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Commentary

Bamboozling the Public in the Name of the Troops

By Z Magazine ArticleNo Comments4 Mins Read

Move America Forward (MAF), which claims to be “the nation’s largest grassroots pro-troop organization,” was the brainchild of Howard Kaloogian, a former California State Assemblyperson, and Melanie Morgan, the co-host of a morning drive program on right-wing talk radio in the San Francisco Bay Area. Russo Marsh & Rogers (RMR), a Sacramento, California-based public relations outfit with long-time close ties to the Republican Party, helped the group get off the ground. Sal Russo, the Russo of RMR, is a long-time GOP political consultant, listed on the 10-year-old charity’s tax returns as chief strategist.

The banner on Move America Forward’s website reads: “Supporting Our Troops and Their Missions in the War on Terror.” The organization’s mission statement maintains that it “is a military charity…dedicated to supporting the brave men and women of our Armed Forces and their missions to defeat terrorism.”

One of the group’s earliest activities had little to do with supporting the troops. Move America Forward tried to prevent theater owners from showing Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. MAF’s campaign may have raised a fair amount of money, but failed dismally, as Moore’s film went on to become the largest grossing political documentary in cinematic history. MAF maintains that it runs several programs aimed at the troops, including:

  • A Care Package Program sponsor[ing] Gold Star Parent Trips to Iraq
  • Broadcast[ing] television and radio commercials throughout the nation advocating support for our troops
  • Defending our troops from those who have “attacked their character, integrity and effectiveness in carrying out their missions”
  • Leading the Voices of Soldiers Truth Tour—with Move America Forward’s Co-Chairs (Howard Kaloogian & Melanie Morgan)
  • Escorting a delegation of radio talk show hosts to Iraq

Purloining Images 

According to ProPublica’s Kim Barker, the charity has frequently “taken images and stories from other groups and from veterans themselves without permission to use in fundraising appeals.” In an advertising campaign conducted last year, MAF solicited funds to provide care packages for 800 Marines in a battalion fighting in Afghanistan. Barker writes: “The charity later described the fundraising drive as a rousing success. In less than five weeks, all 800 Marines in a 1st Marine Division battalion, nicknamed “Geronimo,” were sent care packages and notes in Afghanistan—it claimed. But that couldn’t have been true. The Marines of Geronimo weren’t even in Afghanistan during Move America Forward’s fund drive. Instead, they were deployed more than 3,000 miles away, in Okinawa, Japan.”

Last year, MAF also “solicited funds by claiming a partnership with Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, the largest hospital for wounded service members in the country. No such partnership existed, according to Defense Department officials.”

Sal Russo was the chief strategist for Our Country Deserves Better PAC, (also known as the Tea Party Express) and he has also played a seminal role in Move America Forward.

According to Barker, “Move America Forward” paid out more than $2.3 million to Russo (or Russo, Marsh and Associates) for services, including program management and advertising. That’s about 30 percent of the charity’s overall expenditures over that time.”

Barker also notes that, “Russo and his associates have previously drawn attention for lavishing funds raised through the committees on themselves, using this money on an Alaskan cruise and fancy hotels as well as paying themselves huge consulting fees.”

Although Russo didn’t respond to ProPublica’s questions, Danny Gonzalez, “provid[ed] a four-paragraph defense of the charity. “We are proud of the fact that we always appropriate our donor’s (sic) funds ethically and in the spirit of our mission to support the troops, he said, adding that Move America Forward was currently preparing 2,000 boxes of care packages for shipping.” MAF’s overall rating by Charity Navigator—“Your Guide To Intelligent Giving”—was zero. For the Fiscal Year Ending December 2012, only 53.2 percent of MAF’s budget was spent on programs.

Z

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Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering conservative movements.

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Bill Berkowitz has been tracking and monitoring conservative political and social movements in the United States for the past twenty-five-plus years. In 1977,  after working as an organizer with for the United Farmworkers of America (UFW), and as the first Promotion Director for the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), he helped found the DataCenter, a research library and information center for social activists and investigative journalists located in Oakland, California.Born and raised in New York City, Berkowitz holds a degree in English from the University of Kansas, located in Lawrence, Kansas. During the Vietnam War he co-founded Reconstruction (later named Vortex), the first alternative newspaper in Kansas.During his twenty-four years at the DataCenter Berkowitz focused on religious and secular right wing movements and U.S. military involvement in Latin America and the Middle East, helping put together a series of Press Profiles (collections of the “best of the press”) on such topics as the Reagan Administration’s policies in Central America, the Right-to-Know, and the growth of the New Right in the U.S. During the Persian Gulf War he edited a three-volume series of Persian Gulf Readers.In 1994, Berkowitz became founding editor of DataCenter’s CultureWatch newsletter, which was one of the first national publications systematically tracking the conservative movement from the mid-1990s through the 2000 presidential election.Shortly after leaving the DataCenter in 2000, he was the author of “Prospecting Among the Poor: Welfare Privatization,” an examination of the results of the Clinton Administration’s Welfare Reform legislation.Over the past seven years, Berkowitz has written more than 600 articles and columns for such venues as Z Magazine, Inter Press Service, Media Transparency, Talk2Action, Dissident Voice, Working Assets’ WorkingForChange, In These Times, The Progressive, The Nation and others.He has also appeared on a number of radio programs.In 2005, Berkowitz was given the Journalism Award by the Before Columbus Foundation. In his introduction to the award, playwright and author Ishmael Reed described him as “the Paul Revere of the American left whose job has been to get the left out of Starbucks and self-realization retreats and to awaken progressives, liberals, and everybody-to-the-left-of-center to the personalities and institutions behind what might be the most dangerous drift toward Fascism in our country’s history.”

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