Watching a Bully Get Smacked

It appears that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is having a long overdue comeuppance.

Seven years ago, inspired by SPLC’s “hate map,” a gunman walked into the Family Research Council (FRC) in Washington, intending to massacre the staff and then stuff Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces.

FRC is among many Christian organizations targeted by the SPLC for pro-family stances. During the 1990s, FRC helped draft the Defense of Marriage Act and defended the right of the military and the Boy Scouts to adhere to traditional morality. Over the years, FRC has produced a mountain of meta-research papers that debunk the many spurious studies fed to the media by the LGBTQ activist movement.

It was more than enough to get FRC placed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map,” a profoundly defamatory instrument that inspired Floyd Lee Corkins II to try to commit mass murder that day in August 2012.

The young gay activist would have succeeded and perhaps gone on to other Christian targets on his list if not for the heroics of building manager Leo Johnson, who was shot in the arm but managed to disarm Mr. Corkins and wrestle him to the ground.

Mr. Corkins pleaded guilty to three felonies, including an act of terrorism, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. He told the FBI that the SPLC’s “hate map” led him to FRC’s door.

The SPLC is now ensnared in a scandal that has cost the group its leadership and, it is hoped, its misplaced credibility with law enforcement agencies and corporations.

In March, two groups of employees wrote letters to SPLC leadership, warning them that “allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it” and that the SPLC leaders were complicit “in decades of racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and sexual harassment and/or assault.”

Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican, has written to the Internal Revenue Service asking for an investigation into the tax-exempt status of the SPLC, which he described as a “racist and sexist slush fund devoted to defamation.”

The senator’s action came on the heels of the firing of SPLC co-founder Morris Dees for misconduct and the resignation of Richard Cohen, who had been SPLC’s president since 2003.

The Montgomery, Alabama-based SPLC, which earned a national reputation in the 1970s for taking on the Ku Klux Klan, had been the gold standard for determining what constitutes a “hate group.” From the U.S. Justice Department on down, the SPLC’s “hate” listings were widely used to identify violent extremists.

Housed in what’s nicknamed the “poverty palace,” the SPLC has an endowment exceeding $500 million, including $120 million in offshore accounts. After defeating the Klan, the group needed new enemies on which to raise millions of dollars via direct mail. To the delight of LGBTQ activists, the SPLC began placing Christian conservative groups alongside skinheads, Nazis and the Klan in its materials and on the “hate map.”

Soon, companies like Amazon began removing Christian groups like Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) from their charitable programs such as AmazonSmile. The charity index GuideStar USA affixed “hate” labels to ADF, Liberty Counsel, D. James Kennedy Ministries and other Christian groups, costing them support.

In an April 4 Wall Street Journal article, “We Were Smeared by the SPLC,” ADF Senior Vice President Kristen Waggoner relates how the “hate” designation is anything but harmless. She saw “the word ‘HATE’ plastered in red letters on a photo of my face” on a Google image-search. “Days after I argued the Masterpiece Cakeshop case in front the U.S. Supreme Court, I found the window of my car shot out in my church parking lot after a Sunday service.”

As the SPLC wallows in its own bile, it would be natural to take pleasure from their troubles, especially given the ruthless way they’ve treated their victims. As David wrote in Psalm 57:6: “They have prepared a net for my steps … they have dug a pit before me; Into the midst of it they themselves have fallen.” It’s not wrong to appreciate when a bully gets smacked and justice prevails.

However, Psalm 24:17-18 also warns against schadenfreude: “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away his anger from him.”

While still insisting on justice, we might learn from Leo Johnson, who has metal rods in his shattered arm. At Floyd Corkins’ sentencing, Leo recalled that after disarming Mr. Corkins, he refrained from shooting him because, he said, God spoke to him, telling him not to.

"I forgive you but I do not forget,” he told Mr. Corkins. “If you believe in God you should pray to Him every day because not only did God save my life that day – He saved yours, too."

All this said, the media and corporate America should refrain from using the SPLC as a source until it cleans up its hateful act and stops smearing people.

SPLC——mouthing its “concern” for the dispossessed and more than willing to make a buck on it.

SPLC Surpasses Half Billion in Assets; $121 Million Now Offshore
free beacon ^ | March 12 | Joe Schoffstall
/ FR Posted by Mount Athos

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a far-left nonprofit known for its “hate group” designations, has surpassed a half billion dollars in total assets and now has $121 million parked offshore, according to the group’s most recent financial statements. The SPLC, which is based in Montgomery, Ala., has not publicly posted its most recent financial statements on its website. However, the organization applied for renewal in the state of California days ago and submitted a number of documents pertaining to its financial standing including its most recent audited statement and tax forms for calendar year 2018, which covers Nov. 1, 2017 to Oct. 31, 2018.

According to the filings submitted to California’s Office of Attorney General, the group reported total assets of $518 million from November 2017 to the Oct. 31, 2018, an increase of $41 million from the $477 million in total assets it reported on its previous year’s tax forms.

The SPLC’s assets increased despite its total revenue falling by $15 million last year. The SPLC hauled in $136 million in total revenue throughout 2017. This number fell to $121 million in 2018. Its contributions and grants also fell by more than $20 million from 2017 to 2018, from $132 million to $111 million.
Despite the fall in revenue, the SPLC’s vast investment portfolio expanded in 2018, which included a drastic increase in the amount of money it has parked overseas. By the end of 2018, its non-U.S. equity funds rose to $121 million, an uptick of nearly $30 million from the $92 million it had parked in offshore investments throughout 2017.

While little is known about its actual transfers to offshore entities, in 2017 the Washington Free Beacon discovered foreign forms from the group that showed a small fraction of its previous transactions to a number of entities located in the Cayman Islands. Those foreign forms are not required to be publicly disclosed by the SPLC and are the only known forms showing the nature of its transfers to offshore entities. The SPLC also has interests in Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands.
In addition to the $121 million now in non-U.S. equities, the far-left organization reported $91 million in U.S. public equity funds. Its U.S. and non-U.S. equities include publicly traded stocks of domestic and international corporations. The $92 million the group had tied up in U.S. public equity funds last year was $16 million more than it had the year before.

The SPLC also had $60 million in private equity funds, or investments in buyouts, venture capital, and distressed companies while another $24 million was in real asset funds, which include investments in real estate and natural resources such as oil, gas, and commodities, according to its forms.

One new development on its 2018 financial statements is the formation of another entity tied to the organization.
According to the audited financial statement, the SPLC formed an Action Fund in June 2018, which is consolidated since the SPLC has “both an economic interest in the Action Fund and control of the Action Fund through a majority voting interest in its governing board.”
The SPLC’s Action Fund filed an application for tax exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, or that of a “social welfare” group. The Action Fund allows the group “greater flexibility” to engage in “legislative battles at every level of government” and to support “critical ballot initiatives.”

The SPLC did not respond to a request for comment on its most recent financial statements by press time.
Last year, the Daily Caller reported the SPLC partnered with tech giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter to help the companies determine who are “hate groups.” PayPal had also partnered with the SPLC to help determine who should be “blacklisted” from their company.
The SPLC has come under fire for lumping in mainstream conservative groups, such as the Family Research Council, into categories with actual “hate groups” such as the Ku Klux Klan.

Dozens of organizations contemplated suing the SPLC over its hate group designations after the SPLC had entered into a $3 million settlement with Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim reformer, after including him in its 2016 “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists.”
Additionally, a lawsuit was later filed against the SPLC alleging that the nonprofit runs an “illegal racket to silence political opponents.”

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