Poland and U.S. Launch New Chapter

The two presidents that stood in the Rose Garden this week have often been compared to one another. Presidents Trump and Duda both tend to upset some of the political elites in their country. Both have been accused by political opponents of seeking to undermine democracy--and in both cases quite unfairly. 

But, at their June 12 press conference, the two leaders announced to huge steps for U.S.-Polish relations. One, the U.S. will station about 2,000 new troops in Poland. For those who claim Trump is a puppet of Vladimir Putin, the increased U.S. military presence will make Russia furious. On another front, Trump plans to announce in the next 90 days that the United States will include Poland in the Visa Waiver Program, to make travel between the two countries easier. 

In September, Trump will again travel to Poland--site in 2017 of one of the best speeches of his presidency. The other is the recent Normandy speech. In both instances, he followed the script. 

In September, it will be to mark the 80th anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland that started World War II. 

This has been a significant year for anniversaries in Poland. It's the 20th anniversary of the joining the NATO alliance and its 30 years since Poland had its first free and fair elections. Both of these were ultimate outcomes of U.S. leadership--chiefly by President Reagan. 

This comes a year after the 100th anniversary of Polish independence. Even this was one of the few bright spots of President Wilson's time in office. 

For Government Bullies, It's All About Coercion

The following is an excerpt from an article in Organization Trends: 

In the debate over state religious freedom laws, gay marriage isn’t really the issue.

For the Left, nothing is ever worthwhile until it’s connected to coercion. That’s why a vast collection of progressive organizations, many bankrolled by billionaire financier George Soros, joined to pile on Indiana and other religious freedom advocates.  None of the political or corporate response would have come without progressive groups stirring up alarm.
 

Oregon Capitol (Credit:Oregon.gov)

The assertion that a state religious freedom law is somehow an “excuse” for a state legislature to pass laws protecting business owners ignores the fact that sincerely held religious beliefs are being crushed under the despotic boot of government. Religious freedom laws are not a solution in search of a problem. They’re a response to a clear and present danger.

In late April, Oregon Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough ordered Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery in Portland to pay $135,000 in damages to a gay couple for emotional suffering caused by the bakery’s not catering their wedding.

In New Mexico, the case of Elane Photography v. Willock began when a lesbian couple asked to have their commitment ceremony photographed. When Elane Photography declined, the couple made a complaint to the New Mexico Human Rights Commission. New Mexico has a RFRA law, but the Human Rights Commission refused to apply it to a business in the state, so litigation ensued.

During a Colorado Civil Rights Commission meeting on Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips’s decision to refuse to bake a wedding cake, commissioner Diann Rice said, “Freedom of religion and religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, whether it be slavery, whether it be the Holocaust … we can list hundreds of situations where freedom of religion has been used to justify discrimination. And to me it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use … their religion to hurt others.”  The commission went so far as to order “reeducation” as a potential remedy.

That was too much for Richard Epstein, a New York University law professor who supports same-sex marriage: “The Colorado Commission made the grotesque and inexcusable comparison of the refusal to do business in a highly competitive market with the mass extermination of helpless individuals in government gas chambers,” wrote Epstein.

“Commissioner Rice’s insistence that Cakemasters has used its religion to ‘hurt others’ means that anyone who turns a person down for business ‘hurts’ that person. Her formulation shows no appreciation whatsoever for the relative harms involved in these low-level commercial interactions. Craig [the plaintiff suing Cakemasters] has dozens of alternative outlets clamoring for his business. Phillips and Elane Photography don’t have that luxury; they are now put to the impossible choice of closing down or violating their religious beliefs.”

Clinton Foundation Link in the Hillary Email Scandal: History of Wrecklessness with National Security

Hillary Clinton's email headache doesn't seem to be going away no matter how much she attempts to wave it off.

Federal investigators have reportedly determined more than 300 emails on the former secretary of state's private server could be classified information. The private server was discovered because of the House Benghazi committee. But don't forget about the infamous Clinton Foundation. 

(Credit:State.gov)

As I wrote about in Foundation Watch in May -- before we found out this server contained classified info -- Hillary Clinton has played fast and loose with national security information for some time.

