John Podesta, former Clinton ally and confidant, built the Center for American Progress — which runs Think Progress — into a potent, misleading and devious message machine in favor of the Obama administration.
Podesta is stepping down, and is being replaced by Neera Tanden, a former Obama campaign official.
Tanden has been Chief Operating Officer of CAP, so this doesn’t represent a sea change. But is does emphasize how CAP and Think Progress are nothing more than mouthpieces for the Obama campaign.
Tax exempt mouthpieces, of course, arguing for tax increases on the “rich” while, of course, acting fully within the law as a “nonpartisan organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue code.”
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Just another indication that the tax code is fouled beyond fixing…..scrap it and replace it with next to nothing! Starve the beast that has become the Washington Empire!
Thanks for the
legal eye. Essential.
Couldn’t the same argument be made about The Heritage Foundation? Their current president and many of their board members have worked under conservative policymakers, and they advocate a variety of conservative positions, all while being a 501(c)(3).
You know my feelings on making arguments that could easily be thrown right back at us.
You appear to have missed the ironic point that an organization that pays no taxes is lobbying for higher taxes.
It reminds me of Russ Feingold forming his Progressives United PAC. He wants to fight against corporations using money to influence politics, so he formed a corporation (Progressives United) to raise money to influence politics.
Neera Tanden, a graduate of UCLA (’92) and Yale Law School (’96), is no doubt a very bright lady.
And, she is a lifetime dedicated Democrat political operative . . . not just a former Obama campaign operative.
She was the policy director of Hillary Clinton’s campaign during the primary season in 2008, having moved up from a position as Senator Clinton’s Legislative Director, a position she no doubt earned having been Hillary’s Deputy Campaign Director and Policy Director back during her senatorial run.
Prior to that, she had a stint as “the issues director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee”.
In fact, Neera has played an active political role in Democrat presidential campaigns since back in 1988, when, at the age of 18 she worked as a precinct captain for the Michael Dukakis campaign.
According to the Wiki post (link above) she worked for Bill Clinton’s campaign at one point as well.
In late 2005, following the successful Bush reelection campaign of one year earlier, Neera wrote an interesting “warm up” article in the American Prospect, in which she vigorously attacked President George Bush for the extreme level of negativity of his 2004 campaign, suggesting that the failures of his administration were somehow directly attributable to those negative vibes which she said Bush had willingly unleashed in order to win in 2004.
Here was the heart of her theory:
Well, I suppose someone had to “explain” why John Kerry had failed so miserably, in order to help get the party rank and file re-energized. It was a tough role, huh? And Democrats would say that somebody had to do it, no?
But let’s not pretend that in this new role at the Center for American Progress (CFAP) that Neera is suddenly going to become anything other than a lifetime, fully dedicated political operative for Democrats — the truth is that she will now be running a fully operational, tax exempt wing of the Obama reelection campaign.
This post hits the nail on the head. Her appointment as the new CFAP director, which, as directly quoted from their website, claims to be a “nonpartisan organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue code”, is just plain risible!
But because the taxpayers are also subsidizing the group, it is thoroughly annoying as well.
And here’s the closer!
Just check the title she chose for her attack on then-President Bush . . . “Campaigns Are Destiny.”/em>
Gee. I wonder what her theory of the early employment of open economic warfare, making false accusations intended to stir up racial divisiveness, and other examples of extreme negativity on the part of the Obama campaign will be?
Where is Podesta going to perch?