Posted on 04/22/2005 6:31:14 PM PDT by CHARLITE
A hush-hush meeting of 70 leftist fat cats heard billionaire George Soros lay out a five-year plan designed to build a network of think tanks, media outlets and training schools promoting Soros' brand of Marxism. Meeting in Scottsdale Ariz., last weekend, the assemblage of multi-millionaires, whose identities were kept secret by the meeting's organizers, planned to start the process of building an ideas production line for liberal politicians.
They wwant to begin what organizers hope will be a long dialogue with the "partners," many from the high-tech industry, a group that backed John Kerry in last year's presidential election. According to Hans Nichols, writing in Front Page Magazine, the participants have begun to refer to themselves as the Phoenix Group.
Soros warned the group that if they want to realize long-term political and ideological yields from an expected massive investment in "startup" progressive think tanks, they will have to be patient.
The meeting of venture capitalists, left-leaning moneymen and a select few D.C. political strategists was convened by Rob Stein, a former official of the Clinton Commerce Department.
He advised the participants on how to seed pro-Democratic think tanks, media outlets and leadership schools to compete with such established conservative institutions as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Leadership Institute.
Nichols reports that senior Democratic National Committee (DNC) officials were quietly briefed about the meeting in recent weeks. He says that DNC Chairman Howard Dean, a friend of Stein's, was aware of it, but one senior DNC source said that otherwise the organizers "kept that list [of attendees] kind of tight."
Sarah Ingersoll, spokeswoman for Steins Democracy Alliance, which will act as a clearinghouse and is expected to channel much of its money to new organizations and existing ones such as John Podestas Center for American Progress and David Brocks Media Matters for America, said it was "a very preliminary meeting of committed donors interested in building a community to support progressive infrastructure."
The money details are several weeks away, she said. "There arent dollar figures at this point," Ingersoll told The Hill newspaper. Soros, a Hungarian-born financier who donated more than $23 million to pro-Democratic 527 groups in the 2004 election cycle, gave the main presentation, said Ingersoll, who declined to name the other presenters.
"Primarily, were looking at making recommendations and thinking through with these donors on how they can form an alliance," she added. "This is about creating a network of individuals to share information to be effective in whatever they do going forward."
Among those present were former White House press secretary Mike McCurry and New Democrat Network president Simon Rosenberg.
One source at the DNC with direct knowledge of the agenda told The Hill that the Phoenix Group had three specific goals at the outset. To create:
Liberal think tanks
Training camps for young progressives (FYI, Democrats repackaged for the new millennium are call progressives)
Media centers
Is it my imagination or does this sound a whole bunch like the Frankfurt School for DUmmies.
Secular Jewish Hungarian
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"He's quite mad, you know."
I think he's Hungarian...
I think the better question about Soros is why he was meeting with Grover Norquist this Wednesday.
Yep, I googled. but if this "Grover Norquist this Wednesday." is true it would be more troubling.
Grover Norquist is no friend to this country.
At best, he is an Islamist sympathizer.
Behold the wonders of HTML. I knew it would come to me.
What is this business with Soros and Norquist?
So how long before the liberals come up with their first idea?
Hungry is in Greece??
That was cute!
I think the reference to "recent weeks" is more accurate than "last weekend". Esther Dyson's PC Forum 2005 met in Scottsdale March 22-23 and all the boys would have been there--at least all the boys who are into high tech or investing in high tech via venture capital...
The thing is that all these brilliant guys in business have no, zip, zero, nada new ideas politically. They are mired in the years of Clintonian crony capitalism for them balanced out by socialist slavery for the "ordinary" people. Too bad for them that communism is an old, out-dated, disproven, worn out mythology that no longer carries "magic"--at least in this country.
What is up with communists and their 5 year plans?
Really? I haven't heard this one... but am not quite surprised.
Training (read "indoctrinating") camps for youth... well, the idea and the practice are way older then Bin Laden's Afghan bases. There were plenty of them in the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Russia.
Bin Laden, Arafat and Zarqawi had training in Moscow. I don't know who else.
You are right and that was my point which I didn't make very clear.
Someone posted (suggested as a thought) that Soros was following the Al Qaeda model. My point was, it was the other way around.
Actually he was born in very humble circumstances... which doesn't change anything. So, he is a self-made villain, so what? It doesn't make him less evil.
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