From Foundation Watch:

As Hillary Clinton was in charge of running America’s foreign policy, Bill was giving high-dollar speeches in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Central America, Turkey, Thailand, Taiwan, India, and the Cayman Islands, according to Judicial Watch. Certainly some of these should have raised eyebrows by reviewers at the State Department, considering tenuous U.S. relations with Russia and China. And the fact that the list of donors includes Muslim nations that are known for mistreating women, ought to set off the hypocrisy alarm bells because Mrs. Clinton has long positioned herself as a champion of women’s rights.

The New York Times also reports when she was at the State Department, Hillary okayed a financial transaction that handed control over 20 percent of America’s strategically important uranium resources to Russia after investors gave money to Bill and large donations to the Clinton Foundation. This matters because uranium is needed to make nuclear weapons and America only has an estimated 20 percent of the uranium it needs.

From 2005 through 2011 investors in Uranium One, a shady Canadian company, reportedly gave money to the Clinton Foundation. In 2010 Bill accepted $500,000 from an investment bank to give a single speech in Russia. Uranium One stock carried a “buy” rating with the bank, which had links to the Russian government. Eventually the Kremlin assumed 100 percent control over Uranium One through a subsidiary of Rosatom, a state corporation owned by the Russian government.

Then there are the massive financial institutions sponsoring the speeches that would certainly have an interest in currying favor with the Department of State. These sponsors included Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and American Express. Other sectors sponsoring international speeches included major players in the energy, automotive, casino, hotel, real estate, technology, media, and health care industries, according to Judicial Watch.

Another sponsor was Renaissance Capital in June 2010, where the former president talked in Moscow about the theme of “Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Going Global.” This was in the middle of Hillary’s “reset button” approach to U.S.-Russia relations. The investment bank was focused on Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and sub-Saharan Africa, the Washington Examiner reported.

For Clinton’s speech to a UBS Wealth Management event in April 2012 in Chicago, the State Department characterized it as “approximately 300-400 ultra-high net worth clients, prospective clients, and UBS Financial Advisers.”

Two years earlier, Clinton spoke at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, which the State Department review characterized as “a private speech of up to 350 friends and patrons of Mohegan Sun.… The event will not be open to the public. The event will not be publicly advertised.”

Another event reveals how in tune the Clintons are with the supposed plight of “income inequality” and the poor: Clinton spoke in October 2011 at a San Francisco event for the Wells Fargo Private Bank and the Wells Fargo Family Wealth Group, whose clients, State Department documents explain, “have at least $5 million and $50 million in assets respectively.”

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show the State Department also approved a consulting gig for Clinton with Teneo Strategy, a company headed by Clinton Foundation adviser Doug Band, with offices in Dubai, London, Dublin, Hong Kong, Brussels, and Beijing. After taking some heat over Teneo’s ties to the failed investment firm MF Global, the Clintons ended the deal after just eight months.

Teneo Strategy brings up another aspect that complicates the whole Clinton Foundation-State Department nexus, which is Huma Abedin, better known to some as Mrs. Anthony Weiner. Abedin served under the Secretary of State as deputy chief of staff from January 2009 to June 2012, at which point she became a senior adviser and a “special government employee” that would be allowed to represent individual clients and have outside employment. She was a “special government employee” until February 2013. During that time, Abedin did not disclose what type of work she did for Teneo Strategy, the New York Times reported.

“So we know that the Obama administration’s judgment as to what constitutes a ‘conflict of interest’ is skewed, to put it nicely,” Judicial Watch said in a press release about its findings.

Apparently, some in the State Department may agree with Judicial Watch. On April 10, the department’s inspector general announced he was launching an investigation into Abedin’s irregular employment arrangements.

As evidence continues to accumulate that Clinton’s cavalier approach to state secrets may have put U.S. national security in jeopardy, the shady background of Abedin, who has known ties to the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, is barely acknowledged on Capitol Hill. And it’s not clear that it will ever come up. After several Republican lawmakers publicly raised concerns about Abedin in 2012, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was enraged.

“These sinister accusations rest solely on a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations of members of Huma’s family, none of which have been shown to harm or threaten the United States in any way,” the senator said. “These attacks on Huma have no logic, no basis and no merit. And they need to stop now.”

