Left Watch

Tim Gill, a man who’s mission is to “Stop the Rick Santorums of tomorrow before they get started”, is dabbling into politics at the state level… all the way over in Oklahoma!

Jim Roth continues to lead in raising money for his bid to win a full six-year term on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, campaign reports show.

Contributors include Tim Gill, a top gay and lesbian equal rights movement fundraiser, who gave the maximum donation of $5,000.

Gill, an entrepreneur and software developer from Denver, was among those identified by state Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, as helping contribute $30 million in 2006 to local and state races to help defeat conservative candidates.

Tim GIll has been said to be “the nexus of an aggressive new force in national politics”, so his involvement in Oklahoma races has to make you wonder what his special interest is in this particular candidate.

Roth, a former Oklahoma County commissioner, raised $100,141 during the first quarter of this year, according to his campaign committee’s report filed with the state Ethics Commission. He had $112,482 at the start of the reporting period. He spent $44,298 during the reporting period from Jan. 1 through March 31, his reports show. He has $174,475 on hand.

In addition to Gill, major contributors listed on Roth’s report include Edmond attorney Reggie Whitten, Denver entrepreneur Jared Polis, and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., retiree James Stepp, $5,000 each; El Reno attorney Mark Henricksen, $3,000; and Ronald Ansin, a business executive from Harvard, Mass., $2,500.

Food for thought…

Tags: Money, oklahoma, Tim Gill

You just have to love it when someone from the left claims there is a “vast right wing” conspiracy to take over the world via huge corporate funding schemes. Especially when it is the left who is guilty of doing just that.

Take The Blue Fund Group for example…

The Blue Fund invests in companies that both “act blue” and “give blue.” We build our portfolios on core progressive values like environmental sustainability, community participation and respect for human rights. And then we go a step further, investing only in those companies whose political contributions demonstrate a sincere commitment to these values.

Our “Blue Companies” are screened rigorously, evaluated regularly, and verified by an independent research firm. So you can rest assured that you are aligning your investments with your values.

Ironically, the Blue Fund Group is not doing so well.

So far this year, that fund has underperformed both its large-cap growth category and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, according to Chicago investment-research firm Morningstar Inc.

You can read quite a bit more about this at the WSJ’s story here.

Tags: blue fund group, funding, left, Money

The Center for Public Integrity has an interesting column out titled Stealth Campaigns.

While the article does a good job of making sure it includes reality… specifically that left wing factions of American politics are spending massive amounts of money, I disagree with a lot of its base argument.

For example:

Financed by many of the nation’s wealthiest investors and business leaders, as well as millions of small donors, these organizations are responsible for a flood of political attack advertising. Their work threatens to drown out the traditional voices of the Republican and Democratic parties and undercut the presidential candidates’ efforts to control their own messages.

For one, I believe the “message” is as diluted as possible in order to ignore the real issues and flood the public with non-essential BS. I also believe the two party system has corrupted American politics, and reform is badly needed.

There for, I’m personally not against the idea of American entrepreneurs spending money on reforming the political landscape. However, I am against the constant attacks from the left screaming that “the right is rich and we are not”, when the left is spending just as much, if not far more than the right.

In Stealth Campaigns, it is made clear that far left groups such as Democracy Alliance are pumping huge amounts of money in to American politics.

Read the rest here.

Tags: american government, Democracy Alliance, Money, Politics

David Brock is certainly no stranger to the left wing money machine. He is, after all, the founder of George Soros funded Media Matters of America, an organization with a sole intention on attacking anything that doesn’t align politically.

And the attacks will come hot and heavy now that Brock has taken on the lead role at “Progressive Media USA”. According to Politico, PMUSA is gearing up to launch a four month, $40 MILLION DOLLAR campaign centered around a plan to attack John McCain.

Wealthy Democrats are preparing a four-month, $40 million media campaign centered on attacks on Sen. John McCain. And it will be led by David Brock, the former investigative reporter who first gained fame in the 1990s as a right-wing, anti-Clinton journalist.

The planned campaign is the product of a shakeup in the top ranks of the struggling independent Democratic groups. Brock, now best known as the ex-conservative founder of the liberal group Media Matters, last month quietly assumed the chairmanship of what’s expected to be the main vehicle for independent Democratic attacks on McCain, now called Progressive Media USA.

Brock recently met with George Soros and others of his ilk to lay out the attack strategy. Apparently, Soros liked what he saw and gave the project his blessing.

Keep your eyes on this one, folks. It’s going to get dirty.

Tags: david brock, George Soros, Media Matters

This is a LONG video (just over an hour), but well worth it if you want to get a glimpse in to the mind of George Soros. You might also find it interesting that Eric Schmidt seems to hold Soros in high regard. Especially considering that Google employees overwhelmingly support Liberal Democrats.

Tags: eric schimdt, George Soros, Money

The focus of Left Watch is primarily the anti-free market, anti-free society movement lead by the left wing machine money and George Soros. In most cases the money sources and the paper trail lead to far left activities that attempt to appear “non-partisan”. The purpose of this blog is to keep an eye on the flow of funding via Soros and his ilk.

But occasionally, we come across an attempt to manipulate mainstream media in an effort to discredit or damage politicians who do not fit the agenda of the left. In this case, the subject is George Bush and the War in Iraq. Regardless of your opinion on the war, you’ll likely find this scenario disconcerting and completely unacceptable.

