Teaching Tolerance… SPLC Style

The Southern Poverty Law Center has got to be one of the most ironic places on the planet. It’s incredible enough that not one of “the nation’s leading civil rights organization’s” top executives is a minority, and that this deplorable situation has existed for the entire 40-year history of the SPLC, so it’s probably not much of a shock to learn that the SPLC’s “educational outreach” division has been led by “whites only” for 19 of its 20-year history too.

“Teaching Tolerance” created in 1991 “is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations and supporting equitable school experiences for our nation’s children,” according to the current TT web site.

An earlier iteration of the TT homepage, from 1998, claims:

“In 1991, Teaching Tolerance began supporting the efforts of K-12 teachers and other educators to promote respect for differences and an appreciation of diversity.“

Oddly, the term “diversity” has been removed from the organization’s current mission statement all together, perhaps because there was so little diversity to be found at Teaching Tolerance.

In 1994, Dan Morse of the Montgomery Advertiser, the SPLC’s hometown newspaper, first noted the lack of black executives at the Center. He also noted that all eight staff members of Teaching Tolerance were white, as well. The Advertiser ran a follow-up story two-years later, noting that nothing had changed in the SPLC’s Executive Suite.

Teaching Tolerance’s first director was Sara Bullard, and while we were unable to find a photo of Ms. Bullard, her tenure included the years covered by the Montgomery Advertiser stories. If anyone has a photo of Ms. Bullard, please pass it along to Watching the Watchdogs and we’ll be happy to include it in this post.

Ms. Bullard was followed by Jim Carnes, sometime around 1997:

Mr. Carnes was succeeded by Jennifer Holladay, who served as Director from roughly 2002-2008:

When Ms. Holladay received a six-digit promotion in 2009, she was replaced by interim Director Lecia Brooks:

Ms. Brooks served for about a year before becoming Director of SPLC’s Civil Rights Memorial Center, a position that does not appear among the six-digit salaries of the SPLC’s top executives.

Ms. Brooks made way for Teaching Tolerance’s current director, Maureen Costello:

So much for diversity at Teaching Tolerance.

Ironically, (there’s that word again…), one of Teaching Tolerance’s flagship efforts is its annual “Mix it Up at School Day,” which encourages K-12 kids to sit with someone new in the school cafeteria. A noble and worthwhile experiment without doubt, but one has to wonder with whom do the all-white executives of the SPLC and Teaching Tolerance mix it up? “Do as we say, not as we do…”

One final note, the Teaching Tolerance home page brags about the many awards garnered by its “teaching materials”:

“Our teaching materials have won two Oscars, an Emmy and more than 20 honors from the Association of Educational Publishers, including two Golden Lamp Awards, the industry’s highest honor.“

As noted in an earlier WTW post, the Association of Educational Publishers is a public relations outfit. Non-profits are encouraged to join the association in order to “stand out in a crowded marketplace” and “maximize your ROI [return on investment]“

According to the AEP, “Industry awards are surefire way to give your product and your brand a one-up over your competitors.“

Your membership in the AEP entitles you to a 50% discount on entry fees for the awards! You actually have to pay cash, (from the donation pot, no doubt) to “enter” the contest against other “entrants” who also paid for the privilege of “competing.” Now there’s a wide field of contenders. What if no one else paid to enter your particular event? Instant winner!

Well, the TT page does call it “the industry’s highest honor, and that’s pretty much what Teaching Tolerance is all about… maximizing ROI for the white millionaires who run the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Teaching Tolerance does not list its editorial staff on its web site and never has, (for obvious reasons, no doubt). Therefore the names and dates for this post had to be gleaned from archived publications and web sites, mostly created by the SPLC.

If anyone knows of any errors or omissions in the Teaching Tolerance timeline presented here, please notify Watching the Watchdogs and we will correct the matter immediately.

SPLC – 2011 – The Year in Hate that Wasn’t

The start of the new year presents an opportunity to look back on the good works of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which purports to “fight hate” in the U.S., for only $86,500 a day.

This claim, no doubt, is the main reason why hundreds of thousands of mostly elderly donors sent the SPLC more than $31 million donor-dollars in 2010. After all, who wouldn’t want to do their part to “fight hate”?

Perhaps the best place to begin would be with the SPLC’s own case docket, found on their own website. A quick glance at the docket shows 16 cases for 2011, almost equally divided between law suits filed against under-funded school districts and suits filed on behalf of immigrants and illegal aliens.

In one “case,” the SPLC threatened to sue a school district for disqualifying a high school Homecoming King and Queen because both students were female. The school backed down before the “case” went to court.

While some may argue that these cases are important too, it really does not require a multimillion dollar law firm to file these suits, and let’s face it… “fighting hate” this ain’t.

By its own accounting, the SPLC hasn’t sued a “hate group” in nearly five years, and has only done so three times since 2000. In each of these cases the modus operandi has been the same:

1. Local thugs commit a crime, usually assault, are arrested, tried and sentenced to prison.

2. The SPLC steps in with a civil law suit, ostensibly on behalf of the victims.

3. The SPLC’s fund-raising machinery goes into high gear, bombarding the donors and the media with grisly descriptions of the crime and pleading for more money to “fight hate.”