It is a matter of public record that Huma’s mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is a co-founder of the Muslim Sisterhood, a pro-Sharia organization consisting of the wives of some of the highest-ranking leaders in the Muslim Brotherhood. Egyptian opposition newspaper Al-Liwa Al-Arabi reports that Muslim Sisterhood members: “smuggle secret documents”; “spread the Brotherhood’s ideology by infiltrating universities, schools and homes”; “fulfill the interests of the Brotherhood”; and “organiz[e] projects which will penetrate [the Brotherhood’s] prohibited ideology into the decision-making in the West … under the guise of ‘general needs of women.’” Nagla Ali Mahmoud, wife of Mohammed Morsi, the Islamist who was elected president of Egypt in June 2012 and then deposed, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood. Mrs. Abedin is editor-in-chief of the notoriously pro-Islamist Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. From 1996 to 2008, Abedin worked as assistant editor of the Journal, FrontPageMag.com reported.

And the Clinton Foundation has some explaining to do after one of its former employees received a sentence of life imprisonment in Egypt after being convicted of sedition. In 2012 Gehad el-Haddad, “divided his time between volunteering for the Muslim Brotherhood and heading the Cairo office of the Clinton Climate Initiative, but later that year began to work full time for the Muslim Brotherhood,” according to the Egypt Independent.

Appropriately, the name Gehad can also be spelled Jihad.

A month after Haddad left the Clinton Foundation job for a position with then-Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood standard-bearer, the Clinton Global Initiative invited Morsi to deliver a major address. Morsi calls Jews “bloodsuckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs.” After Morsi was overthrown, in 2013 Haddad was arrested in Egypt for inciting violence. Haddad was given a life sentence on April 11 of this year, according to the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English language website.

Faith in Statism

Below is an excerpt from my piece in Organization Trends: 

The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn pointed out, “Back when gay marriage was first proposed, advocates pitched it this way: What can it possibly matter to you if two men or two women wed?”  He continued: “Since then Americans have learned: It can mean an end to your small business, it can mean your church institutions—from schools to adoption agencies—can no longer run themselves according to their principles, and, if you are a Silicon Valley CEO, it can mean you lose your job.”

McGurn was referring to Mozilla co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich, who was forced from his job in 2014 for having donated to the 2008 campaign in California to recognize marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman.

Hillary Clinton (Credit: State.gov)

Gay journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote of the pizza controversy, “The whole episode disgusts me—as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society. If this is the gay rights movement today—hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else—then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us”

Government hysteria about the Indiana religious freedom law began from the top down, as the White House sounded off in April. “I do think in the mind of the president, the thought that we would have state legislatures in the 21st century in the United States of America passing laws that would use religion to try to justify discriminating against people for who they love is unthinkable,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in waiting, Hillary Clinton, also weighed in on Twitter: “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against [people because] of who they love #LGBT.”

Pointing out that Hillary opposed gay marriage until 2013, the Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf wrote, “she declares Indiana out of step with the times for making gay weddings legal, because refusing to bake cakes for them may be legal, too.”

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D) both announced they would ban publicly funded travel to the state of Indiana. San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee (D) and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D) also banned city employees from traveling to Indiana for work-related trips.

In higher education, San Francisco State University banned work-related travel to Indiana. And even in Indiana, the presidents of the three major universities—Indiana, Depaw, and Butler—issued statements denouncing the law as discriminatory and harmful to the state’s reputation.
Friedersdorf expressed concern about the mob, prefacing his April 1 post with his view that bans on gay marriage in 13 states are “callous.” Nevertheless, he added, “When 13 states prohibit gay-marriage outright, what sense does it make for gay-rights supporters to boycott a different state where gay marriage is legal?”

“Being barred from marriage puts a significant burden on gay couples—a burden many orders of magnitude greater than the relatively small possibility of being refused by an atypically religious photographer or baker in the course of planning a same-sex wedding (the outcome the law’s opponents assert to be its true purpose).”

“Now that those who would discriminate against gays are a powerless cultural minority that focuses its objectionable behavior in a tiny niche of the economy, elites have suddenly decided that using state power to punish them is a moral imperative,” Friedersdorf continued.

“The timing suggests that this has as much to do with opportunism, tribalism, humanity’s love of bandwagons, and political positioning as it does with advancing gay rights, which have advanced thanks to persuasion, not coercion.”

