In mid-November the Capital Research Center and InfluenceWatch helped drive news coverage regarding George Soros, the renaming of Arabella Advisors, ObamaCare and homeless advocacy policy. Links and excerpts are provided below.
***
Washington Free Beacon—Same Game, Different Name: ‘Radioactive’ Arabella Advisors Announces Rebrand to ‘Sunflower Services’ as Prominent Donors Flee: Sunflower Services to take over Arabella’s much-scrutinized fiscal sponsorship division
“One possibility is the name is now radioactive and they had always wanted it secret,” said Scott Walter, the president of Capital Research Center, a watchdog group that investigates Arabella Advisors and other liberal special interest groups.
“This reconfiguration lets them say a non-profit of sorts is in charge of everything instead of a for-profit,” added Walter, who noted the significance of the Gates Foundation move. “Gates said no money to Arabella, but Sunflower is not Arabella. Sunflower just sounds much more puppy-ish than the exotic and incomprehensible Arabella.”
***
Washington Free Beacon—George Soros Paid Columbia University $600K for an ‘Oral History’ of Himself and His Philanthropy: Vanity project for elder Soros came after Soros-funded Open Society Foundations slashed its workforce in a cost-cutting move
“It’s incredible that, after his bad investment in Rivian lost nearly $2 billion of daddy’s money, Alex tightened the belt and laid off 40 percent of OSF staff while making enough room in the budget for an over-credentialed hagiography,” said Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at Capital Research Center, a watchdog group that tracks liberal special interest groups, including OSF.
***
Washington Free Beacon—George Soros Gave $250K to British Group Working To Censor Conservative News Sites and ‘Kill Musk’s Twitter’: The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which does not disclose its donors, has lobbied US lawmakers to create a ‘digital regulator’
Last year, the CCDH quietly organized a campaign to “kill Musk’s Twitter” by pressuring advertisers to cut ties with the company, according to memos published by Racket News. The CCDH, which the watchdog group Capital Research Center calls a “UK-based censorship advocacy group,” met with 16 congressional offices to discuss Musk’s lawsuit against the organization, and held “policy engagement” meetings with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.).
***
PJ Media—Surprise! Here’s Where Your Taxes to Help ‘Homeless People’ Actually Go
Discovery Institute and the Capital Research Center have released their dual report on how extremist groups have used homeless funding for their own political aims. It’s called “INFILTRATED: The Ideological Capture of Homeless Advocacy.”
“Using financial data, legal records, and original research, the report uncovers a vast network of homelessness advocates that spend billions in taxpayer dollars and philanthropic grants on everything but obvious solutions,” the report states. Indeed, the obvious issues leading to homelessness, namely drug addictions and mental health problems, aren’t addressed in the massive expenditures by these organizations and, in effect, worsen the homeless problem even more.
***
Washington Examiner—What protests in the street have in common with deep-pocketed radical movements
“It’s not like George Soros calls up some group and says, ‘I want a riot,’” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s much more complicated and messy than that.”
“But on the other hand, the places that George Soros gives money to do end up being involved in violence over and over again,” Walter added.
Indivisible has denied any connection with the violent attacks on Tesla cars, charging stations, and dealerships — there were dozens of recorded instances this year — and in organizing materials, it encourages activists to engage in peaceful protests at all times.
Walter’s CRC said in a report published this year that Soros’s Open Society Foundations has, since 2016, given more than $23 million to seven groups that “engage in or materially assist violence, property destruction, economic sabotage, harassment, and other criminality that meets the FBI’s definition of domestic terrorism.” Those included groups that train protesters in “direct action” tactics, such as forming blockades, and raise money to bail out and defend violent protesters.
[. . . ]
“Funding networks like the ones run by Tides and Arabella obscure who is funding what,” Walter said. “A billionaire, or a billionaire foundation, can put money into Tides, but we can’t then tell which of Tides’ many grants to outside groups was funded by the billionaire’s grant.”
[. . . ]
“You had the same kind of crazies in the ‘60s, right? You had violent nihilists who hated America in the ‘60s,” Walter of the Capital Research Center said. “But the reason the Weather Underground had to be underground is that big-city mayors wouldn’t tolerate this in their streets, including Democratic mayors like [Richard] Daley in Chicago.”
***
The Washington Stand (Mark Tapscott)— Obamacare Premiums Will Explode When Subsidies End, Proving Program Is a Failure: Health Industry Experts
Capital Research Center (CRC) Vice President Kristen Eastlick told The Washington Stand that POC’s organizational linkage makes clear its ideological roots.
“There are multiple pro-Obamacare campaigns and pop-up groups that may give the impression multiple voices are working to defend Obamacare, but in reality, each is just a separate tactic of the same consulting firm. Protect Our Care, a group that once described itself as a ‘dedicated war room for the ACA,’ is one of many pop-up campaigns operated by the Arabella-managed Sixteen Thirty Fund,” Eastlick said.
A group known as Health Care For America Now, which was also managed by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, “was the main Obamacare advocate during the campaign to secure its passage. The Sixteen Thirty Fund then launched new pop-up groups during the first Trump administration to lobby against any changes” to Obamacare, Eastlick said.
***
Dallas Express—GreenLight Fund’s DEI Focus Raises Red Flags In Dallas
The Boston-based GreenLight Fund had $52.68 million in assets as of 2022, according to InfluenceWatch.
The fund’s long-time former CEO, Margaret Hall, donated to various Democratic politicians, including Hillary Clinton, Raphael Warnock, and Elizabeth Warren, as InfluenceWatch reported.
[. . .]
The Ford Foundation – one of America’s largest grantmaking foundations, which often bankrolls left-wing causes – gave $750,000 to the fund since 2017, as InfluenceWatch first reported.
[. . .]
“GreenLight searches the country for proven programs to address local unmet needs and invests in their expansion in partnership with our communities,” the report reads.
One of its many “portfolio organizations” is Genesys Works, with a Keller mailing address. According to InfluenceWatch, this group “deals with large companies to reserve positions for minority candidates.”