4. The court finds in favor of the victims, awarding astronomical damages that the defendants will never begin to pay, especially from prison.

5. The SPLC pockets millions of tax-free donor-dollars garnered at the expense of the victims, who, of course, do not receive a single dime from the SPLC’s windfall.

Following the docket back in time we see that the SPLC pursued about the same number of cases in 2010, but then the numbers drop dramatically to 5 or 6 cases a year from that point back. In the meantime, the SPLC claims that the number of “hate groups” more than doubled since the year 2000.

Considering the SPLC has taken in more than a third of a BILLION dollars in the same time span, it doesn’t look like the donors are getting much of a return on investment.

In addition to its case docket, the SPLC also keeps a running total of “hate incidents” on its website, going back to 2003.  One can even find a link to a downloadable spreadsheet of the “incidents.”

The header for the “hate incidents” page includes an interesting turn of phrase that equates these “incidents” with actual “hate crimes.”

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A closer look at the SPLC’s “data,” as usual, paints a very different story. First, note that the header states that the “incidents” are “drawn primarily from media sources.” This is because the SPLC does no original investigation of its own.

Since the media and law enforcement steadfastly refuse to examine any of the SPLC’s claims, this is not a problem for them.

As of this writing, data for only the first three quarters of 2011 was available on the SPLC web site, so let’s take a look at 2010, the last full year of reporting:

The SPLC reports 234 “hate incidents” for 2010, including arson, assault, harassment and murder, among other “incidents.”

Both of the “incidents” listed under “arson” are actually assaults, with no references to any fires set.

An “incident” where a black and an Asian man in Seattle nearly beat a 16 year-old white boy to death, because he was white, is listed under “vandalism.”

As it turns out, “vandalism” is the largest category of “incidents,” comprising 31% of the total. The majority of acts of vandalism involved graffiti.

Second to vandalism on the list is the category “legal developments,” coming in at 26% of the total. “Legal developments” consist entirely of follow-up reports on the charges, pleas and sentencing of people involved in previously listed “incidents.”

How in the world can these be counted as “hate incidents”??? This double-dipping serves only to pad out the numbers.

This kind of fast and loose addition is the stock and trade of the SPLC’s public relations guru, Mark Potok. Potok makes up these numbers out of thin air and the media accepts and repeats them without vetting a single claim.

Two other categories of “incidents” making up 11% of the total, include “leafletting” and “rallies.” While the majority of people may or may not agree with the messages promoted by the participants, these are Constitutionally protected civil rights!!

An entry for a rally in Frankfort Township, Illinois, is listed twice, is just one of several examples where the same “incident” is reported more than once, just to pad out the totals.

Again, for the purposes of SPLC fund-raising, it really makes no difference what they write or how obvious it is that the numbers are meaningless.  NOBODY EVER VETS THESE NUMBERS!

The same well-meaning folks who sent the SPLC hundreds of millions of donor-dollars since 2000 will continue to do so in the belief that they are somehow “fighting hate.”

Mark Potok — The SPLC’s ‘Hate Map’ is an “Imperfect Process”

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s $147,000-a-year public relations guru, Mark Potok,  recently appeared at a local Virginia university to talk about, what else, “The State of Hate in America: The Radical Right Since 9/11″

Billed as a “Visiting Scholar, Mr. Potok delivered a rather predictable, hour-long diatribe on the evilness of evil white/conservative/Christian men in America, all leading to and from the Oklahoma City bombing.

A long-time Watching the Watchdogs reader actually captured most of Potok’s sales pitch on video and, better still, Mr. Potok was finally asked the very question we’ve been asking for years: Where are the missing “hate groups”?

Up to that point, Mr. Potok had been preaching to the choir. The professor who introduced the Maestro gushingly referred to him as her “personal hero,” and the crowd of wide-eyed twenty-somethings had been nodding and “Amen”-ing their way throughout the lecture.

By questioning Potok’s numbers in his own element, our correspondent was literally “bearding the lyin’,” so to speak.

Below is a transcript of the exchange, and a video clip of the the three-minute exchange can be found here.

The question seemed to throw Mr. Potok off his game, as nobody, certainly nobody in the media, academia or the DHS had ever challenged his numbers before. He seems to hem and haw and grasp for words. At one point, Mr. Potok seemed to have a flash of sudden inspiration, the missing “hate groups,” said he, “are state chapters!”

If you listen closely, you can almost hear Jon Lovitz exclaiming from the bleachers, “Yeah! That’s the ticket!!”

To his credit, Mr. Potok acknowledged that the question was an honest one: “I understand the criticism and it’s not an illegitimate criticism,” he said.

More amazing still, Mark Potok admitted that his “Hate Map,” the Crown Jewel of all SPLC fund-raising fear campaigns is “a very rough measure” and the result of “an imperfect process.”

