The "For Sisters"-Scaife, Coors, Olin, etc.

[underpants]

http://hnn.us/articles/printfriendly/1244.html

The "Four Sisters"

In 1973, in response to the Powell memo, Joseph Coors and Christian-right leader Paul Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation. Coors told Lee Edwards, historian of the Heritage Foundation, that the Powell memo persuaded him that American business was "ignoring a crisis." In response, Coors decided to help provide the seed funding for the creation of what was to become the Heritage Foundation, giving $250,000.(1)

Subsequently, the Olin Foundation, under the direction of its president, former Treasury Secretary William Simon (author of the influential 1979 book A Time for Truth), began funding similar organizations in concert with "the Four Sisters"--Richard Mellon Scaife's various foundations, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation--along with Coors's foundations, foundations associated with the Koch oil family, and a group of large corporations. (In this article, I will refer to this group of funders as the "Four Sisters Funding Group" or FSFG.)

Following Powell's long-term plan to "build a movement," FSFG has funded and built a network of think tanks, advocacy organizations, and expanded into media, lobbying, and other areas. The work was slow but effective. As Christopher DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, told a group of conservative business people, "things take time. It takes at least 10 years for a radical new idea to emerge from obscurity."


Creating "Conventional Wisdom"

The right-wing movement's messages are orchestrated and amplified to sound like a mass "movement" consisting of many "voices." Using "messaging"--communication techniques from the fields of marketing, public relations, and corporate image-management--the movement appeals to people's deeper feelings and values. Messages are repeated until they become "conventional wisdom." Examples include lines like "Social Security is going broke" and "public schools are failing." Both statements are questionable, yet both have been firmly embedded in the "public mind" by purposeful repetition through multiple channels. This orchestration has been referred to as a "Mighty Wurlitzer, " a CIA term that refers to propaganda that is repeated over and over again in numerous places until the public believes what it's hearing must be true.

[Bat Boy]

1. Thanks for posting this...

I collect proof that Scaife is the fucking anti-christ. Got enough to convict, I think.

Seriously, we talk about Rove and Cheney manipulating things behind the scenes, but Scaife is the money man, pulling the strings from so far back we can barely see him.

[NewJeffCT]

2. great article... here is another one on the same topic

http://www.mediatransparency.com/stories/apparat.html

[underpants]

3. Looks great printing it for later reading

Thanks.