I ran across an interesting blurb over at Free Republic, and I thought it was worth bringing to your attention…
The source is David Horowitz’s most excellent “Discover the Networks” website .
Beatrice Joyce Kean established the Joyce Foundation in 1948 after accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars in the lumber industry (via family-owned timberlands, plywood and saw mills, and wholesale and retail building-material distribution facilities). During her lifetime, most of Ms. Kean’s modestly small philanthropic gifts were to apolitical recipients such as hospitals and health organizations. After her death in 1972, a professional staff took control of the Foundation and began to move it toward the political left. At first, universities and cultural institutions were added to its roster of grant recipients. A few years later, radical environmentalist and conservation groups entered the picture, as eventually did organizations dedicated to social justice, prison reform, and increased funding for government and social services, particularly for minorities. A notable recent member of the Joyce Foundation’s Board of Directors was Barack Obama, who ran successfully as the Democratic candidate for an Illinois Senate seat in 2004.
Today the Joyce Foundation seeks to “suppor[t] efforts to protect the natural environment of the Great Lakes, to reduce poverty and violence in the region, and to ensure that its people have access to good schools, decent jobs, and a diverse and thriving culture.” The Foundation has six main Giving Programs toward which it directs its philanthropy:
(a) The Environmental Program funds organizations that oppose the use of land for such endeavors as logging, mining, construction, and oil exploration; many of these groups are hostile to a capitalist economic model as well. The Environmental Program warns of global warming — which it attributes largely to pollution created by industrial endeavors — and advocates the increased use of bicycles and mass transit as transportation alternatives to cars.
(b) The Anti-Gun Program seeks to drive small gun dealerships out of business by placing the firearms industry completely under consumer product health and safety oversight. It misrepresents the findings of research on gun-related deaths by failing to distinguish between gun-related deaths among inner-city gang members, where the death rates from shootings are astronomical, and gun-related deaths among members of the general population, which are relatively rare. As a result, it depicts gun violence as a national epidemic, thereby creating a perceived justification for what it hopes will be the erosion of Second Amendment rights.
Filed under: 2nd amendment, Election 2008 | Tagged: 2nd amendment, Barack Obama, beatrice joyce kean, david horowitz, Election 2008, free republic, joyce foundation, liberal agenda, obamessiah, Senator Gravitas, Zerobama | 3 Comments »