Potok further concedes that his information is “anecdotal” and that up to 20% of his groups can’t be found. The actual number is 26%, assuming all of the other “groups” actually exist. In fact, last year Mr. Potok bumped the number of alleged “hate groups” up by 70 and yet the number of homeless “hate groups” jumped by 99 for the same time period!

In other words, Mr. Potok’s numbers are meaningless. Who knew?

Let’s allow the Director of Intelligence to speak for himself:

Q: Mr. Potok, every year your organization produces a “Hate Map” that purports to identify the number of “hate groups” in individual states across the country. This past spring, according to your accounting, the number was up to 1,002, but if you actually go in… if you Google the map and look at it…, 262 of those groups aren’t affiliated with any town or city or anything. They’re just kind of floating out there in limbo.

MP: Sure. Well, these aren’t.. I mean, look, let me tell you a little bit about how we do the “hate group” map. I understand the criticism and it’s not an illegitimate criticism.

Let me first of all say, that we do the “hate group” map and the counts, and so on, as a very rough measure… I’m not talking about the individual towns and such… as an attempt to get a feel for what the Radical Right looks like. Is it growing? Is it shrinking? And so on.

And, you know, I will admit right up front, I mean, is… are two groups with two people in them worse than one group with four people in them? Well, maybe not… it’s the same thing. But, what we’ve seen historically is that counts do seem to… very clearly… go up and down… we now see it going up again and we can see it reflected anecdotally.

What you are asking about, and it’s true, we have a lot of groups that we can’t identify in a town, and you know, I’ll say we can’t always… it’s an imperfect process… because we’re forced to… many times we know quite a lot about a group. Other times we don’t know much more, uh, other than a particular Klan group… What those basically are, those are state-wide units… that’s what those groups are… So, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan might have a chapter in Harrison, Arkansas, they may have a chapter in another town, and so they might also have an Arkansas chapter, and in those cases, we don’t know where the chapter is.

Q: But the media doesn’t see it that way. They quote you verbatim, saying that there are 1,002 groups out there.

MP: Well, that’s, that’s what there are out there…

Q: But you can’t locate them. You claim there are 221 Klan groups in the U.S., but you can’t locate 109 of them.

MP: Sorry?

Q: You claim there are 221 Klan groups in the U.S., but you can’t locate 109 of them. That’s fifty percent. That’s quite a discrepancy.

MP: You said it yourself, it’s more like 20% of the overall numbers [unintelligible]. And I’m telling you… the reasons I’m not telling you it’s not possible that some claims of some statewide group that doesn’t exist.

We’re often looking at these groups… I mean, one of the criteria we use when looking at these groups… we’re trying to separate out the real groups that really do things from one man and a computer [unintelligible]… In other words, separating out the real interest blogs… or, you know, a site on the Internet, from groups that actually do something. So one of the things we try to establish [unintelligible]… is that group active? Has it had a rally? Is it publishing? Propaganda of one kind or another? Can you join that group? Those kinds of things.

And there it is, from Director of Intelligence himself. The ludicrous nature of the final paragraph is worthy of its own blog entry, so replete is it with half-truths and outright contradictions. Stay tuned.

SPLC — Housing Crisis for “Hate Groups”?

While doing a little housekeeping recently here at Watching the Watchdogs, we came across a fantastic statistic buried within the Southern Poverty Law Center’s indisputable “hate group” accounting system.

In 2009, WTW noted that of the 926 “hate groups” designated by the SPLC for the previous year, (according to their own spurious definition), fully 127 of them were not affiliated with any known city or town on the map. That’s 14% of the total listed on their “Hate Map” fund-raising tool for 2008, (the “Hate Map” numbers always reflect the previous fiscal year.)

We can all rest assured that those 127 mystery groups are really, really out there, because the good folks at the SPLC tell us they are out there, right? Not that they give any information about the other alleged “groups” beyond a town name. One would think “outing” a hate group by giving its address, phone number and membership list would be a great way to shame the “haters” back underground.

2008 was also the year that Barack Obama was elected president, causing the SPLC’s public relations guru Mark Potok to sputter that this only proved that Americans were more racist than ever, and Mr. Potok predicted that the election of a black president combined with a tanking economy would lead to unprecedented growth in the number of “hate groups.”

As it turns out, for 2009, the first year of the Obama administration and the worst year of the current recession (so far…), the number of “hate groups,” as counted by Swami Potok himself, rocketed from 926 to 932, a terrifying increase of six groups, or six-tenths of a percent. Shocking, but true.

In the big money world of the Hate-For-Profit industry, the number of “hate groups” is NEVER allowed to decline, no matter how much money you throw at them, and since the SPLC is the sole arbiter of the highly lucrative and highly meaningless “hate group” label, we at WTW were mystified as to why Mr. Potok only came up with a 0.65% increase? After all, if you’re the one pulling numbers out of thin air why not make up a number that would at least back up your predictions?

Six-tenths of a percent is the lowest increase in the SPLC’s entire history.

