Looks like the thuggish “progressive” lawfare crew has a few new names it might have to go after (assuming it’s that particular crew who have been behind such stunts, of course), either in court, by way of faked anonymous phone calls to 911, or maybe some well-placed explosives. Those new names? David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin:
Until just a few years ago, Brett Kimberlin was a convicted drug dealer and terrorist doing 51 years in federal prison for planting eight roadside bombs in the town of Speedwell, Indiana. The last of those bombs left a man so severely disfigured that he committed suicide a few years later. An inveterate liar and con artist, Kimerblin managed to gain fame from prison in 1988 by falsely claiming to have sold drugs to then-presidential candidate Dan Quayle.
Kimberlin’s story doesn’t end there, however. Since his early release from prison in 2000, the convicted terrorist has found a second act: as the darling of America’s leading, tax-free progressive foundations. Kimberlin’s seamless transition from prison inmate to the beneficiary of left-wing philanthropy offers a stark illustration of the radical course that progressive foundations have adopted. As we document in our newly released book The New Leviathan, these foundations have fallen under the sway of hard-left ideologues who have channeled the foundations’ tremendous resources to bankroll groups and individuals far outside the political mainstream, thereby shifting public policy on crucial issues dramatically to the left.
Kimberlin is a case in point. It was enough for the ex-terrorist to become involved in left-wing political causes for these nominally apolitical institutions to open up their wallets and avert their eyes from his troubling past. Today, Kimberlin serves as the director of Justice Through Music Project (JTMP), a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization that uses “famous musicians and bands” to support a host of left-wing causes, from the anti-capitalist protests of Occupy Wall Street to environmental agendas. When he’s not overseeing the group, Kimberlin uses frivolous lawsuits to censor discussion about his criminal past by bloggers and journalists.
[…]
To be sure, our system of philanthropy makes it easy for left-wing donors to hide their connections to someone like Kimberlin. The Tides Foundation is a case in point. Tides was set up as public charity that receives money from donors and then funnels it to the recipients of their choice. Because many of these recipient groups are, like JTMP, quite radical, the donors often prefer not to have their names publicly linked with the donees. By letting the Tides Foundation, in effect, launder the money for them and pass it along to the intended beneficiaries, donors can avoid leaving a paper trail. Such contributions are called “donor-advised,” or “donor-directed,” funds.
It should come as no surprise that a number of JTMP’s funders use this very approach. Pressed on its financial support for an extremist like Kimberlin, one donor, Schwab Charitable Funds, protested that its funds “are cause-neutral, and exist to facilitate the charitable giving of their clients.” At the same time the fund, a charitable arm of brokerage giant Charles Schwab, stressed that its “grants do not in any way reflect the views or perspectives of Schwab, Schwab Charitable or the management of either organization.” So it goes: Radicals like Kimberlin get their money, and the true identities of his funders remain hidden. Meanwhile, patently political foundations can claim a tax-free status that depends on their eschewal of political activity.
That Kimerblin’s group counts leading foundations among its financial backers is also an indication of the extent to which so-called progressive foundations have shifted their funding to the far left. The Tides Foundation has led the way in this leftward shift. Tides operations include the richest and most venerable philanthropies, among them the Rockefeller Foundation and its Rockefeller Family Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation. In a profound historical irony, these onetime symbols of American capitalism now dispense their endowments to the anti-capitalist agitators Occupy Wall Street.
— Pardon the interruption here, but that’s not irony. That’s comeuppance, pigs! And besides, the left has learned to take over boards and foundations and universities such that even Jesuit universities like Georgetown wind up expressing institutional support for their own bullwhipping.
But I digress:
There are conservative foundations, too, of course, but they cannot match the resources of their counterparts on the left. With over $100 billion in tax-exempt assets at their disposal, left-wing foundations have been able to invest massively greater amounts in their beneficiary groups than have their political opposites. In splashing their cash, these foundations have not balked at sponsoring groups helmed by political radicals and extremists, so long as their political causes are congenial. Just ask Brett Kimberlin.
Nice work if you can get it.
— Which apparently you can — and it will prove both lucrative and powerful — provided you convince the right backers that you’re a real live “activist,” and that you’re willing to put your particular skillset (like, eg., having sociopathic tendencies, or showing a willingness to try to have opponents who stubbornly stand in the way of whatever your agenda happens to be removed from that equation) to work for the installation of the Greater Good. Itself determined by the fact that progressives wish it and will it to be.
Bill Ayers. Bernardine Dohrne. Citizen K: it’s terrorist chic all over again. But rather than the loner outlaw ethic of Tom Robbins’ Woodpecker, we now get the more polished institutionalized radicalism of corporate-like coordination, where likeminded progressives pull resources and hide tax free inside universities and NGOs.
And here you thought the seventies died with disco and the glorious glorious drubbing of Jimmy Carter.
(thanks to geoffb)
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update: synchronicity! (thanks to Pablo; also, look at me, all happy to help — despite my horrific beg-a-thons or desire to make money, which no good blogger does, etc. Go (otherwise selfless) me!)
Kimberlin uses frivolous lawsuits
They’re not frivolous; they’re predatory.
Brett Kimberlin and the Justice of Google from the other Velvet Revolution. You know, the Vaclev Havel one. The one about liberty.
There’s damned little output for all of the income into these 501(c)(3)’s.
