Dots.
Reduced to layman’s terms, this was the style of French painter
George Seurat. Painting in the manner of what has been called
“Neo-impressionism” or “Pointillism,” Seurat created paintings
composed of thousands of carefully colored points or dots. No one
dot had any meaning. Taken by itself alone it was a single vivid
point on the artist’s canvas. Only when the dots were seen in their
entirety, when one pulled back and looked at a Seurat painting as a
whole, could you suddenly see the entire pattern of dots forming a
remarkable portrait.
The question: Is left-wing billionaire George Soros emerging as
a political version of George Seurat? Are the political dots Soros
has splashed on the canvas of American politics, points of vivid
but solitary color, forming a pattern that threatens the very
process by which Americans conduct their political system?
Here are some of the dots, reaching back almost a decade.
* Dot: July, 2000. Chief Justice of the United States Supreme
Court William Rehnquist receives a cover memo from the Director of
the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, with a
second, lengthier memo attached. The subject: “Apparent Partnership
of Washington Post and Community Rights Counsel on Judges’ Travel
and Recusal Questions.” The memo writer, Deputy Assistant Director
of Public Affairs David Sellers, specifically accuses the
Washington Post and a Soros-funded group known as The
Community Rights Counsel of a relationship that “raises serious
ethical and factual questions.” The core of the allegation: that
the Soros-funded group provided the Post with “a written
analysis” of the CRC’s “findings” on the issue of travel by federal
judges. The trade-off: The memo to Rehnquist states that “in
exchange” for the Soros-funded CRC’s research “the paper has given
him (the CRC director) a platform,” specifically a front page story
in the Post on June 30, 2000. It also cites previous
stories run in 1998 and 1999. The memo concludes: “This form of
journalism is highly unprofessional and adds to the perception that
the reporter and the source have established a working relationship
that goes beyond the acceptable norm.” Sellers tells the Chief
Justice that “there appears to be a disturbing relationship that
has developed between a special interest lobby and a Washington
Post reporter.”
* Dot: July 2000. Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Russell
Feingold (D-WI) introduce legislation banning federal judges from
certain types of travel that exposes them to opinions and views
opposed by Soros. The Soros-funded Open Society Institute supplies
the money to investigate the travel.
* Dot: February, 2002. The pattern repeats itself two years
later. The U.S. Department of Justice receives five written
questions concerning the ethics of a pending federal judicial
nominee from another reporter for the Post. The Justice
Department is not told the research comes from a secret memo
researched and written by the Soros-funded CRC. With his answers to
the Soros-funded questions in-hand, the reporter’s story is
published the same day the once-secret memo is released in
letter-form addressed to Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, then (as
now) chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The letter is
featured in the Post story. There is no reference that the
CRC has received money from Soros, no mention that the
Post used the Soros-funded material as the basis for its
research, and no mention that the Post had received a
complaint from the office of the Chief Justice two years earlier.
The story then presents an NYU law professor to comment unfavorably
on the judge’s ethics — without telling readers that the same
professor was in fact a CRC consultant. In other words, Soros
funded the research, the reporter knowingly used the research
without telling his readers of Soros’s role, then the reporter
presented the letter to Leahy without revealing the connection
between the CRC and Soros to his readers. On that day Leahy
announces he will now hold a confirmation hearing on the nominee, a
hearing he has delayed for months.
* Dot: February — May 2002. Wisconsin Democrat Russell Feingold
chairs the hearing for the judicial nominee in February, and
Senators submit written questions until May. Later, it is
discovered that some of both Feingold’s oral and written questions
to the nominee, some verbatim, are supplied by the Soros-funded
CRC. Likewise, a number of Democratic Senators send the nominee
written questions, like Feingold with no acknowledgment as to the
role Soros’s money has played in their questions.
* Dot: The Capital Research Center reports the Community Rights
Counsel received a $50,000 grant from Soros’s Open Society
Institute in fiscal year 2000 to investigate the ethics of federal
judges.
Let’s move ahead. Past the 2004 election in which Soros gave
over $23 million dollars to a variety of 527 committees to
influence the 2004 election.
* Dot: September 2007. The New York Times gives a
special discount rate ($64,575) not available to others (who are
charged $142,083) to the Soros-funded Move On.org for a full page
ad attacking General David Petraeus.