Regretfully, we at Watching the Watchdogs were so bowled over by these anemic returns that we dropped the ball and did not bother to run through the state by state maps to see how many of those 932 groups were officially homeless. For this, we apologize. We took the numbers for granted even though we have known for years that you cannot trust the SPLC’s mathematics. Mea culpa, mea culpa…

In March of this year, Swami Potok released his impeccably researched number of “hate groups” for 2010, and we were relieved to note that Mr. Potok had noted his previous error and arbitrarily jumped the numbers from 932 to 1002, an increase of 70 groups in one year, or a net gain of 7.5%. Now there’s the kind of good hate work we expect from Mr. Potok. Lord knows you can’t scare the old folks with a measly six-tenths of a percent. What was the man thinking?

As it turns out, after reviewing the maps and doing the math, the number of unaffiliated “hate groups” jumped rather significantly, to 262, or 26% of the total right off the top!

What this means is that while the number of “hate groups” increased by 70, the number of homeless “hate groups” increased by 99!! Apparently, not only were every last one of the new “hate groups” phantoms, but 29 other hotbeds of hate got evicted as well.

It’s no secret that the bursting of the housing bubble caused a lot of good, decent Americans to lose their homes, but thanks to Mr. Potok and the SPLC, we can take great comfort in knowing that evil American “hate groups” are faring no better.

Cue the schadenfreude…

Mr. Potok has been the “Director of Intelligence” at the SPLC for more than a decade now, and while some might be alarmed by these shocking lapses in both accounting and judgment, (Six-tenths of a percent, Mr. P.?? What were you thinking??), fear not, for Mr. Potok’s six-digit salary is far from being in jeopardy. In fact, his grateful overseers actually gave him a $7,300 raise last year (“Recession? What recession?”).

Mr. Potok’s spurious “Hate Map” has been instrumental in bringing in more than $86,000 tax-free donor-dollars a day, every day last year. His numbers are crap, but what does he care? It’s not like anyone in the mainstream media is actually going to look at them.

When you’re the one making up the numbers, you can make up any number you want.

SPLC — “Fighting Hate” on $86,000 a Day

In February, 1994, Dan Morse and Greg Jaffe, two reporters from the Montgomery Advertiser, that city’s largest newspaper, produced a week-long exposé of the history and practices of the Southern Poverty Law Center, also based in Montgomery.

The first of those ground-breaking articles noted that in 1993 the SPLC received an average of $31,348 a day, every day, from its well-intended-but-misinformed donor base, for a total of more than $11 million dollars for the year.

Fast-forward 17 years into the future and the SPLC’s income has nearly tripled to $31,559,774 dollars, according to Page 7 of the SPLC’s own audited financial report for 2010, for a new average of $86,465 tax-free dollars a day, every day, 365 days a year.

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Despite this staggering income of more than $3,600 per hour, the SPLC is still broke and desperately needs your cash, as evidenced by the never-ending stream of fund-raising letters signed by Millionaire Morris Dees.

Oddly enough, even after a full year of unceasing battle with the Forces of Hate, Page 7 indicates that the prestigious “non-profit” organization had  $364,542 donor-dollars left over. We’re not accountants here at WTW, but we’re pretty sure there is a technical term for these collection plate scrapings:

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No matter. Mr. Dees wouldn’t be asking for cash all the time if he didn’t need it, well, most of it, to “fight hate,” right? After all, the SPLC is proud to declare, ” During the last fiscal year, approximately 66% of our total expenses were spent on program services.” That’s $20 million dollars going toward “bringing the Klan to its knees” and shutting down new “hate groups” wherever they appear.

Well, not so much. See, the term “program services” is a tad misleading, as Page 11 of the same financial report indicates:

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Take the term “legal services,” for instance. Of the $9 million the SPLC spent on “legal services” last year, more than half, (52%) went toward salaries, (the SPLC’s top four lawyers split the first million donor dollars between themselves each year). Other “legal services” include rent, insurance and utilities. Most laymen would call these expenditures “costs,” but the experts at the SPLC know a “service” when they see one. The SPLC spent even more money on “public education” services.

Ironically, the SPLC spent more than twice as much money on postage than it did on actual “legal case expenses.” In 2009, they actually spent more on office supplies.

Note the column marked “Development” under the “Supporting Services” heading. “Development” is Accounting-Speak for “fund-raising.” In short, 19 cents of every donor-dollar raised goes toward raising the next donor-dollar. Note that the SPLC spent over five times as much on fund-raising as it did on actual “legal case expenses.”

At least the donors can rest assured that their donations are going toward “fighting hate groups,” though, which, of course, is the SPLC’s stock and trade. Er, well, again… not so much. Of the 11 cases on the SPLC’s 2010 docket, not one of them had anything to do with “hate groups.”

In fact, the SPLC hasn’t brought law suit against a “hate group” in four and a half years… By their own accounts, they haven’t filed a “landmark suit” in nearly ten years. So just where are all of these millions of donor-dollars going each year?

