Tom Tancredo & His Pro-Abort Backers
Written by Mark Harris on January 16th, 2007Red State story here.
In fact, it’s not clear Tancredo is in line with the mainstream, social conservative wing of the GOP he seeks to align himself with. According to campaign finance reports, one of Tancredo’s biggest financial backers has been the family of Dr. John Tanton, the founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Wall Street Journal editorial-page features writer Jason Riley wrote a devastating piece about the organization back in 2004, in which the group’s pro-abortion and pro-eugenics roots were revealed.
Tanton is also one of the most prominent conservative financiers of Planned Parenthood in the United States, having helped found in the mid-1960s the first Planned Parenthood chapter in northern Michigan.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies may strike right-wing poses in the press, but both groups support big government, mock federalism, deride free markets and push a cultural agenda abhorrent to any self-respecting social conservative.
FAIR’s founder and former president is John Tanton, an eye doctor who opened the first Planned Parenthood chapter in northern Michigan. By Dr. Tanton’s own reckoning, FAIR has received more than $1.5 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white-supremacist outfit devoted to racial purity through eugenics.
Board members of FAIR actively promote the sterilization of Third World women for the purposes of reducing U.S. immigration prospects. And if anything disturbs the good doctor more than those Latin American hordes crossing the Rio Grande, it’s the likelihood that most of them are Catholic, or so he once told a Reuters reporter.
CIS, an equally repugnant FAIR offshoot, is a big fan of China’s one-child policy and publishes books advocating looser limits on abortion and wider use of RU-486. CIS considers the Sierra Club, which cites “stabilizing world population” fourth on its 21st century to-do list, as too moderate. And like FAIR, CIS has called for a target U.S. population of 150 million, about half of what it is today.
I post this just as an fyi. I am not taking a position either way, as I don’t think taking money from pro-choicers makes one pro-choice.
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A big reason that I don’t identify with the anti-immigration wing of the party.
That being said, Tom Tancredo is on record as either a no or one exception pro-lifer. That being said, he has drunk the no-immigration kool-aid to the point that he’ll support almost anyone that agrees with him on that issue. That being said, he won’t win more than 1% in the primaries.
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Sick.
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This is so sloppily reported. I have followed all the links and find no evidence that Tom Tancredo is a racist, nor that FAIR is racist or supports abortion or eugenics. This is a deliberate attempt by pro-amnesty Republicans to discourage pro-life Republicans from supporting Tancredo, who is 100% pro-life and pro-rule of law.
Sick.
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This was very sloppily reported. I see no evidence for the claim that Tom Tancredo or the FAIR PAC is racist, supports abortion or eugenics. This is an attempt by pro-amnesty Republicans to smear an outspoken critic of their policies. Particularly, to pull away any support he might get from pro-lifers. Tancredo is 100% pro-life and anti-establishment.
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hmm…I seem to remember posting something about Mr. Tancrdo last summer detailing his very interesting politics. Enough said.
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rubeng07,
I read your post on Tancredo “detailing his very interesting politics”. You didn’t detail anything. You quoted one line of his. You made an attempt to debunk him but failed. Then you detailed your solution to the illegal immigration problem, which included penalties for employers of illegal aliens, which is one of Tancredo’s solutions. But what’s this got to do with the outrageous insinuation that Tancredo approves of racist and pro-abortion policies?
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Enviromentalists, population control freaks, anti-market, abortions mills, Catholic-bashing freaks. All of this DIRECTLY connected to the little Italian dark-type character Signore Tancredo. He does not look very “Conservative” to me, does he? Traditional conservativism is Roman Catholic, anti-French revolution, pro-Western civilization, individualist and capitalist. Not nativist redneckishm big-brother-controls-all. Thus, he is not conservative. Viva el Brownback!