'Sore Winners' and More Reminders of Democrats and Jim Crow

Below is an excerpt of my article published in Organization Trends:

Of course, neither the First Amendment nor the Religious Freedom Restoration Act gives a person blanket immunity to do whatever he wants by claiming it’s part of his religion. Let’s recall the 1990 Supreme Court ruling whose backlash helped to bring RFRA into being.

The case of Employment Division v. Smith involved Alfred Smith, a member of the Klamath tribe in Oregon, who was fired for ingesting the hallucinogenic drug peyote, even though he told his employer that his consumption of it was part of a tribal ritual. In what might be a black mark against an otherwise stellar judicial record, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote an overly broad decision in the case, decreeing that “the right of free exercise [of religion] does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).’”

Justice Antonin Scalia (Credit: acus.gov)

In other words, because the law applied to everyone regardless of religious faith, it was deemed constitutional. RFRA essentially provided the courts with better guidance. The law shifted the burden to the government to prove (1) that it has a “compelling interest” in restricting whatever practice of religion is at issue and (2) that it has used “the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” In the 1997 case of City of Boerne v. Flores, the Supreme Court determined that the federal RFRA law does not protect citizens from religious freedom infringement by state and local governments.
 
Congressional efforts to patch this loophole failed, and in 1999 states began to take up the issue with legislation of their own. So what happened between Clinton’s signing of the bipartisan bill and now? How did we reach the point where what was a universally held principle a mere two decades ago has now became a rallying cry for demagogues?
 
Why is the current White House calling RFRA laws “unthinkable,” even though as a state senator in 1998, Barack Obama voted for the Illinois version of RFRA, which passed the state senate 56-0? Why are other politicians imposing boycotts? Why are corporations buckling to pressure groups that invoke the ugly history of Jim Crow and the murderous Holocaust when speaking about religious freedom laws? Supposedly the answer is cake and pictures. To be more precise, wedding caterers and wedding photographers who cite their religious beliefs when opting against working at gay weddings. For this reason, they have been targeted and sometimes smeared. In one case, a pizzeria—that will almost certainly never be asked to cater any wedding—was harassed into closing its doors. A bakery in Oregon was ordered to pay a $135,000 fine.
 
The owners of another bakery in Colorado were compared to Nazis in a formal government hearing. The real answer to what is behind the change in views about religious liberty is a network of well-financed progressive groups whipping up controversy.
 
Matt Welch, editor of the libertarian magazine Reason that supports same-sex marriage, identifies the problem: “The bad news, for those of us on the suddenly victorious side of the gay marriage debate, is that too many people are acting like sore winners, not merely content with the revolutionary step of removing state discrimination against same-sex couples in the legal recognition of marriage, but seeking to use state power to punish anyone who refuses to lend their business services to wedding ceremonies they find objectionable.”

“That’s not persuasion, that’s force, and force tends to be the anti-persuasion among those who are on the receiving end of it.”

Most recently, the Indiana and Arkansas versions of RFRA were mischaracterized to stir fear among a public that too often only hears those who are shouting the loudest. National Action Network president and MSNBC host Al Sharpton said, “This is a key moment for the country. Too often in our history, we’ve seen religion used to justify attacks on other people’s rights, from slavery, to Jim Crow, to women’s right to vote … That same fight is with us today. And we can’t let it stand”.
 
Aside from insulting those who suffered under Jim Crow, Sharpton is making an illogical comparison. Jim Crow was the name given to Democrat-imposed state laws that required, among other things, that businesses segregate their public accommodations.
 
In other words: big government regulation. No doubt in that era some restaurants and hotel owners would have chosen to discriminate without the state laws. But they would have had competitors who would have been glad to get the business the discriminators refused.

Thus, Jim Crow laws shielded bigoted business owners from competition. Jim Crow laws were not only racist, but anti-market and anti-capitalist. No wonder Democrats loved Jim Crow politics so much. Southern streetcar businesses opposed forced segregation, because it required them to spend more money on cars and conductors. They routinely ignored the laws until conductors were arrested and the business owners fined by regulatory agencies.
 
The Wall Street Journal’s William McGurn explains, “In 1964, when the Supreme Court upheld the Civil Rights Act’s requirement that hotels serve African-Americans, blacks, especially in the South, effectively had their ability to travel restricted by the possibility they couldn’t secure lodging. In contrast, no one today suggests gay couples can’t find a baker or photographer for their weddings.”

