How on earth can “Heritage is a 501(C) (3) organization”? Political activism and policy engagement in legislative lobbying and political advocacy to a much greater extent. I’m curious what qualifies as their charitable programs? If it walks, looks, and quacks like a 501(c)4, it’s a 501(c)4. Even the NRA was forced to become a 501(c)4.
Heritage Action for America is the lobbying "sister organization" funded by The Heritage Foundation and many others that is the lobbying arm. It is a 501(c)4. This is the deal with all of these organizations. There is a huge amount of money that keeps circulating among them and each pass through one of the foundations makes it hard to track the ultimate funding sources.
From their website:
Heritage Action was founded in 2010 and is armed with the research and policies of The Heritage Foundation.
Our mission is to fight for conservative policies in Washington, D.C. and in state capitals across the country. We turn ideas into bills and bills into law.
Instrumental to achieving these policy victories are a trained network of Heritage Action Sentinels. Sentinels are boots-on-the-ground, grassroots Americans; They are engaged citizens and local leaders who work for the betterment of America at all levels of society.
Heritage Action reinforces the grassroots work of Sentinels with our first-class team of state directors and government relations specialists in Washington. Together, Heritage Action and Sentinels are fighting for America’s future.
Makes you wonder how many current Republicans in Congress, including Mike Johnson, were at one time during the early years of their political life (town council, local organizer, etc) were Heritage Action Sentinels.
Writing about the record-setting Instant-Hurricane Otis, which devastated Acapulco, Elizabeth Kolbert points out that: 'In 2019, when (Mike) Johnson chaired the Republican Study Committee, the group made fun of the proposed Green New Deal, calling it “a Greedy New Steal.” The Hill has characterized Johnson as “a longtime ally of the oil industry” who will be “perhaps the most vocal skeptic of the scientific consensus on climate change ever to hold the speakership.” ’
Heritage is very anti-government regulation, anti-EPA and is heavily funded by oil. Johnson was clearly their choice, not Trump's, and I am extremely worried that Johnson will start putting the Project 2025 agenda in effect in the next year. Ultimately the billionaire's do not want chaos and insurrection--it is bad for business. I think the timing here was for two purposes--Heritage first wanted to see rules changes in the House to make it easier for amendments to be added from the floor so they would not be in any way constrained by Committee chairs and they wanted to get rid of McCarthy--they had an article on one of their webpages about how the rules change was important for returning the legislative process back to where it was a hundred years ago. And there was no "congratulations Kevin" announcements from Heritage after he got the Speakership. Jordan and Johnson are apparently very tight, but Johnson is really smart and smooth while Jordan is not, and way too pit bull. I suspect, but not have tracked down evidence, that the unanimity on the floor vote was because the word got out that Heritage would not advise their donors to support those who did not align with Johnson and Heritage's agenda.
Thanks for the link! At some point I need to look up Johnson on opensecrets.org and try to see if I can track back through the various front organizations. Lots of name changes over the last 10 years for some of the Koch operations.
I wouldn’t be so tough on Robert Reich on the subject of Johnson’s selection and how much Reich bought into the main stream media blabber. Reich’s specialty is labor and economics as it applies to the everyday American and the common good of the nation, he usually doesn’t get into the nitty gritty minutiae of back room politics like you and HCR. Even a good number of Senate Republicans had to Google search Johnson. I don’t think he was annotated by Trump, as so much as Trump has a thumbs up and a thumbs down list or random social media comment and thumb direction.
What does amaze me is in my random non-scientific clicks on commenter profiles, how few subscribe to both Robert Reich’s SubStack and HCR’s. Everyone has their select few favorites and only so much bandwidth.
I love Reich, but I think he fell victim to what many pundits are prone to in our polarized society. We don't know a lot about the stars on the other team, so we assume that if we haven't heard of them them, they can't be important. We are all too distracted by the bright and shiny objects. Johnson's work with the ADF is hair raising, but his ideological companion and buddy Jim Jordan got all the press because he craved the media attention. I think the majority of the media hogs are not the ones posing the real danger. It's the very smart quiet ones that can do the real damage.