Most of the SPLC’s “legal case expenses” since 2007 seem to go toward suing impoverished school districts in Mississippi and supporting immigrants, documented and otherwise. We won’t deny the merit of these cases, but $86 thousand a day seems a little steep for these run-of-the-mill civil suits. Any first year law school graduate could handle most of these cases for a fraction of the SPLC’s costs.

Again, suing on behalf of an immigrant who slipped on a sidewalk and broke his ankle may be a worthy cause, but “fighting hate” it ain’t.

Of course, the $86k-a-day doesn’t include a single dime from the SPLC’s bloated “Endowment Fund,” which generated an additional $26 MILLION in tax-free interest last year. Morris Dees created the Endowment Fund so that “one day” he could cease all fund-raising operations and live off the interest. That day came many years ago, Mr. Dees.

Take the $31,589,955 you claim it cost to run the center last year, deduct the $6 million you spent on fund-raising, which would no longer be necessary, and compare it to the $26,563,924 your Endowment Fund generated in interest alone:

$31,589,955
-   6,020,180
$25,569,775  Total costs for 2010

$26,563,924  Endowment Fund interest, minus
-25,569,775  Total costs for 2010
$994,149

Morris Dees could pay every last dime of his annual expenses from the Endowment Fund interest and STILL have a nearly million dollar tax-free “non-profit” left over! All without soliciting another red cent…

Sure sounds like the “Endowment Fund” is doing a bang up job. One would think so, but the SPLC isn’t about broken ankles or “fighting hate,” it’s all about the money, get it? Even though the “Endowment Fund” already generates nearly a million dollars more than Morris Dees can spend each year, on August 3, 2011, Dees advertised for a “Regional Advancement Director,” (RAD):

“We seek a Regional Advancement Director (RAD) to join our growing major gifts team. Based in Montgomery, the RAD will travel to targeted regions of the US identifying, cultivating, soliciting and closing individual major gifts.”

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Even $86,465 a day isn’t enough to “fight hate” at the SPLC.  Donors really ought to be asking themselves if their donor-dollars couldn’t do more good right at home. That $100 dollar check will mean a lot more to a local food pantry, women’s shelter or free clinic than it will to the SPLC.

The SPLC’s bloated Endowment Fund generates roughly $50 dollars a minute in interest, without even touching the $220 MILLION dollar principal, and local charities will actually do something useful and helpful with the money.

Think about it.

A Great Source for SPLC Information

Watching the Watchdogs is only one of a myriad number of groups around the country who seek to expose the public relations practices, highly questionable fund-raising tactics and dangerous media manipulations of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

One such group is the Georgia Heritage Council, who have compiled a listing of excellent articles on the SPLC as well as many other players in the alphabet-soup Hate Industry.

Watching the Watchdogs is pleased to share a link to this excellent resource.

Although the Internet has allowed the SPLC to reach more unwitting donors and witless media outlets, the growing body of facts and figures that can be found online may ultimately prove to be their downfall.

SPLC — Every Tragedy Has a Golden Lining

We’ll say this for Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees… he’s consistent.

The first of the Norwegian murder victims had not even been buried before Rumpelstiltskin Dees began spinning their tragedy into gold:

July 26, 2011

Dear Friend,

Inside the DHS: Former Top Analyst Speaks OutSPLC President Richard Cohen’s Letter to DHSSPLC Tracks More Than 1,000 US Hate Groups 10 Profiles of Anti-Muslim Domestic Extremists Domestic Terrorism Plots Since the Oklahoma City Bombing Donate

The terrorist attack that took the lives of so many children in Norway is a sobering reminder that hate and extremism can drive people to commit unspeakable acts of violence.

The problem is just as grave in our country. For the first time, hate groups here have topped 1,000, and the potential for widespread damage is mounting. Just this year, a neo-Nazi was arrested for planting a bomb that could have killed hundreds along an MLK Day parade route in Spokane.

That’s why it’s so shocking that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has bowed to political pressure from conservatives and dramatically cut back the resources it’s devoting to the threat from right-wing extremists. We exposed DHS’ reckless decision in June and have called on the agency to reverse course.

The tragedy in Norway takes me back to the Oklahoma City bombing, the work of a right-wing fanatic that left 168 people dead. Months before that attack, we warned federal officials about the mounting danger from radical extremists. Now, with your help, we’re speaking out again. Too much is at stake to remain silent.

Your voice — your support — is amplifying ours. Thank you for standing with us.

Sincerely, Morris Dees Founder, Southern Poverty Law Center

“For the first time,” Dees warns, “hate groups here have topped 1,000.” Little matter that their is no legal definition of  “hate group” or that the SPLC is the sole arbiter of this arbitrary appellation. Dees neglects to mention that his $147,000 donor-dollar a year “Intelligence Director” Mark Potok can’t seem to locate 262 of these groups on the map, or that Potok fails to offer almost any information on the size or location of any of them.