To the contrary, it’s almost certain that if one wedding photographer, caterer, or for that matter, pizza delivery man, didn’t want the business of a gay couple, a nearby competing business would almost certainly be happy to take the couple’s money. Nevertheless, today we see an intense parade of calculated hyperventilating. On the frontlines of hyperventilation is the organization that, at least in name, would seem inclined to defend religious liberty.
 
The American Civil Liberties Union ought to know better. In fact, in 1993 the ACLU actually joined a coalition that included the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Ethics Religious Liberty Commission, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and others to support the federal RFRA.
 
Contrast that with today, when the ACLU attacks Midwesterners who wanted the same kind of law for Indiana. “The Indiana legislature and the governor made a terrible and dangerous mistake, and they were met with widespread condemnation and a backlash that has hurt their state’s reputation and its economy,” the ACLU said in a statement.

The group added, “Religious freedom is important, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to impose their beliefs on others, discriminate, or cause harm.” And yet, any honest evaluation of what has happened in recent months clearly shows only one side has tried to “impose their beliefs on others.”

Under pressure, Indiana made changes to the religious freedom law so as not to allow religious beliefs as a defense in a civil rights lawsuit. Even these amendments did not appease the mob. The ACLU statement continued to say the law “still poses a risk that it can be used to deny rights to others, including in education, access to health care, and other aspects of people’s lives.”

To avoid the headaches that Indiana endured, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) told the state legislature to re-do the religious freedom bill that it had already passed. The ACLU called for improving the law, but it seems unlikely any changes would please the organization. “While we are grateful that Governor Hutchinson listened to the loud outcry in opposition to HB 1228, this new proposal falls far short of ensuring that this law cannot be used to discriminate against or harm anyone within our state,” said Rita Sklar, executive director of the Arkansas ACLU. “I encourage the legislature and the governor to work together to improve this proposal now.”

The ACLU and other left-wing groups were able to successfully torpedo a religious freedom law in Arizona, where Gov. Jan Brewer (R) vetoed the measure last year, after businesses in the state became fearful. Meanwhile, Georgia’s proposal didn’t make it through the 2015 session. In 2012, North Dakota voters turned down a religious freedom law after heavy spending by Planned Parenthood, the pro-abortion group NARAL, and the state’s ACLU.

Planned Parenthood's War on Babies and Taxpaayers

Just as it seems its becoming possible for Planned Parenthood to defend its existence, let alone its taxpayer funding, yet another video comes out. 

Now the pressure is on those politicians who seek to justify sending limited resources to such an organization, when in fact there are other community health organizations that are more effective and less controversial. Planned Parenthood is a powerful lobby, and expects something back from the politicians who put them in office. 

Before when funding for Planned Parenthood came up, the group and it's political allies simply rallied around the "War on Women" slogan. Shockingly, something so absurd worked. But they can only got to that well so many times. The undercover videos make it nearly impossible that such a strategy can continue. 

I previously wrote about Planned Parenthood's role in the "War on Women" meme for Organization Trends.

In February 2011, the Republican-controlled House was debating the proposed “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.”  That’s when Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, said, “This legislation, represents an entirely new front in the war on women and their families.”  The Center for American Progress followed Nadler’s comment with a press release, “The Right’s War on Women.”  Planned Parenthood led a protest against the legislation with printed signs that said “War on Women.” …

“The ‘War on Women’ describes the legislative and rhetorical attacks on women and women’s rights taking place across the nation.  It includes a wide-range of policy efforts designed to place restrictions on women’s health care and erode protections for women and their families.  Examples at the state and federal level have included restricting contraception; cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood; state-mandated, medically unnecessary ultrasounds; abortion taxes; abortion waiting periods; forcing women to tell their employers why they want birth control, and prohibiting insurance companies from including abortion coverage in their policies.” …

EMILY’s List teamed with MoveOn to start the website StopTheWarOnWomen.com, asking people to sign a petition to “Tell Congress to stop its attacks on Planned Parenthood.”  The site added, “By signing this petition, you are opting to receive email from EMILY’s List and MoveOn.org Political Action.”  MoveOn.org posted on its own website the “Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP’s War on Women.”  The top 10 charges include accusations against members of Congress and state legislatures for pro-life legislation and cuts to various programs.

