A Public Service of A Job is a Right Campaign, Milwaukee, WI

No. 2, September, 1998

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee is the country's leading right-wing grantmaker. With a half billion dollars in assets and extensive political connections, Bradley has help advance some of the most reactionary social programs in the recent period. Best known for its funding of the notoriously racist book "The Bell Curve", Bradley has also supported the overturn of affirmative action, the development of Wisconsin's draconian welfare "reform" program, W-2, and the attacks on public education through the promotion of school vouchers.

"The Bradley Watch" is an insert to the bi-monthly newsletter of A Job is a Right Campaign. A follow-up to our report "The Feeding Trough," it's purpose is to disseminate new information on Bradley, like-minded foundations, think tanks and institutes and the social/political initiatives they are promoting. We welcome comments, tips and leads from our readers.

"The Bradley Watch" is written and edited by Phil Wilayto, coordinator of A Job is a Right Campaign and author of the report "The Feeding Trough."

Families Beware: Gov. Thompson Discovers Fatherhood

Tommy Thompson has discovered fatherhood. According to the Aug. 28th Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Gov. Tommy Thompson declared Wisconsin a father-friendly state Thursday and launched a broad-based campaign to promote, establish and coordinate programs aimed at getting more dads involved with their children."

Thompson was speaking at a press conference held at the Milwaukee County Zoo, where he pointed out the personal responsibility shown by male penguins in the hatching of their young. Earlier he had announced his new fatherhood campaign during the National Governors Association conference held last month in Milwaukee.

Now, here's a guy who has sent more dads to prison than any other governor in the state's history. He's also the man responsible for the most draconian welfare "reform" program in the country, one that has condemned thousands of single moms to lives of low-wage, dead-end jobs with their kids stuck in sub-standard child warehouses euphemistically called "day care centers." He has also led the charge on the issue of school vouchers, which opponents view as a Trojan Horse-type attack on the very concept of public schools.

W-2 and school vouchers are the two issues most closely associated with Thompson. They're also at the heart of the political agenda of the right-wing Bradley Foundation, the outfit that supplies Thompson with most of his policy ideas, so it might be interesting to take a closer look at this new "fatherhood" initiative. Is it a simple appeal for dads to show more interest in their kids, or is it something else?

The governor's new campaign is to be called the Wisconsin Fatherhood Initiative. According to the Journal article, "Among the dignitaries on hand [at the press conference] was Wade Horn, a former welfare official and president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Horn announced Thursday that his group would open its first state office in Wisconsin to act as a resource center for the statewide initiative." According to its website, the National Fatherhood Initiative was created "to counter the growing problem of fatherlessness by stimulating a broad-based social movement to restore responsible fatherhood as a national priority." The group has been organizing conferences, forums and coalitions. In addition, the NFI recently co-authored a document entitled "Seven Things States Can Do to Promote Responsible Fatherhood," published by the policy arm of the National Governors Association.

Pretty benign, and pretty general. The specifics get more interesting.

The NFI, based in Lancaster, Penn., was created in 1994 with a $150,000 grant by the Bradley Foundation. The next year it was awarded another $135,000. As we pointed out in last year's report "The Feeding Trough," Bradley doesn't give money to groups outside Milwaukee unless it's to further its racist, right-wing political agenda.

So what's the agenda of the NFI?

Wade F. Horn, Ph.D, the group's director, was U.S. Commissioner for Children, Youth and Families in the Department of Health & Human Services under President Bush. That was the period that continued the steep increase in child poverty begun with Ronald Reagan's deep budget cuts. Horn is also an "affiliate scholar" with the Hudson Institute — the Indiana right-wing think tank that developed W-2 under a grant from the Bradley Foundation.

Also on the staff of the NFI is Matthew Buckwalter, Project Director of the Virginia Fatherhood Campaign. Buckwalter came to NFI from the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise "where he was involved in developing curriculum for the Neighborhood Leadership Development Institute."

The Washington, D.C.-based NCNE, also a Bradley creation, has been deeply involved in recruiting and training "community leaders" to play roles in Bradley-funded initiatives in Milwaukee, particularly around W-2. The NCNE's president, Robert L. Woodson, Sr., has been promoted as a Black "conservative" whose role is to attack affirmative action programs and the civil rights leaders who support them. Woodson spent years working at the American Enterprise Institute with Charles Murray, co-author of "The Bell Curve."

