Eric Boehlert: Glenn Beck's Incendiary Angst Is Dangerously Close to Having a Body Count

If Glenn Beck's incendiary angst is to have a body count, I hope his is among it. "[Y]ou can shoot me in the head ... but there will be 10 others that line up." Yay, execution style! That just makes it easier!

The Tides Foundation promotes a multitude of leftist agendas, as evidenced by its assertion: "We strengthen community-based organizations and the progressive movement by providing an innovative and cost-effective framework for your philanthropy." Among the crusades to which Tides contributes are: radical environmentalism; the "exclusion of humans from public and private wildlands"; the anti-war movement; anti-free trade campaigns; the banning of firearms ownership; abolition of the death penalty; access to government-funded abortion-on-demand; and radical gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender advocacy. The Foundation is also a member organization of the International Human Rights Funders Group, a network of more than six-dozen grantmakers dedicated to finaning leftwing groups and causes.In 1996 the Tides Foundation created, with a $9 million seed grant, a separate but closely related entity called the Tides Center, also headed by Drummond Pike. The Tides Center functions as a legal firewall insulating the Tides Foundation from potential lawsuits filed by people whose livelihoods or well-being may be harmed by Foundation-funded projects. (These could be, for instance, farmers or loggers who are put out of business by Tides-backed environmentalist groups.) In theory the Foundation's activities are restricted to fundraising and grant-making, while the Center focuses on managing projects and organizations; in practice, however, both entities do essentially the same thing.

The Tides Center's Board Chairman is Wade Rathke, who is also a member of the Tides Foundation Board. Rathke, a protege of the late George A. Wiley, serves as President of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union, and is the founder and chief organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).

The Tides Foundation and its closely allied Tides Center distributed nearly $66 million in grants in 2002 alone. The Tides Center was spun off from the Foundation but is also run by Drummond Pike. The Tides Center, the Foundation,and two other entities under the Tides roof collaborate as partners. There is a technical – but insignificant – separation between the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center. From 1994 – 2004, the Heinz Endowments, which Teresa Heinz Kerry heads, have given the Tides entities $8.1 million in grants. Until February 2001, Kerry was also a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Carnegie has given Tides numerous six-figure grants.

Tides allows donors to anonymously contribute money to a variety of causes -- and thereby avoid public accountability for their donations. The donor simply makes the check out to Tides and instructs the Foundation where to forward the money. Tides does so, often keeping as much as ten percent of the total amount for “charitable advisory fees.” This allows high-profile individuals to fund extremist organizations by “laundering” their money through Tides, leaving no paper trail. Founder Drummond Pike referred to his organization as “a convenient vehicle with squeaky clean books.”

The entities the Tides Foundation has chosen to fund are overwhelmingly leftwing. The so-called “legal left” (its own referent) has been a prime beneficiary of Tides largesse. One of its principal beneficiaries, for example, is the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which began as a Communist front organization and remains proud of its lineage. Its national convention in October 2003 featured a keynote address from Lynne Stewart, a lawyer specializing in defending terrorists who has been indicted by the Justice Department for providing “material support” to sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, whose organization, known as the Islamic Group, bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand.

Stewart is on record supporting terrorism against defenders of “capitalism” and “racism.” “I don’t believe in anarchist violence but in directed violence,” she told the New York Times in 1995. “That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism, sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions and accompanied by popular support.” In her National Lawyers Guild keynote address, Stewart said she and her NLG comrades were carrying on a proud tradition of their forebears, past and present:

What depresses me the most is that I'm a Republican, and I've been watching helplessly as the party has descended further and further into this madness since the Nixon administration. What fascinates me the most is that "the core" of the Republican party is impossible to unify. It consists of social conservatives and libertarian types -- two groups who despise each other. I was much happier when the social conservatives were called "Southern Democrats" and were politely ignored by both the right and the left, and the Glenn Becks of the world only spewed their bullshit in dive bars.

Glenn Beck the new Jim Jones of 2010.

Well this is one progressive that would be happy to see a stranger walk on our 300 acres past the do not trespass signs. If he wants to hunt progressives I'll bet he'll ony hunt unarmed ones. tiny dick

* "[Y]ou will have to shoot me in the forehead before you take away my gun" and "before I acquiesce and be silent." .......That's a stupid thing to say in the insane political climate he is helping to create. He could end up being a victim of his own hate mongering.

on one hand the left has been saying this for literaly years at this point, with no event to call upon to validate the claim.but it really is just a matter of time

I wonder how many people watch him just for the entertainment of seeing and hearing the idiocy this baby-faced clown spews out. Actually if one sees his performance as a parody on the current right wing fanaticism it's pretty comedic. Unfortunately there are a number of right wing wing-nuts who take him serious enough to pose a danger to the rest of us.

They should be forced off the air, this same insanity happened during the Clinton years.

So hes a crazy right wing nut job, who is insiting violence in america to up his ratings. I thought we already knew that. So all I have to say is please someone exile him back to radio please. Oh and i wonder how much of his ratings is just people watching him for ammo to dis him later? Just a thought.