Deception & Misdirection

Snap, crackle…racist


The American Thinker blog ran a post today by Capital Research Center senior editor Matthew Vadum.

Read it here:

December 5, 2012

Snap, crackle…racist

Matthew Vadum

The Left’s vicious all-out assault on electoral integrity this past election cycle was largely funded by the nation’s most radical labor union and the man who brought you Rice Krispies.

The Battle Creek, Michigan-based W.K. Kellogg Foundation funneled a staggering $5.2 million in grants to the Applied Research Center (ARC), which churned out a steady stream of propaganda aimed at convincing Americans it’s somehow racist to require photo ID from a voter, Media Trackers Ohio reports.

The multi-billion-dollar foundation was endowed by Will Keith Kellogg (1860-1951) whose company manufactures Rice Krispies, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes, and a host of other breakfast cereals.

ARC also took in more than $200,000 in 2011 from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for “consulting.”  Since 2005 ARC has accepted grants from the Tides Foundation ($1.1 million), Ford Foundation ($1.1 million), and George Soros’s Open Society Institute ($715,000).

The misinformation campaign was orchestrated by so-called reporters like Brentin Mock of ARC’s Colorlines website.  Working closely with the extreme-left Nation magazine, Mock writes that “Voter fraud as a thing has been exposed by civil rights watchdogs and a wide range of journalists as pure conspiracy theory.”

To him, poll-watching aimed at catching and deterring fraud is racist vigilantism, little different from the lynchings of the Jim Crow era.  As far as Mock is concerned, peacefully observing people in a polling station is no different than burning a cross or dangling a noose in front of a person of color.  Poll-watching equals “voter suppression” and “voter intimidation,” according to Mock and his ilk.

Mock describes good government group True the Vote as one of hundreds of Tea Party groups across the nation that has “plugged itself into an existing infrastructure of influential far-right organizations hellbent on criminalizing abortion, banishing gun control, repealing the Affordable Care Act – and now, on intimidating would-be voters.”

He calls the respected Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky and political columnist John Fund “anti-voting rights activists and voter fraud hucksters.”

Mock thought it was hilarious when NAACP activists took over a Houston polling station, urged voters to vote for Obama, moved Obama supporters to the front of the line, offered trips to faraway Obama rallies, and handed out bottled water as a reward.  He sarcastically downplayed the illegal activities, calling them the “Houston NAACP Water-Gate caper.”

Mock’s employer, New York-based ARC, is a self-described “30-year-old racial justice think tank that uses media, research and activism to promote solutions.” Translation: America is a “structurally racist” hellhole, and the only things that might make it better are affirmative action and programs to “narrow the racial wealth divide.”

ARC hosts twice-yearly “Facing Race” conferences that are promoted as the country’s largest multi-racial gatherings of organizers, activists, and intellectuals who are “committed to change” in the areas of race and politics.  Self-described communist and former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones addressed the conference in 2010.

ARC isn’t the only race-baiting effort the Kellogg Foundation underwrites.

In 2010 Kellogg created its own five-year, $75 million “America Healing” initiative.  Harvard’s Stephan Thernstrom describes America Healing as “the largest single boondoggle ever created for the racial-grievance industry.”

The Kellogg Foundation also funds groups such as the radical Tides Foundation and Tides Center ($25,140,067 since 2001), National Council of La Raza ($5,438,113 since 2002), and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy ($4,301,770 since 2005).

The Minneapolis-based Institute happens to have been founded by Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizer Mark Ritchie.  He’s the ACORN-loving Minnesota secretary of state who orchestrated Al Franken’s highly dubious recount-victory over incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman in the 2008 election cycle.

Matthew Vadum is senior editor at Capital Research Center in Washington, D.C.  His book on ACORN and President Obama, Subversion Inc., was published last year.