Bradley Foundation: Difference between revisions

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The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a large and influential right-wing foundation with about half a billion US dollars in assets. According to the Bradley Foundation 1998 Annual Report, it was giving away more than $30 million per year. The Foundation has financed efforts to support welfare reform, to promote school vouchers, to deregulate business, and to privatize government services.

The Bradley Foundation's former president, Michael Joyce, was instrumental in creating the Philanthropy Roundtable, a network of foundations that support right-wing advocacy organizations.

In the early 1990s the foundation helped support the American Spectator magazine, which at the time was researching damaging material on President Bill Clinton. Before that, it had paid to have David Brock's attack on Anita Hill published.

The Bradley Foundation has provided important support for think tanks and groups that advocated an attack on Iraq as a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, such as the Project for a New American Century and the John M. Olin Center for Strategic Studies. In early 2003, Joyce bragged to a local paper that President George W. Bush and members of his administration were influenced by the policy discussions of those groups. Joyce commented that the attack only hastened Bush's inevitable move towards neoconservatism. [1]

Criticism

Phil Wilayto, a writer for the communist Workers World Party, and Media Transparency, a left wing website that tracks the funding of right wing politics, writes:

The overall objective of the Bradley Foundation, however, is to return the U.S. -- and the world -- to the days before governments began to regulate Big Business, before corporations were forced to make concessions to an organized labor force. In other words, laissez-faire capitalism: capitalism with the gloves off.

Wilayto also published a 140-page "investigative report" on the Bradley Foundation, The Feeding Trough, on behalf of the "A Job is a Right Campaign" in Milwaukee. The report attacks the Bradley Foundation for allegedly commissioning the studies that supported the Welfare Reform legislation in Wisconsin. Wiyalto has stated that Wisconsin welfare reform is a draconian program that has increased the misery of the poor by supplying business with forced labor at wages inadequate to maintain a reasonable standard of living for the purpose of bringing massive profits to private business and non-profit agencies.

People for the American Way alleges that the Bradley Foundations underreports its giving to right-wing organizations. [2]

Past and present grantees

List of grants and cumulative amounts given from 1985-2002 [3].

National organizations

Over $10 million

Over $5 million

Over $2 million

Over $1 million

Over $500,000

Over $100,000

Less than $100,000

Unknown

Local charities

Over $5 million

Over $1 million

Madison Center for Educational Affairs

Over $500,000

Milwaukee Public Library Foundation

Over $100,000

Unknown amount

Public officials

Jurists

Writers

External links

The Bradley Foundation -- Official website
The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation -- An analysis and critique by Phil Wilayto
The Feeding Trough: The Bradley Foundation, "The Bell Curve" and the Real Story Behind W-2, Wisconsin's National Model for Welfare Reform. -- Investigative report by Phil Wilayto
Response from Michael Joyce, foundation president, to The Feeding Trough

@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 === National organizations ===
-*''Over $10 million''
+''Over $10 million''
 *[[American Enterprise Institute]]
 *[[Heritage Foundation]]
-*''Over $5 million''
+''Over $5 million''
 *[[Freedom House]]
 *[[National Affairs]]
-*''Over $2 million''
+''Over $2 million''
 *[[Federalist Society]]
 *[[Center for the Study of Popular Culture]]
-*''Over $1 million''
+''Over $1 million''
 *[[Brookings Institution]]
 *[[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]]
@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 *[[Institute for Justice]]
-*''Over $500,000''
+''Over $500,000''
 *[[Black Alliance for Educational Options]]
 *[[American Spectator Educational Foundation]]
-*''Over $100,000''
+''Over $100,000''
 *[[Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability]]
 *[[Foundation for Individual Rights in Education]]
 *[[Heartland Institute]]
-*''Less than $100,000''
+''Less than $100,000''
 *[[Children First America]]
 *[[Council for the Spanish Speaking]]
 *[[Potomac Foundation]]
-*''Unknown
+''Unknown
 *[[Center for Education Reform]]
 *[[Child Abuse Prevention Fund]]
@@ Line 72: / Line 72: @@
 ===Local charities===
-*''Over $5 million''
+''Over $5 million''
 *[[Wisconsin Policy Research Institute]]
 *[[Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra]]
-*''Over $1 million''
+''Over $1 million''
 *[[Madison Center for Educational Affairs]]
-*''Over $500,000''
+''Over $500,000''
 *[[Milwaukee Public Library Foundation]]
-*''Over $100,000''
+''Over $100,000''
 *[[Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee]]
 *[[Wisconsin Historical Foundation]]
-*''Unknown amount''
+''Unknown amount''
 *[[Association of Midwest Museums]]
 *[[Epilepsy Association of Southwest Wisconsin]]