It's the same thing with Trump or someone like Sarah Palin. He is not the brains or the funding behind the dark money far right. He is an effective distractor and front man, but not effective at managing implementation of real institutional change. Trump's one success was in packing the courts and in that he just did what the Federalist Society told him to do to get the evangelicals to support him with his many "anti-family values" escapades. It was transactional for him. I think the Trump endorsement of Johnson was also likely transactional. He was probably told with Johnson as Speaker he would be more likely to get the impeachments "expunged." But ultimately I think Trump is going to get thrown under the bus by the Heritage folk because he is now so erratic and will not be effective in implementing something as large scale as Project 2025. Suspicions but no proof yet.
I should clarify the use of “stealth “ as it applies to Johnson. Not a candidate that’s picked to run from day one, but a politician that’s identified early on as someone they can groom, support and work with for the long game.
I am trying to track if Johnson was ever part of the Heritage internship program while in college or if he received any of their grants or was a fellow. I also want to try to figure out how much money may have been funneled by Heritage through ADF when Johnson was a lawyer there. He apparently was still a lawyer with ADF during his one term in the LA legislature.
Georgia, like you I’m hesitant in going down the conspiracy path, but Johnson has well placed stealth candidate of the Heritage Foundation written all over him. Stealth candidates have been a right wing method for decades starting at local school boards and councils on up. He’s name has probably been on Heritage’s up and coming list, but events made him rise to the top faster. I’m probably jumping ahead to your next post, but Heritage and the oligarchs have used Jordon and Trump as their tools to get the portion of the base frothing that’s not intellectually ideological enough for the Heritage heavy stuff. Now they have someone like Johnson in a high position of power, Trump is only a megaphone soon to be tossed to the side.
The former owner of my house was a Heritage donor. For years I received his junk mail (mailed to him, not me) from Heritage and their like. Really sick and warped reading.
Thank you for this review, Georgia. Thanks, especially for explaining the scientific process. I have tried, in my posts to explain that since scientific theories are data driven they change. Science can never be exact, because, believe it or not, Homo sapiens are not omnipresent. We can only explain what we know today.
As to Mike Johnson, thank you for your diligent research. Johnson is much more frightening then Kevin McCarthy. He is a Constitutional lawyer who does not support the4Constitution. Like too many members of the Supreme Court he twists the verbiage to give it new meaning in his own biases. And like those people on SCOTUS he is deeply prejudiced. What seems more important to him, from reading his speeches, is the absolute supremacy of white, christian, males.
I don't seem to be able to open any of the footnotes except the ones to your posts. I'm pretty sure we're in agreement with most of this stuff, and it does seem that the Heritage Foundation has outsize influence. For some reason, I get an email from The Daily Signal every day, as well as from the pro-life arm of Hillsdale College. I don't unsubscribe because I believe in knowing as much as possible about how other people think. I'm very curious how I hit their lists though. I even got an email from Donald Trump himself once, but some algorithm must have quickly informed him that I wasn't a fan. I posted my own Stack earlier this morning describing how much I had enjoyed Robert Reich in conversation with Heather Lofthouse (as well as JoJo from Jerz with Noel Casler). Let's keep the lines of communication open.
Try copying and paste the link into your browser. That should work. I am still learning the details of posting links--I may have to go through a link command. This is not the easiest platform for authors to use!
I like Reich very much but I really think he gives Trump way too much credit. The fact that Jordan, who was his first pick, didn't get the support of the Conference but Johnson did tells me that other forces were in charge. Jordan and Johnson are ideological clones, but Johnson is way smarter and way more sophisticated. Trump was useful but is now too erratic to carry out stage 3 of the game plan to gut the executive branch with Project 2025. Basically he blew it when he was President--he managed to stack the judiciary but that was about it.
Read the the descriptions for the causes or the subtext--. Diana Davis Spencer is also on the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society. Her Foundation has over $1 Billion in assets.
You can also read the Heritage Foundation's annual report
How on earth can “Heritage is a 501(C) (3) organization”? Political activism and policy engagement in legislative lobbying and political advocacy to a much greater extent. I’m curious what qualifies as their charitable programs? If it walks, looks, and quacks like a 501(c)4, it’s a 501(c)4. Even the NRA was forced to become a 501(c)4.
https://heritageaction.com/
Heritage Action for America is the lobbying "sister organization" funded by The Heritage Foundation and many others that is the lobbying arm. It is a 501(c)4. This is the deal with all of these organizations. There is a huge amount of money that keeps circulating among them and each pass through one of the foundations makes it hard to track the ultimate funding sources.