So what’s the scoop?

It all started this morning when the Associated Press published a story regarding a study on false comments preceding the war in Iraq. Two major flaws in the story are readily apparent.

WASHINGTON - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

#1) The Associated Press NOT ONCE mentions that the two “nonprofit journalism organizations” are funded by George Soros and his ilk.

#2) The Associated Press fails to provide similar statements by MANY politicians on both sides of the isle.

Need proof?

Watch the video…

Then, as if following a script, the New York Times published a version of their own.

Notice the names listed in the NYT article, or rather, the lack there of.

Warnings about the need to confront Iraq, by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and two White House press secretaries, among others, can be combed line by line, and reviewed alongside detailed critiques published after the fact by official panels, historians, journalists and independent experts.

Shameful…

Tags: 1357, 1996, 760, 767

We see a lot of information starting to come out of the cracks regarding the big government advocates and their far left wing money machine, but I don’t think we’ve ever seen a resource that is as well thought out and articulated as the one found at Front Page Mag.

It’s well worth the read and comes loaded with good information.

Points expanded on include:

-Billionaires for Big Government
-Origins of the Democracy Alliance
-Speed Bumps on the Road to Socialism
-DA Finances
-Selected Grant Recipients

Prepare to become red in the face and click here

Tags: 1999, 2001, 548, 91

Yet somehow, the anti-US crowd bought into it hook, line, and sinker.

The Times Online reports that Soros payed for more than 50% of a 2006 study that was printed in Lancet, a medical journal. The study claimed that more than 650,000 people were killed during the Iraq invasion, which is 10 times higher than general consensus.

The study, published in 2006, was hailed by antiwar campaigners as evidence of the scale of the disaster caused by the invasion, but Downing Street and President George Bush challenged its methodology.

New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003.

“The authors should have disclosed the [Soros] donation and for many people that would have been a disqualifying factor in terms of publishing the research,” said Michael Spagat, economics professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.

I fail to understand why ANYONE would take a Soros funded study seriously.

Tags: 1996

Just when you think the left wing money machine is running at full capacity, a new front of funding moves in to play.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The term of choice in political giving these days is straight out of the world of finance — donors have become “investors.” Now, liberal California venture capitalists have come up with the natural corollary — political “mutual funds.”

The new venture, being launched Monday, is the work of Andy and Deborah Rappaport’s New Progressive Coalition, a San Francisco-based organization they like to call the Charles Schwab of politics.

Through a rigorous vetting system, the coalition identified 37 Democratic-leaning organizations and distributed them among three funds. The idea is to guide potential contributors through the myriad liberal causes and groups that dot the political landscape.

That’s right, they see politics as an investment. Meaning, they actually want to control government. And if you think Democracy Alliance is sitting this effort out… think again.

The effort is part of an evolution in liberal giving, where donors big and small are looking to organizations with proven track records or long-term missions instead of funding new, fleeting groups that disappear at the end of an election cycle.

A coalition of top dollar Democratic donors — the Democracy Alliance — met in Washington this month to hear formal presentations from established political groups eager for a share of the tens of millions of dollars the alliance is expected to have at its disposal.

The alliance, whose membership is by invitation only, has helped finance such Democratic-leaning organizations as the New Democratic Network, Media Matters and the Center for American Progress. These are high-profile operations, some with big budgets, that seek to influence the political debate in Washington.

Similar efforts are under way in a handful of states, modeled after a Colorado coalition of wealthy donors who helped raise funds for state legislative races. Donors and strategists recently met in New Mexico to create interest in similar funding organizations to assist liberal and Democratic-leaning organizations at the state level.

Gag.

Tags: , 1995, 91

While most Americans felt insulted by the recent “General Betray Us” political stunt fueled by the far left folks at MoveOn.org, Tom Matzzie. the groups Washington Director embraced and defended it.

The Washington chattering class has this fidelity to certain norms for, you know, political discourse. But let’s be straight about it. In a democracy you have to be able to question the uniformed military. We appreciate their service. We honor their sacrifice. But, especially for the generals, there needs to be accountability for their actions…
[S]ome people probably won’t like the ad, but they probably hate the war in Iraq more…If it was just a soft step, no one would have heard about it.

You know, let’s be clear. The ad did not call General Petraeus a traitor. It said, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” It had posed a question about whether or not the general in his testimony was going to betray the confidence of the American people.

Which makes it even more interesting that Democracy Alliance, the left wing money machine, is bringing Matzzie on as an advisor. And not just any advisor…

Tom Matzzie has been hired to run a new effort for 2008, which he has described in an e-mail as a $100 million-plus venture organized around “issues and character.” Matzzie is leaving his post as the Washington director of Moveon.org to take the job. He did not return an e-mail seeking comment on his new position.

The news of Matzzie’s hiring comes roughly two weeks after a group of the largest donors in the Democratic party gathered in Washington to discuss where they’ll put their money during the 2008 race. One of the attendees — Hollywood producer Steve Bing — is said to be one of the leading financial forces behind the organization Matzzie has been hired to head.

Sounds like the left is looking to move even more to the left, and they’re doing it with a powerful money machine running the back end.

We had better start paying attention and fast.

Tags: 1924, 1995, 2000, 2002, 91