Reply #16: Rightweb's take on DLC's mother organization PPI:

[struggle4progress]

... Since PPI’s inception in 1989, founders Will Marshall and Al From have advocated for a “third way” .... Which translates into policy recommendations that are very close to the .. conservatism articulated by .. Bush: uncompromising support for free market and free trade economics, a strong military with a global presence, an end to the politics of entitlement, rejection of affirmative action, and an embrace of competitive enterprise while at the same time rejecting a key role for government in development policy. Expressing the opinion of many progressive Democrats, Robert Kuttner, editor of the American Prospect, wrote that the political approach of the PPI and the DLC amounts to “splitting the difference with a Republican administration” ...

The neoconservative leanings of the PPI are evident in the writings of the contributing authors to Progressive Internationalism. In a March 9, 2004 essay, Ronald Asmus and Michael McFaul assert that “a bipartisan consensus is emerging in America about the need to bring greater freedom and democracy to the Greater Middle East.” Having signed on to the neocon agenda of invading Iraq, based on false claims about Iraq’s stockpiles of WMDs, the liberal hawks after the invasion also became among the most vocal advocates of the regional political restructuring plans of such neocon institutes as the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century. Asmus and McFaul call for a ten-fold budget increase for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental “democracy-promotion” institute that was established as a neoconservative political project in 1983 ...

PPI is part of the Third Way Foundation ... Between 2000 and 2002, the Foundation received $225,000 from The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, one of major top right-wing foundations. The DLC and its closely associated Progressive Policy Institute are the recipient of grants from many Fortune 500 firms as well from such right-wing foundations as the Bradley Foundation. Corporate contributors to the Progressive Policy Institute include AT&T Foundation, Eastman Kodak Charitable Trust, Prudential Foundation, Georgia-Pacific Foundation, Chevron, and Amoco Foundation. The Third Way Foundation, which is an umbrella group for the New Democrats of the DLC, receives funding from the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, Ameritech Foundation, and General Mills Foundation. (According to a magazine report, the DLC counts on funding from Bank One, Citigroup, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, Health Insurance Corporation, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Occidental Petroleum, and Raytheon.

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1534