I heart David Horowitz. He actually knows or knew, if they are now dead, most of the signature lefties/commies/terrorists, some of them since they were Red Diaper Babies together.
– That’s what you Neocons get for forcing people to eat popcorn and drink milkshakes.
– Oh, and BUSH!
BBH Pictures please, as I am tad hard of hearing.
Sorry, I must have been thinking of some other bush.
Can I post my link-whoring, Bret Kimberlin, strip in here? If this is against the rules visit my site and tell me I’m a bad man (warning: graphic and *not* for children under the age of 13 in our completely coarsened and vulgur culture that I’m only help embolden for cheap laughs):
http://waxingerratic.tumblr.com/post/23748002751/update-5-29-kimberin-related-wiki-entry-is
If this is illegal, well, I won’t do it again and will accept whatever punishment is doled out for such transgressions (I hear SWAT-ing is hot this season).
Dunno about whether it’s immoral or illegal, ECM. Is it fattening?
Your graphic style is very cool, ECM. And really, one can never show Kimberlin getting ass-raped in prison often enough. He’s a wee little guy – like a lady! – and that’s how they likes em’ in there.
NR emails at Stranahan. 3 parts so far.
Rauhauser is certifiable.
This graf is worth 300mg of a psychotropic drug, maybe more. A congressman extorting an entire Temple congregation in another congreeman’s district.
Weinergate is a puzzle, but here is my studied opinion on the matter. Mike Grimm, former FBI undercover, now Congressman for NY-13 attempted to extort a Jewish congregation on Staten Island. The rabbi went to Weiner, he reported it, and that got the investigation rolling. A couple of weeks later a crew started following Weiner online, presenting porn stars, hookers, fake underage teens, trying to get him sexting. They fabricated some teens, leaked it, and we almost broke it up before he was forced to resign. Weiner finally came out about the stuff with Grimm in May – he waited until the primary was done, then saddled the GOP with a guy that may get indicted.
Frey dropped Naffe’s dox in order to intimidate/guide people in how to attack her. This was done to protect James O’Keefe – Frey has been his most vocal defender, and I think they used to work together. So that’s an obstruction of justice attempt in New Hampshire, and it probably just overflowed into federal stuff due to one of O’Keefe’s crew posing as Attorney General Eric Holder and attempting to vote using his name.
Roddy, I haven’t seen industrial-grade crazy like that since the last nishi / hammer-boi team up here….
Just DAMN!
It’s crazy but this crew has been up to their neck in crazy conspiracy theories ever since the 1988 “I sold pot to Quayle” which made BK’s bones on the left.
Seth Allen denouncing their prize-money-making-scams as just that was what got him on BK’s shit list which led to Aaron Walker/Worthing getting on it when he offered to help Allen.
For BK it is about keeping the money flowing in. For NR it is about advancing the interests of the Party but that is skewed by what he sees as “advance” and “interests”.
VR
Jeff
Speaking strictly for myself, I consider it an honor to contribute to one who is able to articulate what I am thinking 1000 times better and more coherently. Whoever started the site either is specifically taking a swipe at you JG or their jealous. Likely both. Wonder if they applied for 501(C)(3) status.
Really?
Who do you think pushed the “Diebold will steal our elections” BS? Who pushed the “Ohio was stolen” lie? Who pushed the “Rove had a man killed!” lie? They get the base stirred up and spread malicious lies.
Stacy McCain gets to the edge of what the Kimberlin Krew are for, but refuses to back off the dumbass “this is not a right vs. left thing” cop out.
Dismissing it all as the acts and delusions of the insane misses the motivations of the people bank-rolling Kimberlin’s Krew.
It’s for the Party. It’s for the Cause. They get thugs to rough up the opposition for cheap.
How do you figure? I read it as making clear that the blog has one purpose and one purpose only: Knocking Kimberlin down the search results for Velvet Revolution and replacing his position with the truth about him. That said, this:
..is nonsense on stilts. All of the top blogs and lots of the not-so-big blogs are monetized in one way or another. Jeff is far from being the only person making money from their blog.
It seems to me there are a number of even finer distinctions (albeit mostly not altogether worth the trouble) that can be drawn from the terms “in this for money”: distinctions as wide as the various other motivations driving people who take contributions, which in themselves, are not an end.
Is anyone else getting sick of the “let’s not admit what’s going on” game from Patterico and Stacy and the rest? And sick of their indulging the sick fantasies of the Kimberlin Krew as if there’s some explanatory power in the persecution fantasies of lunatics?
The lunatics are being used by the Democrats as their brute squad. The left will never respond to an appeal in the name of free speech because they believe free speech is a tool of oppression. Stop the bullshit pussy-footing around the issue and start naming names or let it go, already.
Crawford, the problem in dealing with this lawfare BS is that because of the situation Patterico is in, with criminal and civil court cases, bar association complaints, and judicial ethics complaints, any naming of names can be used to file more charges etc. about conspiracy, intimidation, stalking, etc. The BK crew doesn’t have to care about that because they have independent income from Leftist sugar daddies, can’t be fired, and are probably pretty close to judgement proof. Thus illustrating the weakness of our legal system when dealing with connected abusers.
Meant to add that all of these apply to the other individuals named.
Pablo,
I suppose I might have made the connection between politico and the site given that it seems to (to me at least) that a particular person there would likely find amusement in just such a jab at our host. If they are not in it for anything that is simply all they had to say.