Additional Charts Examining Left & Right Funding

Overview

Popular mythology says that the conservative movement is awash in money while the Left, starved for cash, lacks the means to effectively disseminate its message to the American public. But in fact, precisely the opposite is true. Funding for the Left dwarfs the funding that is received by the political Right. This page contains links to a series of charts that examine various aspects of Left and Right funding.

Some highlights:

One of the more noteworthy charts shows that the combined assets of the top 115 “progressive” (i.e., left-wing) foundations exceed $104 billion. Among these funders, which underwrite a vast network of advocacy “think tanks” and grassroots radical groups, are such well-known giants as the Ford, Gates, MacArthur, Rockefeller, and Tides Foundation, along with the Open Society Institute of the ubiquitous George Soros.

In stark contrast, a second, related chart identifies 83 leading conservative foundations whose combined assets amount to a mere $10.3 billion—in short, a 10-to-1 ratio in favor of the Left. Not a single conservative foundation has assets exceeding $1 billion, whereas 14 progressive foundations do.

A third illuminating chart shows that the combined assets of the 64 foundations and philanthropic organizations which comprise the left-wing Peace and Security Funders Group (PSFG) total an astounding $29 billion—a sum larger than the defense budgets of Greece, Colombia, and Poland combined. PSFG grew out of the Ploughshares Fund, which, during the Cold War, pushed for unilateral American disarmament and supported the nuclear-freeze movement, a Soviet-sponsored initiative that sought to further solidify the nuclear and military superiority which the USSR had recently gained. PSFG’s agendas today are a natural extension of its parent group’s objectives—drastic reductions in the U.S. defense budget coupled with massive American commitments for international humanitarian relief and economic-development programs.

A fourth chart identifies more than 550 progressive environmental groups whose combined assets amount to about $9.3 billion. These groups—which include such long-established left-wing stalwarts as the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace—contend that global warming (now “climate change”) is a fact of crisis proportions; that it is caused chiefly by human industrial activity; that businesses and corporations are major environmental despoilers; that government regulation of business is the solution; that drastic revisions of American law are required to promote the necessary remedies; that litigation in behalf of green agendas is in order; that many natural resources (fossil fuels, land) must be put off-limits to as large a degree as possible; and that human beings are inherently toxic to the natural environment. Notably, such groups do not derive their revenues solely from the largesse of foundations. Taxpayer dollars play an enormous role as well, as evidenced by a fifth chart showing that the federal government awards more than $560 million per year to at least 225 progressive environmental groups.

A fifth vital chart shows that there exist scarcely 40 conservative environmental groups; i.e., groups that: share preferences for property rights and free-market solutions to environmental problems; seek to preserve the rights of people to hunt and fish; regard the issue of global warming as controversial rather than “settled”; regard the theory of mankind’s culpability for global warming as questionable or, at best, unresolved; advocate clean coal mining, responsible drilling, and the replanting of trees after logging; and do not oppose alternative energies but seek to strike a balance with economic realities. The total combined assets of these groups are just $44.7 million, and only 7 of them receive any type of government funding at all.

Progressive immigration groups—which typically refer to illegal aliens as “undocumented immigrants” and seek to grant them rights traditionally reserved for legal citizens—form the focal point of a sixth chart. The combined assets of these groups—among which are such influential entities as the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the League of United Latin American Citizens—exceed $194 million. In addition to the rivers of cash that pour into their coffers from left-wing foundations, these organizations, again, siphon enormous sums of money from the bank accounts of American taxpayers. Indeed, the federal government funnels more than $325 million per year to at least 110 progressive immigration groups.

By contrast, another chart shows that there exist a mere 16 conservative immigration groups; i.e., groups that support traditional immigration policies focusing on border security and the enforcement of immigration laws. The combined net assets of these 16 entities total only $17 million, and the federal government gives money to just one of them.