouldn’t be considered racists, arguing that the founders knew slavery was wrong, but they just weren’t “active enough.”

The document even contends that Jefferson included blacks in the Constitution, and cherry-picks parts of historical documents to prove that the founders “consistently worked to build a constitutional republic of liberty that equally protected the rights of all Americans.”

When students are finished with the lesson, they will have learned absolutely nothing about the inhumane torture of slavery. The chapter neglects to offer any details about the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the abolitionist movement or the plantation system. The economic impact of slavery and how it made the U.S. an economic superpower is completely ignored by BRI’s instruction.

You might think I’m joking here, but in the 3,000-plus words on the civil rights movement, there are only four black people mentioned in the chapter: Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall. BRI mostly explains how freedom-loving Caucasians fought for equality for all by putting their lives and careers on the line:

As a result of the Brown decision, many white politicians and ordinary citizens engaged in what they called “massive resistance” to oppose desegregation. In 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus refused to use the state National Guard to protect black children at Little Rock High School. President Dwight Eisenhower sent in troops from the 101st Airborne Division to compel local desegregation and protect the nine black students while federalizing the Arkansas National Guard to block Faubus. The Little Rock Nine attended school under the watchful eye of federal troops. The principles of equality and constitutional federalism came into conflict during this incident because the national government used the military to impose integration at the local level.

Nothing about fire hoses. Nothing about Freedom Riders. Nothing about lynching. Nothing about bombings, beatings and church burnings. But notice the shoutout to small-government principles clashing with freedom for black people.

Again, these lessons are reaching millions of children across America. Most schools and teachers are willing to take any free educational resource that allows them to stretch their meager budgets. Furthermore, most school districts don’t have the time or the manpower to closely examine every single teacher’s lesson plan.

BRI also hosts educational seminars for teachers all over the country, instructing them how to teach history and civics. The instructional seminars can even go toward continuing education credits required in some states. Even the online lesson plans are tailored to the education standards for each state.

Combine those facts with two billionaire brothers and unlimited resources, and you get a secret brainwashing program permeating the education system. BRI funding is steadily growing, its reach is widening and American schools are increasingly underfunded—a dangerous mix that ends up in the Koch brothers’ favor.

And here’s the worst part: Even if parents examine their children’s lessons, they might not know the source of the information because the institute is geared toward teachers, not students. Even teachers whose lessons are compiled by a conservative principal or a right-leaning department head might not be aware of the content or from where the lessons originated.

To be fair, it is important for students to learn about the free market. How else would they discover that money actually can buy everything ...

Including history.

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