Monday, January 07, 2008
FR. ROBERT SIRICO, MONT PELERIN, AND INTERCONNECTING DIRECTORATES
Fr. Robert Sirico is a member of Mont Pelerin Society - a libertarian think tank - according to this interview on the Heartland Institute website.
Fr. Sirico's Acton Institute lists the Heartland Institute in its "Helpful Links".
Lucis Trust's New Group of World Servers includes Heartland Institute on its list.
CADI Eleutheria in Romania lists three members of the Academic Council who are members of the Mont Pelerin Society -
- Leonard Liggio - Senior Vice President of Mont Pelerin
- Pascal Salin - President of the Mont Pelerin Society (1996-1998)
- Reverend Robert Sirico
Another member of the Mont Pelerin Society is Antony Fisher, who established the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Heritage Foundation, and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. (source)
The Heritage Foundation is also on the Action Institute list of "Helpful Links".
Mont Pelerin and Heritage are both on the list of "groups surrounding the Rockefeller and Rothschild families"
Alejandro Chafuen is the President and CEO of Atlas Economic Research Foundation. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and a founding trustee of The Acton Institute.
Mont Pelerin founded the Cato Institute.
Executive Intelligence Review has this to say about Cato:
No organization is more responsible for the forced-march drive to privatize Social Security—stealing trillions of dollars of its funds for Wall Street accounts—than the Cato Institute, a multi-million dollar Washington, D.C. think tank. During the past 20 years, Cato has had more than a quarter of a billion dollars lavished on it in contributions by the most powerful Wall Street banks, and largest right-wing think tanks—led by the ultra-right-wing Koch group of foundations. Cato has spent this money on a host of projects intended to destroy the sovereign nation-state and implement fascist economic austerity. But the lion's share has gone into the privatization of Social Security.
Since its founding in 1977 by Ed Crane, currently its President, and Charles G. Koch, the heir of an oil and energy fortune who is a leading figure of the Mont Pelerin Society, Cato has methodically built up a far-flung network to propagandize for, and enact privatization. Some of that network is hidden, just out of public view; some is public, but the average observer would not know it belonged to Cato—which designed it that way.
Online Journal puts it more bluntly: "Bankrupting Social Security to finance fascism".
Doug Bandow is a member of the Advisory Board of the Acton Institute according to SourceWatch. The same source offers this commentary on Doug Bandow:
Doug Bandow was a syndicated columnist with Copley News Service and a senior fellow of the Cato Institute. Following revelations that he had accepted payments from lobbyist Jack Abramoff he resigned from Cato and was suspended from Copley News Service. In late December 2005 it was announced that he had accepted an appointment as vice president of policy at Citizen Outreach.
Cato Institute is another organization listed in the "Helpful Links" at the Acton Institute website.
Mrs. Betsy DeVos is a director of Acton Institute, and the female half of the Amway fortune. Notice that Wikipedia tells us:
In a 1979 ruling, Amway was found by the Federal Trade Commission that its operations did not violate pyramid scheme prohibitions, but the company was ultimately sanctioned.[7] The FTC now requires that Amway and Quixtar publish an SA4400, which shows that more than 99% of all distributors lose money each year.
Quite an interesting little organization Fr. Robert Sirico is running.
Of course this survey of Fr. Sirico's activities would not be complete without a link to Randy Engel's Sirico Brief which lists in detail Fr. Sirico's most interesting activities in the gay community. He is a man of many talents.
