Alternet (Interesting Stuff)

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* Leftist webzine that seeks to counterbalance "the negative impact of right-wing media"



Founded in 1998, AlterNet is an online progressive news magazine that publishes original articles and also redistributes news stories from other independent media outlets. Visited by some 1.7 million readers per month, the AlterNet website aims "to inspire citizen action and advocacy on the environment, human rights and civil liberties, social justice, media, and health care issues." Alternet is a program of the Independent Media Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to "strengthening and supporting independent and alternative journalism."

Specific topics that regularly draw AlterNet's attention include: the suggestion that women who choose to forego a career to raise children "could be making a huge mistake"; the threat posed by the "religious right"; philosophical justifications for high taxes as public policy; the current income tax system's inequities against women; Republican scandals; the dangers of global warming; sexism in the United States; America's "bloated prison system and its tremendous financial and moral cost to our society"; the Bush administration's mismanagement of the Iraq War; characterizations of the "war on drugs" as "an assault" on the poor; and the need for socialized medicine.

AlterNet identifies three major "challenges" toward which it directs its efforts on a daily basis:

* The right-wing media machine: "The scope of conservative media is vast. … The ability of the right-wing media apparatus to dominate public discourse is at the expense of liberal and progressive values and represents a fundamental transformation in American politics. This is what we are fighting against."

* The negative impact of right-wing media: "Over the past two decades conservative media has had a huge impact, and the results are disconcerting. First, most conservative media uses an ideological propaganda model that results in a more ignorant audience."

* Building the progressive "echo chamber": "The top-down delivery model of right-wing rhetoric … traces a path directly from the White House and conservative think tanks, to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and a whole host of conservative talk shows. These messages are repeated and further reinforced on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and other newspapers, creating a right wing echo chamber. AlterNet is working hard with many partners to build the progressive echo chamber that will fight back."

AlterNet columnists include, among others, Amy Goodman, co-anchor of the radio and television program Democracy Now!; author and professor Robert Scheer; Norman Solomon, founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy; and media personality Arianna Huffington.

The Executive Editor of AlterNet is Don Hazen, former publisher of the San Francisco-based Mother Jones, a bimonthly socialist magazine and website. In the late 1990s, Hazen organized the Media & Democracy Congresses that sought ways to merge progressive activism with alternative media. In addition, he helped manage the political campaigns of New York City Democrats Ruth Messinger and (former mayor) David Dinkins. Says Hazen, "The country is sick and tired of war, corruption, hypocrisy, ignoring global warming, lack of healthcare, and the colossal failure of Republicans across the board."

AlterNet's Senior Editor is Jan Frel, who previously worked on the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean and for the news website TomPaine.com.

AlterNet has also published a number of books, including a 2002 screed titled After 9/11: Solutions for a Saner World, a collection of 42 articles that "untangl[e] the knot of our new post-9/11 landscape, tackling every subject from civil liberties to Islamic fundamentalism to economics to sex." Contributors to the book included: Bill Moyers, Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbara Lee, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Marc Cooper, Michael Klare, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Stephen Zunes, Arianna Huffington, and Robert Reich.

Following the 2004 presidential election, AlterNet published Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics. This book featured interviews with such notables as MoveOn.org co-founder Wes Boyd and Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern. It also contained articles by leftist blogger Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and then-Illinois Congressman Barack Obama.

In January 2008 an Alternet op-ed piece by Chuck Collins advocated massive tax hikes on "big corporations and the rich" as a means of strengthening the American economy. Wrote Collins:

Underlying our economic crisis is a polarization of income and wealth. Real wages for working people have been stagnant for decades ... On the other end of the wealth spectrum, the superrich have so much money that they are engaging in speculative investments in search of maximum returns.... Congress should pass a 'bottom up' stimulus package and pay for it with taxes on the rich.… These measures would [address] the root of our current economic distress, the extreme inequality of wealth and power.

AlterNet is the creator and host of WireTap Magazine, an online publication that seeks to bring progressivism to contemporary youth culture. In its sub-sections titled "Youth Activism," "Immigration," and "Racial Justice," WireTap posts stories that "foster dialogue, challenge stereotypes, inspire action, and give young people a voice in the media." A project of the Tides Center, WireTap is a strong backer of Noam Chomsky and the United For Peace and Justice antiwar coalition.