“A neo-Nazi was arrested for planting a bomb that could have killed hundreds…” While no one in their right mind would minimize the very real dangers of a pipe bomb, only a calculating propagandist like Mr. Dees would deliberately exaggerate the deadly potential of the Spokane device.

According to the FBI and news reports:

“Law enforcement sources described the device to ABC News as a “small pipe bomb” designed to be triggered by a radio frequency system.”

“He [FBI agent Frank Harrill] added that authorities believe the device “was potentially lethal and could have had the ability to inflict multiple casualties.”

Again, let no one diminish the danger this device posed to people in the immediate vicinity, but really, Mr. Dees, “… could have killed hundreds?? Nothing like a little groundless hyperbole to pad the numbers, eh, Mr. Dees?

The blood had yet to be scrubbed from the sidewalk in Tuscon, Arizona this past January, after a shooting spree left six dead and thirteen wounded, and there was Mark Potok, on his Huffington Post soapbox, psychoanalyzing accused gunman Jared Loughner. It was only the release of Loughner’s Uncle Fester-esque mug shot that forced Potok to throw in the towel and admit that Loughner was seriously mentally ill.

Jared Loughner

 

This didn’t prevent Potok from attempting to gain access to Loughner’s “right-wing” psyche by analyzing a short list of books found on Loughner’s YouTube profile. Forget the fact that nearly every book on the list has been required reading for high school students since at least the 1970s, Swami Potok, who has no legal or law enforcement background, and certainly no psychological experience, (at least not as a practitioner), scrutinized the tea leaves, read the chicken bones and pronounced that “… an anti-government thread runs through all those works.”

Among this chilling list were such anarchical works as “Peter Pan,” “The Phantom Toll Booth,” and a personal favorite of Potok’s boss, Klan lawyer Morris Dees, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Basically, there is no tragedy, no lone-wolf psychopath, that cannot be lumped into a fund-raising ploy by the SPLC.

Morris Dees has a long history of exploiting murder victims for cash in this fashion. During the 1986 civil trial of two Klan thugs who had been convicted and sentenced for the murder of Michael Donald, Morris Dees sent out hundreds of thousands of donor letters featuring a photo of Donald’s bloated corpse.

While the jurors in the trial undeniably had every right to see the photo, what possible reason could there be to send this hideous image out to donors who had no impact whatsoever on the outcome of the trial? Well, as Ken Silverstein reported in Harper’s Magazine, Dees’ gruesome gambit brought more than $9 million tax-free donor-dollars into the SPLC’s coffers.

Dees won a $7 million dollar wrongful death suit against the United Klans of America, which promptly turned over its sole asset to Michael Donald’s mother. Mrs. Donald got a barn worth $52,000 dollars, which is definitely better than nothing, but she never saw a dime of the $9 million Dees made by exploiting her son’s murder. Dees even includes the photo in both iterations of his autobiography.

Dees has used the same gimmick in six other show trials since:

1. The SPLC’s multimillion dollar publicity machine kicks into gear.

2. Hundreds of thousands of donor letters go out on cue.

3. Huge damages far beyond the assets of the defendants are awarded.

4. The victims get a fraction of the amount awarded and the SPLC rakes in millions in donations.

It’s bad enough that the SPLC exploits the deaths of adults to make money, but to exploit the murders of innocent children, before their grieving families have even had a chance to give them a decent burial, is reprehensibly low even for the likes of Morris Dees.

Mr. Dees, have you no decency?

Is the SPLC violating its tax-exempt status?

Online news sources and the Blogosphere have been touting another SPLC “report” recently. As usual, most of these sources simply regurgitate SPLC fund-raising propaganda without even bothering to look at the numbers.

Electoral Extremism: 23 Candidates on the Radical Right purports to identify 23 evil racists who were trying to spread their particular brands of “hate” via the ballot box in 2010. The SPLC trots out the usual epithets to describe these heinous characters; everything from “anti-immigration” to “Neo-Confederate,” (whatever that means), to Rand Paul’s crime against humanity… “Right-wing Libertarian.”

As usual, the thrust of the SPLC’s hit piece is to scare the Old Folks into believing that Armageddon is right around the corner and only their generous checks stand between them and the Forces of Evil.

No matter that all of these candidates, (with the possible exception of ex-con Tom Metzger) have every legal right to run for any office they choose, regardless of what their viewpoints are. The SPLC, which claims to be the guardian of justice, isn’t real big on the Democratic process unless it happens to be processing a Democrat.

A key example: On July 5, the Blogosphere reported that former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke was considering another run for the White House, leading an unnamed SPLC spokeswonk to comment: ” “We’ve seen increasing numbers of white supremacists and others on the radical right running for electoral office for several years now.”

Oddly enough, in March of this year, former KKK Grand Dragon John Paul Rogers ran for Mayor of Lake Wales, Florida, yet the SPLC had no comment on his candidacy. In fact, even though Rogers served as Grand Dragon of the United Klans of America, the very group that SPLC founder Morris Dees “brought to its knees” by taking away its $52,000 barn, you won’t find Rogers’ name on the SPLC web site.