As of 1996, Wisconsin had the highest level of child poverty among Latinos in the country, the second highest among Black children and one of the highest levels of infant mortality among Indian children — and all this was true after years of Thompson running the state.

Now, it's true there are a lot of irresponsible fathers. They're found in all communities, at all income levels. And it's true a lot of kids would be better off if their fathers either were around or at least kept up the child support payments.

But that isn't what's responsible for child poverty and misery. The fact that one out of four kids in this country live below the poverty level has a lot more to do with irresponsible corporations and pro-corporate government than it does with individual deadbeat dads.

Will Thompson's new initiative call for the creation of tens of thousands of union wage public service jobs? Will it call for raising the minimum wage to a living wage? Will it call for serious job training and placement for the thousands of dads Thompson has locked up in the state's prisons?

Not likely. What the Wisconsin Fatherhood Initiative will most likely do is recruit a bunch of sports and political figures to blame fathers for the poverty of their children — in other words, to let Thompson off the hook for the devastating effect of his nakedly pro-corporate, anti-working class policies. And then that "campaign" will be promoted as a national model to let the whole corporate ruling class off the hook as well.

Public figures would do well to think twice before signing onto this latest Thompson/Bradley charade.

Kenneth Starr, The Bradley Foundation & President Clinton

Under President Bill Clinton, the richest 1% of the population has seen its net wealth increase faster than under either Reagan or Bush. Clinton has successfully pushed NAFTA and GATT, repealed AFDC and can be counted on to bomb Iraq on a sickeningly regular basis. What more could a right-winger ask for? How come they want him out of office?

Obviously, somebody's got it in for Clinton. And the intricate connections between the various right-wing organizations involved (see below) means a large section of the ruling class approves. One very influential section of that class is represented by the tobacco companies.

Consider the case of Kenneth Starr. A former Solicitor General in the Bush Administration, Starr is a highly paid senior partner in the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis, where he specializes in defending companies like tobacco giant Philip Morris in liability suits. Phillip Morris is the fifth largest corporation in the country -- and the largest employer in Wisconsin, Bradley's home state. One former board member is Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan.

After being named Whitewater independent counsel (reportedly at the urging of North Carolina senator Jesse Helms, a faithful servant of the tobacco industry), Starr represented Brown & Williamson in a class action suit filed by smokers against a number of tobacco companies. The case was considered to be the most threatening lawsuit to confront the tobacco industry. In his briefs, Starr attacked the notion that nicotine is uniformly addictive. (National Law Journal, 3/25/96; Wall Street Journal, 3/27/96 and 4/3/96; Legal Times, 4/1/96; USA Today, 3/26/96.)

This is not to say the Clinton Crisis is all about tobacco, just that a powerful section of the corporate class has gotten tired of not totally controlling the White House. And if Clinton even mildly threatens the profits of one powerful section, that makes the other corporations concerned as well.

But back to Starr and Bradley.

Starr is no stranger to Wisconsin -- or to the right wing. He and law partner Jay Lefkowitz have worked for Milwaukee's own Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, providing legal advice about "school choice" and other matters. When the state hired Starr and Kirkland & Ellis to defend the constitutionality of its school voucher program, Bradley picked up the tab for their services.

Bradley also helps fund the half-dozen conservative organizations and media that have promoted the Whitewater issue, including The American Spectator and the Free Congress Foundation, a group that in turns sponsors National Empowerment Television. The Bradley-funded Hudson Institute (the leading group in the development of W-2) also got into the act, paying for a study of the ethics of the Clintons and the Whitewater issue.

Another Bradley-funded outfit is Landmark Legal Foundation, a Kansas City-based law firm with offices in Herndon, Virginia. According to The Nation, Landmark has provided free legal representation to L. Jean Lewis, the Resolution Trust Corporation official who first brought Whitewater to light.

Landmark's vice chairman is Edwin Meese, Nixon's Attorney General. The treasurer is William Bradford Reynolds, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under Ronald Reagan. One of its directors is Robert L. Woodson Sr., a close associate of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and president of the Bradley-funded National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.

