You may have heard of the Bradley Foundation. It's one of America's tributes to the idea that if you have enough money, you can in the name of something that sounds ultimately American, advertise anything, make anything up, exaggerate anything you don't like, and lie about anything--and get your own way because if you repeat it often enough and pay for the advertising of it, people in power start to believe you. Besides, they can't afford to run for office without its support, so they mouth their backing whether they really follow it or not.
It's also best known for, up to this point anyhow, its biggest fabrication that it's foisted upon the American public, that the public school system is a conspiracy and monopoly of unions that needs to be dismantled and reduced to a manageably manipulated size. Only then can it be saved from things like godlessness (without school prayer) and utter lack of morality (ditto, as if that would do it), group learning, lack of basics (so it claimed) and (now) critical race theory--which, I assure you, more than half of all middle school and high school social studies teachers never heard of until some twisted radical conservative decided to bring it forward and attach it to what they're doing.
So it weaseled vouchers into the system, getting parents the 'right' to pay for their children's education wherever they wished. That has drained the public system gradually, consecutively, and devastatingly of its needed resources. It has established a fait accompli to show people that public education doesn't work, which it sure doesn't with a pre-arranged lack of proper funding. It paid, too, to get judges either elected or selected (the route doesn't really matter, what with all that money available to pay for how many elections that needed to be won) to rule that the Constitution allowed such 'freedom,' which is defined however it needs to be defined in order for the Bradley Foundation to get whatever it wants.
So while it would be slightly (just slightly) misleading to say that the Bradley Foundation, located in Milwaukee, my hometown, owns the United States of America, it has subverted democracy enough for people, especially conservatives, to defer to it to embark on whatever nonsense they wish to. It has done so again, and in a way even more dangerous to all of us. It's an even bigger fabrication than the need for vouchers. Way-way. It plays the music to which they dance.
It's now paying the bulk of the freight for the Big Lie. That's right. The recounts and the propaganda behind it--the oxygen it needs--are primarily being funded by the Bradley Foundation. It's running wild now, with little of substance in its way.
Or so Jane Mayer, reporter extraordinaire, discovered upon her digging for her latest article in The New Yorker, for which she's a staff writer, "The Big Money Behind the Big Lie." She's also the author of the blockbuster book, Dark Money, which pretty much summarized the extent to which barely traceable money has fulfilled the fears of those opposing the Citizens United Supreme Court case, now eleven years old.
In eleven years, you would think that big money would have had the chance to exert its grip upon our political processes. You would be right. It's also quite good at hiding its tracks. But Jane Mayer's a bulldog, and she's unearthed some complicated connections here. If you've heard of the following:
- Heritage Foundation;
- American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC);
- Honest Elections Project;
- Election Integrity Project California; and
- Freedom Works--
For starters--there are certainly more--you're dealing with Bradley Foundation money, in whole or in part. You just create new organizations that sound independent but actually aren't. As has been said endlessly--follow the money.
Mayer's article also revealed something that's troubling me. One of the Bradley Foundation's members of its board of directors is Paul Clement. Clement graduated from Cedarburg High School (He took a couple of my courses, and thought back then that I was pretty good; as a clerk for Justice Scalia, he arranged for me to attend a Supreme Court open session then got me a private docent for a tour of the building) a while back and has put himself into the position of being one of the most sought-after lawyers if one finds themselves needing to argue in front of the Supreme Court. He is a conservative, which I do not hold against him. It's a big country, and Cedarburg has its share of conservatives. He was a terrific student.
But to be connected with the major funding source of Stop the Steal is not indicative of who he has been. Regardless of the prestige with which he is respected in Washington--one of the most highly-ranked people who has never been elected to public office (though he has been Deputy Solicitor General and Solicitor General under Bush-43, appointed positions)--I think this is a back-door effort at still more ambition: the Supreme Court itself, whenever the next Republican president gets elected. Clement is just the right age to serve a long and influential term, too. His experiential record is unchallengeable.
I think he's selling his soul, though, because he's always been smarter than this. Nobody can be behind Stop the Steal who is not closely connected to ex-'s cult of personality; you can't have it both ways. Whether this is an attempt at strategic positioning with self-justifying craftiness, or if he has drifted into this position, it is not patriotic whatsoever. It subverts democracy, and I am astonished and sad about this.
It would be nearing incredulity to think that Clement didn't know about the Bradley Foundation's surreptitious connection. Perhaps it's his local connection, plus his Washington-based prestige, that has influenced the Bradley Foundation to reach out to him and add him to its luster. Now, though, it has attached him to this attempt at underhanded nonsense.
Be certain: I did not fill him with the kinds of ideas that he now must support. Although he's now certainly more learned than I ever was, I do know that his learning career began with someone who taught him respect for the Constitution and the rule of law. Stop the Steal represents quite the opposite.
It is not easy to write this, but life is long, and sometimes one must depart from those who he once valued. Perhaps this is such a moment. I used to be proud of Paul Clement and what I taught him, but I cannot be proud of this. The bonds of sentimentality have been ruptured. My country comes first.
If I'm wrong about something here, I'm happy to admit it. If he were speaking with me now, I would ask him his motivation to put his name behind this subversion. Is there something I got wrong? I would ask. There we were in a little high school in Wisconsin, so maybe I unknowingly constructed an ivory tower that distorted reality. If so, please tell me. I've learned a few things myself. But then, I reached out to you while I had an office in D.C. and you did not respond. It's not like I didn't try to catch up.
It may be just another example of how adherence to a bullying, ranting fool, in the name of the appearances of loyalty, has gained such power that people who crave that power must turn themselves into something nobody who once knew them recognizes. Politics can do that, even or especially if one tries hard not to appear political. But there will be a price, even if one doesn't foresee it at a given moment. The Faustian dancing is done first, but the fiddler must be paid. I, too, have learned that.
It's just another example of the darkness to which so many have turned. This cannot go well. And the Bradley Foundation must be curtailed. In the name of raw power and a pure form of libertarianism that cannot be functional for any but the richest people, it is trying to control America. It cannot succeed.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask indoors. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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