Why not? Because Grand Dragon Rogers ran as a DEMOCRAT…

After all, the SPLC states that “Hate group activities can include…  marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing,” which are the keystones to the entire US election process for candidates of ALL political parties.

A closer look at the “radical” roster shows just how close the Land of the Free came to succumbing to the forces of evil.

Jeffrey Stankiewicz: 654 votes

Ryan J. Murdough:  297 votes

Billy Roper: 49 votes

Tom Metzger: 10 votes

Frazier G. Miller: 7 votes

And even Norm Olson, who withdrew before the election, thus garnering ZERO votes, is lumped in to help pad out the numbers.

Overall, 43% of the candidates failed to break into double-digit territory as a percentage of the votes cast, and four of them didn’t even break the single digit barrier. Some threat to Democracy, no?

Now this kind of baseless fear-mongering is the SPLC’s stock and trade. It’s the kind of demi-lie that convinces tens of thousands of people to send in tens of millions of tax-free donor-dollars, so this is no surprise. But the SPLC’s latest plunge into political waters raises some interesting questions.

On September 28, 1971, Morris Dees’ newborn “civil rights organization” received a special document, literally, a “golden ticket.” It was on that date that the IRS issued Millionaire Mo with his 501(c)(3) tax exempt status. It is this innocuous scrap of paper that has allowed the SPLC to amass hundreds of millions of dollars without paying a single dime in taxes.

Now there’s always a catch, even with golden tickets, and for the 501(c)(3) the IRS stipulates that:

“For an organization to be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) it cannot “participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements) any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.”

“The regulations provide that activities that constitute participation or intervention in a political campaign include, but are not limited to, the publication or distribution of written or printed statements or the making of oral statements on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate for public office. Reg. 1.501(c)(3)-1(c)(3)(iii).”

“Basically, a finding of campaign intervention in an issue advertisement requires more than just a positive or negative correspondence between an organization’s position and a candidate’s position. What is required is that there must be some reasonably overt indication in the communication to the reader, viewer, or listener that the organization supports or opposes a particular candidate (or slate of candidates) in an election; rather than being a message restricted to an issue.”

The SPLC’s rant against these candidates has nothing to do with any stated issues. Rather, just as with the SPLC’s designation of the meaningless “hate group” smear, the SPLC’s problem with these “…extremists, radicals and dangerous ideologues…” is simply that these people have wrong thoughts.

This is a blatant violation of the IRS rules governing 501 (30)(c) tax-exempt organizations and Watching the Watchdogs is taking the issue directly to the IRS and asking for a ruling.

Remember… It wasn’t the FBI that took down Al Capone… It was the IRS.

Popping the tax-exempt status on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s bloated $216 MILLION dollar cash cow would go a long way to relieve a lot of poverty.

SPLC — “Ding! Dong! The Klan is Dead!!”

Which old Klan? Why, the wicked Klan. Who knew?

As it turns out, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s $147,000 donor-dollar-a-year “Intelligence Director,” (read: Public Relations Guru), Mark Potok knew.

Regular readers of Watching the Watchdogs will be familiar with our coverage of Mr. Potok’s proclamations and prognostications, but Mr. Potok’s most recent public statement caught us completely off guard.

Mark Potok began downgrading the threat posed by the Ku Klux Klan several months ago, as we reported here:

“The Klan of today is small, fractured, impotent and irrelevant,” Potok said. (www.timesfreepress.com, September 12, 2010)

“The Klan is a sorry shadow of its former self. It’s common for the KKK to brag about big numbers, but usually they are largely outnumbered by the counter-protesters, Potok said.

Even on the white supremacist scene, the Klan is seen as less important today, he said.” (www.chronicle.augusta.com, October 21, 2010)

But just last week, Mr. Potok drove a stake into the heart of the SPLC’s prime fund-raising bogey-man:

“But Potok said the Klan has disintegrated. “There is no Klan now,” he said, only a collection of squabbling organizations. (www.sanluisobispo.com, March 23, 2011)

That’s right folks… It’s official!! Intelligence Director Mark Potok announces that “There is NO Klan now!!”

Considering the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars the SPLC has garnered over the decades from exploiting the specter of pointy-headed Klansmen roaming the streets of America, it’s almost incomprehensible that Mr. Potok would cut the throat of this most sacred cash cow.

Fortunately for Mr. Potok and the SPLC, it really doesn’t matter what they say or do. Their mostly elderly donors will continue to cut checks, the so-called media will never vet as much as a single Potokian claim, and the SPLC’s coffers will continue to bulge (they now have more than $216 MILLION tax-free dollars in cash on hand)

On February 23, 2011, Mark Potok released his latest “Hate Map,” claiming that there were 221 Klan “groups,” even though he was unable to locate 109 of them on the map.

On March 23, 2011, Mark Potok announced that “There is no Klan now.”