Landmark has also played a key role in the legal battles around school choice. The defense for the first Wisconsin voucher law was led by Clint Bolick, at the time an attorney for Landmark. Later hired as part of the Starr/Lefkowitz legal team, Bolick is now director of litigation at the Bradley-funded Institute for Justice. Among other achievements, Bolick was the author of a bill that would end all affirmative action programs on the federal level.

Of course, Bradley isn't the only right-wing foundation around. While working as independent counsel, Starr was offered, and initially announced he would accept, the deanship of Pepperdine University's new School of Public Policy, a post heavily funded by conservative activist Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife, heir to a sizable fortune based on the Mellon family industrial, oil and banking empire, plays a key role in the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation. The Scaife, Olin, Smith Richardson and Bradley foundations are often called the "four sisters" for their tendency to fund similar conservative institutions and causes. Scaife is also vice chairman of the Heritage Foundation, the country's leading national right-wing think tank, which also receives funding from Bradley.

Then there's the Federalist Society, a D.C.-based organization of conservative lawyers that counts among its members one Kenneth Starr. Other prominent Society members include Senator Orrin Hatch, Edwin Meese, Judge Robert Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia. Another is James Moody, attorney for Linda Tripp, Monica Lewinsky's "friend" who carried a wire for Starr in an effort to gather information on Lewinsky to use against Clinton. According to the Times, Moody has also "been handling a Landmark suit against the IRS for alleged harassment of conservative non-profit groups." The Federalists, by the way, also have some strong Wisconsin ties, with chapters in Madison, Milwaukee, western Wisconsin, the U.W. Law School and Marquette.

Moving right along (no pun intended), we come to The Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based group of conservative lawyers that is financing Paula Jones' legal costs in her sexual harassment case against Clinton. Rutherford normally concentrates on trying to break down the Constitutional separation of church and state. In the past, Rutherford has reportedly received fundraising help from the Rev. Jerry Falwell of Moral Majority fame.

One thing this crisis has revealed is that there is a well-funded, right-wing establishment trying to mold public opinion and control the political process. Understanding this network exists is the first step in curtailing its influence.

What's Happening:

New York

— "Learnfare, a welfare innovation concocted in the social laboratories of Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, has been a big hit nationally: Some form of it has been adopted by most states. Now it's taken the Empire State by storm: The New York legislature has passed a bill requiring a state-wide implementation of Learnfare by 1999." [From Milwaukee's newsweekly The Paper, 9/3/98]

Under Learnfare, welfare payments are withheld from parents whose children skip school. No study, government or otherwise, has ever shown that financially punishing parents increases school attendance by their kids. But that didn't stop Thompson from declaring the program a huge "success" and exporting it to other states. The new program is estimated to cost New York $20 to $30 million.

Earlier this year, New York City hired Jason Turner to run its giant workfare program, called WEP. Turner formerly headed the task force that developed Wisconsin's workfare program, called W-2.

W-2 (& AJRC) on the Move...

Dr. Linda Stewart, Secretary of Wisconsin's Department of Workforce Development, traveled to Germany this summer to promote W-2. Jason Turner, who headed the Bradley-funded task force that developed W-2, was in Amsterdam to do the same. (Turner now heads the WEP program in New York City, the largest workfare program in the U.S.) Earlier this year, DWD official Jean Rogers was in New Zealand to speak at a government-sponsored conference on welfare "reform".

On the other hand, Job is a Right did an hour-long interview with Danish Public Radio in August and supplied information on Bradley to the magazine Doen in Amsterdam. Karen Davis, of the Auckland Unemployed Workers Rights Center in New Zealand was one of the speakers at the April 4 "March to Stop W-2 Suffering" we organized here in Milwaukee.

This summer we did a half-hour interview with Pacifica Radio's nationally syndicated Democracy Now program and later a 10-minute commentary on New York's workfare program. On Sept. 13 we did an hour-long interview with Junior Francis of WJBC, a college radio station just outside Los Angeles.

Bradley may have a half billion dollars in assets, but we are doing our best to keep alive the spirit of struggle and resistance. Want to help? Give us a call.