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Funders

This section of DiscoverTheNetworks examines the immensely wealthy charitable foundations that provide financial backing for leftist groups and causes. These foundations (sometimes called endowments or charitable trusts) are nongovernmental, nonprofit entities whose assets are provided by donors and managed by their own officials, who each year earmark portions of their assets for what they consider to be socially useful purposes. Most of these foundations can be classified under the following categories:

a) Community foundations, which build their endowments through contributions from many donors within a given geographic region, and typically focus on local needs

b) Corporate foundations, which are private foundations established by for-profit corporations but legally separate from the parent corporation

c) Family foundations, in which the original donor or the donor's family plays a significant role in governing the foundation

d) Independent foundations, which are private foundations, usually endowed by one source such as an individual's bequest

e) Operating foundations, which are private foundations that use most of their income to provide charitable services or programs of their own, rather than making grants to outside organizations

f) Public foundations, which are public charities that operate significant grantmaking programs


The DiscoverTheNetworks database currently identifies more than 115 major foundations whose political and philanthropic orientations are generally Left, and whose combined assets exceed $90 billion. Many of the foundations described in this section are so large that entire cultural and political movements can be shaped by a single one of them. (See, for example, the Ford Foundation's role in underwriting The Open Borders Lobby.) The four largest foundations that consistently fund leftist agendas are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The total assets of this quartet in 2004 amounted to approximately $49.343 billion. Out of this, they gave some $2.448 billion to their selected donees.

Several very large tax-exempt entities -- most notably the Tides Center, but also the Liberty Hill Foundation, the Shefa Fund, and the Proteus Fund -- are pass-through operations designed to mask the relationship between donor and gift. That is, they take money from donors who specify the precise groups and causes for which they want it earmarked, and in turn funnel that money to those recipients, allowing the donors to not be publicly associated with the groups being funded. Such transactions are called donor-advised funds. (The JEHT Foundation, which closed its doors permanently in 2009, was yet another pass-through.)

As of 2003, the major left-leaning foundations not only held $51 billion more in assets than their conservative counterparts (those that consistently fund groups promoting individual rights, a pro-market stance, and limited government), but also funded the Left with more than twenty-six times the funds dispensed by foundations that could be considered conservative. With many billions of dollars at their disposal, the foundations profiled in this section of DiscoverTheNetworks are positioned to permanently shift America's political dialogue to the Left through their grant-making power. Leftist activists commonly hold key positions on the staffs and governing boards of these foundations, and in many cases they serve on multiple boards.

Many recipients of foundation money today are the immensely influential activist organizations popularly known as Section 527 committees. Dedicated to promoting political candidates and agendas, 527s are, by definition, private, nonprofit groups that are less regulated and require less disclosure than other types of nonprofit groups engaged in electioneering. They need not register with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as "political organizations." Consequently, they need not observe the FEC's strict limits on political contributions. The 527 committees may collect as much "soft money" as they like from individuals or corporations.

In this section of DiscoverTheNetworks, the category titled Guide to the George Soros Network explores the philanthropic activities and agendas of multi-billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Institute.

The category titled Funding the Left examines the diverse and interrelated agendas of the leftist organizations that receive grants from charitable foundations nationwide.

The category titled Comparison of Left v. Right Funding looks at those foundations that are the biggest donors to conservative and leftist causes, respectively, and documents the disparity between the amounts given by foundations of each type.

The category titled Funding the Opponents of the War on Terror investigates the philanthropic aims of an immensely influential coalition known as the Peace and Security Funders Group.

The category titled Philanthropy and Affirmative Action examines how identity politics has intruded into the world of philanthropy. To avoid the possibility of being sued for racial discrimination, charitable foundations must now meet "diversity targets" not only in the makeup of their workforce, but also in the way they choose to allocate the money they give away.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[RonD1120 62]

Right thinking Americans have for way too long believed that good would win out. Now we find we are forced to make a serious stand to protect our freedoms. Our first opportunity is the 2010 elections.

Look for the shiny things of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. They only last for an instant but it is a Holy Instant. Let your soul absorb them.