Alexander Zaitchik: Right Wing Groups Spent Over $1 Million

bankrolling Fox News Host's Propaganda in Schools! Two foundations that have been described as the dark money ATM of the right, have spent more than $1 million combined, funding a non profit organization, whose primary function is distributing libertarian education materials, featuring Fox Business host John Stossel. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, the affiliated funding groups, were until recently obscure entities, but over the past month, a series of reports have detailed how those organizations have paid out more than $400 million, to over 1,000 conservative groups since their 1999 founding. Those reports have described how the two organizations have allowed wealthy individuals to discreetly underwrite tending conservative causes, like climate change denial. the groups have also been the the primary "funders" behind an effort to flood American classrooms with packaged libertarian lessons, branded with John Stossel's mustachioed face. In 2011, Donors Trust gave $540,000 to the Philadelphia based Center for Independent Thought (CIT), with the funds earmarked for the distribution of free "Stossel in the Classroom" videos, DVDs and discussion guides, which the program claims, are currently used by more than 150,000 teachers in middle school, high school, and classrooms around the country. The 2011 Donors Trust donation made up more than two thirds of CIT's $750,581 revenue, according to IRS filings. The Center spent $360, 872 on the "Stossel" program that year, making it by far the largest of three active programs listed on is website. "Stossel in the Classroom" began in 1999, when Stossel was still with ABC News. It was seeded with financial support from the libertarian Palmer R Chitester Fund, and grew slowly, until CIT took over the program in the mid 2000s. CIT was a natural home for "Stossel in the Classroom." Founded with Koch money, as the Libertarian Review Foundation in the 1970s, real estate developer Howard Rich took control of the organization in 1990, and gave it its current name. Rich is part of the libertarian donor elite, founded Americans for Limited Government, and sits on the board at Cato, the Club for Growth, and the Friedman Center for Educational Choice. Rich's wife, Andrea, runs CIT, but does not draw a salary.