High-ranking cabinet official in charge of $47 billion funds organization he started in his kitchen. --- Hand That Feeds |
| Sat Mar 03, 2007 at 06:49:33 PM EST | |
 As Peggy Lee used to sing, 'Nice work, if you can get it -- and if you get it, tell me how.' |
Most of society's problems, according to a 1997 interview of Horn, are caused by feminists. At a time when the National Fatherhood Initiative was still operating from his kitchen, he explained:
Where I think radical feminism is to blame, at least in part, for the collapse of fatherhood is when it confuses social equality with androgyny and insists women don't need men. What it says is not only should my daughter be able to become a physician, but we ought to have a culture which says men and women are exactly the same. They should behave exactly the same.From what we know, that's just not true. That's right, men are different from women! When it comes to parenting, it's the same thing. Men and women parent differently. Not in every circumstance, but they do tend to parent differently. When children do best is when they're exposed to the complementary aspects of what a man and a woman bring to the parenting equation. It's not that two-parent households are better than one-parent families because of a second pair of hands. It matters to whom that second pair of hands is attached.
As a government official, Horn has shown that he understands the hand that feeds very well. It was he, for example, who approved the hiring of columnist Maggie Gallagher to promote marriage -- although she denies that she used her column as currency for exchange. Gallagher had also worked for the National Fatherhood Initiative, according to research by Bill Berkowitz. It was Horn who gave money to writer Mike McManus to support marriage promotion, while also giving money to McManus' organization, Marriage Savers ("a ministry that equips ... local congregations to prepare for lifelong marriages ..."). Horn, as it happens, is also a founding board member of Marriage Savers.
Horn has also funded a multitude of specious marriage counseling programs that funnel money to churches.
Horn was recently handed additional money to dispense -- the $157 million in abstinence-only education. He has a nifty idea that abstinence programs could go beyond students, and become engaging programs for adults, as well.
The National Fatherhood Initiative presents a benign facade (helping men to be better fathers)for the same old "family values" of the Religious Right. Women are nurturing and make meals; men are aggressive and can't cook. Gays and lesbians cannot be parents (oops, don't tell Dick Cheney or his pregnant lesbian daughter and her lesbian partner) and (heterosexual) marriage will solve all American problems.
National Fatherhood Initiative co-founder Don Eberly is also deeply embedded in the Religious Right. He was a former Reagan White House aide, who, Fred Clarkson noted, developed conservative state policy networks to spread "family" issues. He, too, was tapped by George W. Bush, and named as deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. Writes Berkowitz,
"Although not normally associated with such Religious Right demagogues as the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Dr. James Dobson ... Don Eberly nevertheless plays an essential role defining America's twenty-first century culture wars."
Horn, who has a PhD in clinical psychology, used his position as president of NFI as a platform for reactionary views. He opined that marriage should be promoted by changes in government policy, for example, by letting only children of married couples into Headstart ("there are still going to be plenty of places for children of single women"), and by giving married couples preferences in public housing and welfare benefits. He claimed that domestic partnership is bad because it is "antimarriage," and discourages marriage. Of course, he opposes abortion.
His nomination to a key government position was opposed by dozens of women's groups , which described the "sexist agenda" of the National Fatherhood Initiative, challenged his use of gender stereotypes and "his assertion that wives should 'submit' to their husbands."
Horn's views were well-known to insiders before Bush put him on the government payroll. He had served under the first President Bush to serve as commissioner of Children, Youth and Families in the Administration for Children and Families. He was affiliated with the conservative Hudson Institute, and, as noted above, served on the board of the ultraconservative Independent Women's Forum. According to a 2000 briefing paper by Lee Cokorinos of the Institute for Democracy Studies, Antifeminist Organizations: Instituting the Backlash, the board of the IWF included Lynne Cheney, Mary Ellen Bork and Midge Decter; others affiliated with IWF include ultraconservatives Christina Hoff Sommers, Linda Chavez and Elaine Chao.
Conservative foundations spread the butter for both IWF and Horn's National Fatherhood Initiative. In addition to the Scaife start-up grant for NFI, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc. delivered two grants of $100,000 to get it going. The project continued to be funded generously by Bradley and Scaife, with additional funds from the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Earhart Foundation (To support a book, 'The Faith Factor in Fatherhood' by Don Eberly), the Jacquilin Hume Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation (`Fatherhood and TV Evaluation Project: Wade Horn will direct an effort to examine how fathers are depicted in prime time television). From 1994 to 2004, the National Fatherhood Initiative received 57 grants for $3,554,830 from the conservative foundations tracked by Mediatransparency.org.
The government began to kick in with NFI funding, too. According to IRS 990 forms posted on Guidestar.org, the group had total revenue of $4,434,347 in 2002. Of that, $2,846,095 came from government grants, and $1,153,520 from other grants and contributions. The 2004 Form 990, covering the calendar year 2004, reported similar, but slightly lower, amounts; $4,102,614 in total revenue and $2,662,916 in government grants.
In those areas in which Horn has been unable to direct government policy to reflect his regressive views, he has deftly directed money to organizations that believe as he does -- such as NFI.
With a million dollars distributed to the National Fatherhood Institute by Horn's own department in a program specially crafted to mirror the mission of the organization, Horn is giving a big handout to his baby. The funds equal one-quarter of the NFI's previous budget, and the great thing about a "capacities-building" grant is that it can be used to cover any number of expenditures -- whether buying mailing lists or outfitting new computers. NFI is using half of its funds (approximately $500,000) to further spread its "traditional families" propaganda to 20 other "comunity-based" or "faith-based" organizations, which will receive $25,000 to participate in a training program.
The not-so-distant sound is of the Scaife Family Foundation-- clapping with both hands.
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