Since Mr. Potok’s “Hate Map” is a simple HTML web page, which any middle-schooler can edit with ease, we can expect that by April 23, 2011, the “Hate Map” numbers will drop accordingly. Right?

Right???

SPLC — Black “Hate Groups” Lead the Pack?

A recent posting on www.mediaite.com brought some interesting “hate group” statistics to light that the Southern Poverty Law Center will probably opt to ignore in their future fund-raising propaganda.

The article, by Frances Martel, comments on MSNBC host Cenk Uygur’s difficulties in believing that “Black Separatists” were the third largest category on the SPLC’s spurious “Hate Map.” Uygur happily rattles off the list of usual suspects until he gets to the third entry:

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As Ms. Martel points out, Uyur couldn’t even get the words out:

“Topping the list,” he began, “[are] the Ku Klux Klan with 221 groups. They are followed with Neo-Nazi groups with 170 groups, and”– at this point Uygur stops for a beat, before ending the list with “that doesn’t make any sense.”

(Click the link at the beginning of this post to find the video. Uygur’s moment of shock comes at 1:30)

Apparently, it makes perfect sense to the SPLC’s public relations guru Mark Potok, who is compensated with more than $147,000 donor-dollars a year to cook up the SPLC’s “Hate Map.”

As Watching the Watchdogs pointed out on February 27, 2011, Potok’s “Hate Map” is the SPLC’s most potent fund-raising tool. Even though there is no legal definition for “hate group,” this in no way hinders Mr. Potok from pulling numbers out of the air, which the mainstream media will regurgitate verbatim as “fact” without ever investigating a single claim.

Fortunately, Watching the Watchdogs is happy to look at Mr. Potok’s claims, and as usual, we find them wanting.

Last month, Potok released his “Hate Map” for 2010, claiming there were now 1,002 “hate groups” in America. A closer look, however, revealed that, foremost among many shortcomings, Mr. Potok neglected to connect 262 of the alleged groups with any known communities. We know they are there because Mr. Potok tells us they are there. Right?

Ironically, these phantom groups are instrumental in understanding Mr. Potok’s incredible claim that “Black Separatists” are not only the third largest group on his “Hate Map,” they actually lead the pack!

The SPLC has been hoisting the white sheets of the Ku Klux Klan for decades as proof that “hate groups” are everywhere. Shockingly, Mr. Potok all but invalidated the SPLC’s prize “hate group” cash cow last fall when he stated:

“The Klan of today is small, fractured, impotent and irrelevant,” Potok said. (www.timesfreepress.com, September 12, 2010)

“The Klan is a sorry shadow of its former self. It’s common for the KKK to brag about big numbers, but usually they are largely outnumbered by the counter-protestors, Potok said.

Even on the white supremacist scene, the Klan is seen as less important today, he said.” (www.chronicle.augusta.com, October 21, 2010)

As if to underscore this shocking admission, a closer look at Potok’s Klan numbers show that 109 out of the 227 alleged Klan groups are homeless. That’s 49% of the Klan’s total and 41% of the national phantom total overall!

In NINETEEN STATES every single alleged Klan group listed is homeless. In 12 other states, Mr. Potok could only be bothered to make up one or two locations while the rest of the alleged Klan groups float in limbo.

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Fifty-eight Neo-Nazi and 19 white nationalist groups are also non-existent, and yet, only FIVE of Mr. Potok’s Black Separatist groups are unaffiliated. Adjusting the numbers for these non-existent “groups” produces an entirely new list of standings:

Ku Klux Klan       221 – 109 = 112
Neo-Nazis            170 – 58 = 112
White Nat’lists     136 – 19 =  117

Black Separatists 149 – 5 = 144

Well, Mr. Potok, now what do you have to say about your “Hate Map”? Granted, Potok only grudgingly includes Black racists on his list, and only then by blaming them on whites:

“Although the Southern Poverty Law Center recognizes that much black racism in America is, at least in part, a response to centuries of white racism…“

Potok concludes by reluctantly admitting one of the major pitfalls of making hundreds of millions of tax-free donor-dollars by finding “hate” everywhere:

“Although the racism of a group like the Nation [of Islam] may be relatively easy to understand, if we seek to expose white hate groups, we cannot be in the business of explaining away the black ones.”

Good for you, Mr. Potok! At this rate, you’ll be admitting that hate and racism are universally human failings and not endemic white ones.

In the final analysis, however, Mr. Potok’s numbers on Black “hate groups” are equally as meaningless as those on white groups. The SPLC is the sole arbiter of the “hate group” label, and nobody in the mainstream media can be bothered to even look at Mr. Potok’s underlying figures, as Mr. Uygur’s visceral reaction so perfectly demonstrates.

Mr. Uygur’s reaction is typical of many in the mainstream media. Not only are these people unwilling to do their jobs by investigating Potok’s claims, many of them are physically and mentally unable to do so.

What we are left with, though, is a perfect example of how numbers can be manipulated to produce any result desired, which has helped to earn the Southern Poverty Law Center more than a third of a billion tax-free dollars since 2003 alone.