From their website:
Heritage Action was founded in 2010 and is armed with the research and policies of The Heritage Foundation.
Our mission is to fight for conservative policies in Washington, D.C. and in state capitals across the country. We turn ideas into bills and bills into law.
Instrumental to achieving these policy victories are a trained network of Heritage Action Sentinels. Sentinels are boots-on-the-ground, grassroots Americans; They are engaged citizens and local leaders who work for the betterment of America at all levels of society.
Heritage Action reinforces the grassroots work of Sentinels with our first-class team of state directors and government relations specialists in Washington. Together, Heritage Action and Sentinels are fighting for America’s future.
Makes you wonder how many current Republicans in Congress, including Mike Johnson, were at one time during the early years of their political life (town council, local organizer, etc) were Heritage Action Sentinels.
Writing about the record-setting Instant-Hurricane Otis, which devastated Acapulco, Elizabeth Kolbert points out that: 'In 2019, when (Mike) Johnson chaired the Republican Study Committee, the group made fun of the proposed Green New Deal, calling it “a Greedy New Steal.” The Hill has characterized Johnson as “a longtime ally of the oil industry” who will be “perhaps the most vocal skeptic of the scientific consensus on climate change ever to hold the speakership.” ’
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/hurricane-otis-and-the-world-we-live-in-now
Heritage is very anti-government regulation, anti-EPA and is heavily funded by oil. Johnson was clearly their choice, not Trump's, and I am extremely worried that Johnson will start putting the Project 2025 agenda in effect in the next year. Ultimately the billionaire's do not want chaos and insurrection--it is bad for business. I think the timing here was for two purposes--Heritage first wanted to see rules changes in the House to make it easier for amendments to be added from the floor so they would not be in any way constrained by Committee chairs and they wanted to get rid of McCarthy--they had an article on one of their webpages about how the rules change was important for returning the legislative process back to where it was a hundred years ago. And there was no "congratulations Kevin" announcements from Heritage after he got the Speakership. Jordan and Johnson are apparently very tight, but Johnson is really smart and smooth while Jordan is not, and way too pit bull. I suspect, but not have tracked down evidence, that the unanimity on the floor vote was because the word got out that Heritage would not advise their donors to support those who did not align with Johnson and Heritage's agenda.
Makes sense that it was Heritage (and ALEC, and all the other Koch Kleptocrat mobs) that called the Speaker's vote.
If so, I would imagine that info will leak out in a while...
For Mike Johnson’s corporate backers, see the October 30 Popular Information “Speaker Mike Johnson’s Corporate Backers” on SubStack.
https://open.substack.com/pub/popularinformation/p/speaker-mike-johnsons-corporate-backers?r=1knhs2&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Thanks for the link! At some point I need to look up Johnson on opensecrets.org and try to see if I can track back through the various front organizations. Lots of name changes over the last 10 years for some of the Koch operations.
I wouldn’t be so tough on Robert Reich on the subject of Johnson’s selection and how much Reich bought into the main stream media blabber. Reich’s specialty is labor and economics as it applies to the everyday American and the common good of the nation, he usually doesn’t get into the nitty gritty minutiae of back room politics like you and HCR. Even a good number of Senate Republicans had to Google search Johnson. I don’t think he was annotated by Trump, as so much as Trump has a thumbs up and a thumbs down list or random social media comment and thumb direction.
What does amaze me is in my random non-scientific clicks on commenter profiles, how few subscribe to both Robert Reich’s SubStack and HCR’s. Everyone has their select few favorites and only so much bandwidth.
I love Reich, but I think he fell victim to what many pundits are prone to in our polarized society. We don't know a lot about the stars on the other team, so we assume that if we haven't heard of them them, they can't be important. We are all too distracted by the bright and shiny objects. Johnson's work with the ADF is hair raising, but his ideological companion and buddy Jim Jordan got all the press because he craved the media attention. I think the majority of the media hogs are not the ones posing the real danger. It's the very smart quiet ones that can do the real damage.