* Dot: September- October 2007. Media Matters, described by
National Review’s Jonah Goldberg in the New York
Post as “part of the complex of liberal activist groups linked
to George Soros” targets Bill O’Reilly with a false charge of
racism and Rush Limbaugh with a phony charge of being
anti-military. Both stories dominate the news cycle for days.
* Dot: October 2007. Now we find out from our colleague The
Prowler here at The American Spectator that Congressman
Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform
Committee “has asked his investigative staff to begin compiling
reports on Limbaugh, and fellow radio hosts Sean Hannity and Mark
Levin based on transcripts from their shows, and to call in Federal
Communications chairman Kevin Martin to discuss the so-called
‘Fairness Doctrine.’” A Democratic House leadership aide says
flatly that “Limbaugh isn’t the only one who needs to be made
uncomfortable about what he says on the radio.”
LET’S STAND BACK and take a look at the pattern formed by all these
individual dots. What has George Soros’ money been used to pay
for?
* Research for a major newspaper in return for a front page
story based on that research.
* Questions to the Justice Department asked in the name of a
reporter for that same newspaper.
* A newspaper story reporting unfavorable comments on judicial
ethics from a law professor without identifying the professor as a
consultant to the Soros-funded group.
* Oral and written questions asked of a judicial nominee in a
Senate hearing by United States Senators.
* Legislation is introduced by two Democratic Senators based on
Soros-funded research.
* The New York Times advertising discount was given to
Move On.org, which has received, according to
discoverthenetworks.org, $2.5 million from Soros personally as well
as much more from Soros associates.
* Media Matters, the organization seeking to drive Limbaugh and
others off the air, has received indirect Soros funding through
other groups that receive direct funding from the billionaire such
as MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress and Democracy
Alliance.
* Forty-one Democratic Senators vote for a Senate resolution
condemning Limbaugh, a resolution based on the Media Matters
research.
Congressman Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight
Committee, has now denied he plans to launch a congressional
investigation of radio talk show hosts designed to censor their
speech or possibly even take them off the air completely. He has
called the American Spectator report to the contrary “a
fictitious story.”
But a few days before the Spectator ran its story I
heard former Democratic presidential candidate and Soros fundee
retired general Wesley Clark tell MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson that he
supports a ratings system for free speech. “I don’t see why there
can’t be standards for political discourse,” Clark said, going on
to urge the establishment of speech rating system of “A-rated,
B-rated and C-rated” and so on. And just by the sheerest of
coincidences, a year ago this October 16 the New York Sun
reported that Mr. Clark’s political action committee Wes-Pac had
received $75,000 from Soros. Clark was quite up front about his
objective with talk radio, which interestingly dovetailed with the
sentiments attributed to Waxman. Said Clark: “There are standards
for propriety in public broadcasting, are there not?…What we need
to do is we need to be rating the whole standard of political
discourse in America.” Why? When asked by Carlson if he, Clark, was
“attempting to censor [Rush Limbaugh] by taking him off the air?”
the Soros-funded ex-candidate bluntly replied: “Well, I think he’s
[Rush] crossed the line.”
None of this is fictitious. One can only be curious if the
powerful Waxman and his Democratic colleagues who have a penchant
for passing House Resolutions will have the courage to clarify the
issue by introducing a one-sentence House Resolution that reads:
“Resolved: The House of Representatives supports the First
Amendment of the United States Constitution.”
ALL OF THESE THINGS — newspaper stories, questions to a government
agency from a reporter, questions asked of witnesses by Senators,
legislation introduced by Senators, newspaper advertisements, talk
radio, Senate resolutions and, most frighteningly, federal
investigations powered by public tax dollars — all of these have
traditionally been an independent part of the American democratic
process. They are all now, Waxman’s denial not withstanding, very
clearly and with easy documentation, under assault.
Conservatives need to be asking three questions:
1) What else is being done out of the public eye to undermine
our democratic system?
2) Who is paying for it? For example, just as the pro-censorship
Clark is a Soros-fundee, who else calling for repeal of the
Fairness Doctrine in Congress receives Soros money? Who provides
Henry Waxman’s staff with research? Who, for that matter, has
provided his staff?
The third and last question is the most obvious: What are
conservatives going to do about all of this?
Hopefully, Dr. Dobson, putting Hillary Clinton in charge of the
Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA is not the answer to
question three.
