George Soros' tentacles

I knew that George Soros was a big financial backer of MoveOn.org, but I really had no idea just how influential and widespread his reach is until I read this series of articles in Investor's Business Daily. Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite:

From The Soros Threat to Democracy

George Soros is known for funding groups such as MoveOn.org that seek to manipulate public opinion. So why is the billionaire's backing of what he believes in problematic? In a word: transparency.

How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely "NASA whistleblower" standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros' Open Society Institute , which gave him "legal and media advice"?

[ ... ]

That's not the only case. Didn't the mainstream media report that 2006's vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?

Turns out that wasn't what happened, either. Soros' OSI had money-muscle there, too, through its $17 million Justice Fund. The fund lists 19 projects in 2006. One was vaguely described involvement in the immigration rallies. Another project funded illegal immigrant activist groups for subsequent court cases.

[ ... ]

Soros' "shaping public policies," as OSI calls it, is not illegal. But it's a problem for democracy because it drives issues with cash and then only lets the public know about it after it's old news.

That means the public makes decisions about issues without understanding the special agendas of groups behind them.

From George Soros: The Man, The Mind And The Money Behind MoveOn

Soros says he gives away about $400 million annually.

It's an admirable picture, but "philanthropy" may be the wrong word. Unlike, say, Bill Gates, who really does put the bulk of his charity into helping the world's poor through medical services, Soros tends to fund pressure groups and foundations he misleadingly characterizes as promoting "civil society" and "democracy."

The image gives him moral cover to manipulate democracies whose voter verdicts he opposes.

The first groups Soros supported back in the 1980s did play a role in undercutting the rickety communist regimes of Eastern Europe. But his motives seemed less than idealistic. All Soros groups tend to tear down tyrannies rather than build up democracies.

And since 2003, tearing down what he views as the "fascist" tyranny of the United States, as he has put it, is "the central focus of my life."

From A Party Bought And Paid For

MoveOn.org once crowed that it had bought and owned the Democratic Party. With the Senate now blasting its tactics, that's an open question. But not, apparently, for Democrats running for president.

The Senate voted 72-25 on Wednesday to stand up for the integrity of America's leading military field commander, Gen. David Petraeus.

[ ... ]

The Senate's nonbinding resolution was simple enough: It expressed "full support" for the general returning from the field of battle and "strongly" condemned "personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces." Given that they voted 81-0 to confirm him less than a year earlier, it was a reasonable gesture.

MoveOn's ad disgusted average Americans across the country. Even the Democrat-dominated Senate couldn't halt a vote to condemn it. A quarter of the Senate, however, did refuse to condemn the attacks, and curiously, that included all Senate Democrats who seek to become the military's next commander in chief.

Sens. Hillary Clinton and Christopher Dodd voted against the symbolic measure. Sens. Joe Biden and Barack Obama had other things to do that day and abstained from voting.

Read 'em all.