If Joe Biden Makes Elizabeth Warren His VP Pick, She Will Have Powerful Friends to Boost Democrats 2016

Vice President Joe Biden, pondering shaking up the 2016 Democratic presidential primary by challenging Hillary Clinton, reportedly meeting with radical Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Credit:warren.senate.gov)

 This is fueling speculation that Biden might tap Warren to be his vice presidential running mate.

If so, Warren would bring in an immense infrastructure in the form of the nonprofit group Demos, as I wrote about last year in Organization Trends:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the freshman Massachusetts senator who pioneered the “you didn’t build that” philosophy, is using her new book, Fighting Chance, to throw red meat to the Left and position herself to the left of Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who are more comfortable with Wall Street donors. Warren’s book tour was well received among fawning liberal supporters across the country, many of whom are looking for an un-Hillary in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

“I’d spent nearly twenty years fighting to level the playing field for the middle class, and I’d seen millions of working families go over the economic cliff—and it was getting worse,” Warren writes in her book, explaining why she decided to run for Senate in 2012. “What kind of country would my grandchildren grow up in? What if the conservatives and the big banks and the big-time CEOs got their way and Washington kept helping the rich and powerful to get richer and more powerful? Could I really stand on the sidelines and stay out of this fight?”

The New Republic has called Warren “Hillary Clinton’s Worst Nightmare,” and much reporting since has followed similar themes, even as Warren feigns uninterest in presidential politics (just as she claims public clamor forced her to run for the Senate).

Still, many political observers claim former Secretary of State Clinton is invincible. Of course, similar claims were made in 2008. That year, in addition to her official campaign organization, Hillary had close allies in the nonprofit sector propping her up, such as the Center for American Progress (founded by a former Clinton White House chief of staff, John Podesta) and targeting her enemies, as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) did.

How can Warren compete with that?

Should Warren run, she will likely have her own infrastructure in place with Demos, the research and advocacy group whose slogan is “An Equal Say and Equal Chance for All.” Notice the similarity to the title of Warren’s book.

Of course, the Left’s vision of equal opportunity is usually based on some absurd equality-of-outcome scheme, which is part of the core policy positions of Demos: to spend more, tax more, redistribute more, restrict political speech more, and convince the public that big government is good for them. The organization’s mission statement even calls for “rethinking American capitalism as it exists today as a system of political economy.”

The name Demos is actually an ancient Greek word meaning “people” or “the mob.” The Greek term is the root of the English word democracy—and also of demagogue.

Before she was a senator, Demos honored Warren at its 10th anniversary gala in 2010 with its “Transforming America” award, because Warren was the architect of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (New York Times, April 10, 2010). Demos aggressively advocated for the Dodd-Frank bill and has long supported Warren. In 2003 Demos helped promote Warren’s previous book, The Two Income Trap. But that’s understandable, given that the senator’s daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, is a co-founder and currently chairman of the governing board for Demos.

Demos has a new president, Heather McGhee, who took the job in March when Miles Rapaport left to become president of Common Cause (see Organization Trends, May 2014). McGhee ascended to the presidency after serving as vice president of policy and outreach. She previously served as the deputy policy director for the ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D). There’s no reason to believe she was among the campaign aides involved in covering up Edwards’ extramarital affair or his questionable use of campaign funds that led to his indictment by a federal grand jury. (He was acquitted.)

But more importantly where Demos is concerned, Edwards sought to position himself far to the left of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during that primary, running a “two Americas” campaign based on class warfare themes that approximate most of the positions in policy papers and books that the organization publishes.

“I am honored that Demos’ board and staff have entrusted me with the leadership of this extraordinary organization at this moment,” McGhee said in a statement after her promotion. “It’s true that a future progressive majority is emerging, but deep change is needed to ensure that the next generation has a meaningful say in our democracy and a chance in our economy. At a time when more Americans are demanding solutions to the inequality crisis, there’s simply no place I’d rather be.”

Other top staff members have a history in left-wing activism.

Brenda Wright, the Demos vice president of legal strategies, is a former managing attorney for the National Voting Rights Institute in Boston, as well as a board member for Common Cause of Massachusetts—Warren’s state, coincidentally. She was also the director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where she remains a board member.