It's the same thing with Trump or someone like Sarah Palin. He is not the brains or the funding behind the dark money far right. He is an effective distractor and front man, but not effective at managing implementation of real institutional change. Trump's one success was in packing the courts and in that he just did what the Federalist Society told him to do to get the evangelicals to support him with his many "anti-family values" escapades. It was transactional for him. I think the Trump endorsement of Johnson was also likely transactional. He was probably told with Johnson as Speaker he would be more likely to get the impeachments "expunged." But ultimately I think Trump is going to get thrown under the bus by the Heritage folk because he is now so erratic and will not be effective in implementing something as large scale as Project 2025. Suspicions but no proof yet.
I should clarify the use of “stealth “ as it applies to Johnson. Not a candidate that’s picked to run from day one, but a politician that’s identified early on as someone they can groom, support and work with for the long game.
I am trying to track if Johnson was ever part of the Heritage internship program while in college or if he received any of their grants or was a fellow. I also want to try to figure out how much money may have been funneled by Heritage through ADF when Johnson was a lawyer there. He apparently was still a lawyer with ADF during his one term in the LA legislature.
Georgia, like you I’m hesitant in going down the conspiracy path, but Johnson has well placed stealth candidate of the Heritage Foundation written all over him. Stealth candidates have been a right wing method for decades starting at local school boards and councils on up. He’s name has probably been on Heritage’s up and coming list, but events made him rise to the top faster. I’m probably jumping ahead to your next post, but Heritage and the oligarchs have used Jordon and Trump as their tools to get the portion of the base frothing that’s not intellectually ideological enough for the Heritage heavy stuff. Now they have someone like Johnson in a high position of power, Trump is only a megaphone soon to be tossed to the side.
The former owner of my house was a Heritage donor. For years I received his junk mail (mailed to him, not me) from Heritage and their like. Really sick and warped reading.
Exactly!
Thank you for this review, Georgia. Thanks, especially for explaining the scientific process. I have tried, in my posts to explain that since scientific theories are data driven they change. Science can never be exact, because, believe it or not, Homo sapiens are not omnipresent. We can only explain what we know today.
As to Mike Johnson, thank you for your diligent research. Johnson is much more frightening then Kevin McCarthy. He is a Constitutional lawyer who does not support the4Constitution. Like too many members of the Supreme Court he twists the verbiage to give it new meaning in his own biases. And like those people on SCOTUS he is deeply prejudiced. What seems more important to him, from reading his speeches, is the absolute supremacy of white, christian, males.
I don't seem to be able to open any of the footnotes except the ones to your posts. I'm pretty sure we're in agreement with most of this stuff, and it does seem that the Heritage Foundation has outsize influence. For some reason, I get an email from The Daily Signal every day, as well as from the pro-life arm of Hillsdale College. I don't unsubscribe because I believe in knowing as much as possible about how other people think. I'm very curious how I hit their lists though. I even got an email from Donald Trump himself once, but some algorithm must have quickly informed him that I wasn't a fan. I posted my own Stack earlier this morning describing how much I had enjoyed Robert Reich in conversation with Heather Lofthouse (as well as JoJo from Jerz with Noel Casler). Let's keep the lines of communication open.
Try copying and paste the link into your browser. That should work. I am still learning the details of posting links--I may have to go through a link command. This is not the easiest platform for authors to use!
I like Reich very much but I really think he gives Trump way too much credit. The fact that Jordan, who was his first pick, didn't get the support of the Conference but Johnson did tells me that other forces were in charge. Jordan and Johnson are ideological clones, but Johnson is way smarter and way more sophisticated. Trump was useful but is now too erratic to carry out stage 3 of the game plan to gut the executive branch with Project 2025. Basically he blew it when he was President--he managed to stack the judiciary but that was about it.
So do you any thoughts about who might be the final architect of the plan?
Speaking of not being easy . . . Please insert the missing have!
track the money. Here is one example:
https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-foundation-receives-25-million-gift
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/diana-davis-spencer-foundation/
Read the the descriptions for the causes or the subtext--. Diana Davis Spencer is also on the Board of Visitors of the Federalist Society. Her Foundation has over $1 Billion in assets.
You can also read the Heritage Foundation's annual report
https://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2022/Annual_Report.pdf