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ABOUT FAIR’s FOUNDER and CURRENT BOARD MEMBER
TANTON: Well, they were actually taken in 1978, to get ready for 1979. We [Federation for American Immigration Reform] got our tax ruling from the IRS in about August of 1978. We had arranged from some other contributions before that. One of the early contributions went to the ZPG Foundation [Zero Population Growth] and was subsequently re-donated to us when we finally got our IRS ruling. Pg. 29
TANTON: I don’t remember the exact sequence now in which people joined me on the board [Federation for American Immigration Reform], but certainly Sherry Barnes was on of the very first people. Sherry had served with me on the ZPG [Zero Population Growth] executive committee, and I knew her quite well. She worked for Planned Parenthood in New York and was a free thinker who was able to deal with topics like immigration, unlike some of our other colleagues at ZPG. So she was key. Then there was Bill Paddock, who had been on the board at ZPG. He had left it by the time, but he understood our point of view. So that made three of us. Pg. 30
TANTON: Let’s see, the fifth person in that original group was Sidney Swensrud, the former chairman of Gulf Oil. Sherry knew Mr. Swensrud from his work at International Planned Parenthood and the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, and she thought he might be interested. Pg. 30
TANTON: All five of the first board members, along with our executive director, came out of the population and environmental movements. The thing that got us all into this in the first place was the very high-level concern in the 1970s about population growth, and the population arguments were the ones we put forth initially. But we found they didn’t seem to carry as much weight with others as they did with us. Pg. 34
All quotes taken from “A Skirmish in a Wider War: An Oral History of John H. Tanton, Founder of FAIR”
Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan
FAIR AND THE PIONEER FUND
The Pioneer Fund was founded in 1937, based on the monetary endowment of Wickliffe P. Draper. Draper started the Fund in order to further his interest and goal of purifying the American gene pool by encouraging the descendants of white colonialists to procreate. Since that time the Pioneer Fund has become a centerpiece in keeping scientific racism alive through allocating grants for pseudo-academic studies. The Pioneer Fund serves as a primary supporter of the eugenics movement and has given it both the space to grow and the chance to politicize its research and theories.
The Fund can also be held partly responsible for the successes of several of its grant recipients. The Fund has given significant amounts of money to the likes of: J. Philippe Rushton who received $333,405 between 1994-1996, to research such topics as “cranial size and IQ in Asian Americans” and “brain size and cognitive ability: Correlations with age, sex, social class, and race; Roger Pearson who receive $568,000 between 1981-1991 and $159,500 between 1994-1996, to help argue that a breeding program be started to save the white race from inferior gene pools.
In years past a major contributor to FAIR has been the notorious Pioneer Fund (See Profile), an organization known for its support of racist, biological determinist and eugenic research and advocacy. According to the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism, Pioneer had contributed in excess of $1.2 million to FAIR between the time of its founding and 1996, $600,000 of which came between 1988 and 1994.
JOHN TANTON ON EUGENICS
“As with the euthanasia, active eugenics will deservedly continue to be rejected by most persons, but passive eugenics should elicit their support.”
The Case For Passive Eugenics
April 24, 1975
John H. Tanton, M.D.
Founder and Board member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
JOHN TANTON ON POPULATION
“All five of the first board members, along with our executive director, came out of the population and environmental movements. The thing that got us all into this in the first place was the very high-level concern in the 1970s about population growth, and the population arguments were the ones we put forth initially. But we found they didn’t seem to carry as much weight with others as they did with us.”
April 20-21, 1989
A Skirmish in a Wider War: An Oral History of John H. Tanton
“Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? … Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down?”
John H. Tanton, M.D.
Paper for the WITAN study group, 1986, as referenced in Jean Stefanic & Richard Deldago’s
No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed America’s Social Agenda
(Temple University Press, 1998), p. 11.
JOHN TANTON ON FAIR LEADERSHIP
“One person who attended those [FAIR] advisory meetings several times was Sally Gamble Epstein. Sally was from Washington and had worked in Planned Parenthood and population matters for many years. She also worked on the board of the Pathfinder Fund, an international population group centered in Boston. Another advisory board member was Janet Harte from Corpus Christi, Texas. Janet had also been very active in Planned Parenthood. Another person was Dorothy Blair of Naples, who also had been an enthusiastic Planned Parenthood supporter . . .”
April 20-21, 1989
A Skirmish in a Wider War: An Oral History of John H. Tanton
“You may not remember, but one of the reasons that we were able to get Sidney Swensrud to come to our board was that he had been on the board of the Association for Voluntary Sterilization, and they had a rule that rotated everybody off every three years.”
April 20-21, 1989
A Skirmish in a Wider War: An Oral History of John H. Tanton
Dick Lamm
FAIR Board Member
Former president of Zero Population Growth
Former governor of Colorado
“I first met him [Dick Lamm] at a ZPG annual meeting in Estes Park, Colorado where we occupied the podium together. After talking about the population problem, we had a great joke-telling session, as I recall.”
April 20-21, 1989
A Skirmish in a Wider War: An Oral History of John H. Tanton
Bill Paddock
Founding FAIR Board Member
Former president of the Environmental Fund (Now known as Population-Environmental Balance)
“Population-Environment Balance, or BALANCE, is a grassroots membership organization committed to stabilizing U.S. population in order to safeguard the carrying capacity of the United States.” http://www.balance.org/
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Punishing the employers of Illegal immigrants will only drive them to hide their employment records.
This immigration problem is alot more tricky than it seems on the surface. Of course, the main response against the Illegal Aliens is that they are taking American jobs. But, some of the jobs they are taking have them working under the table and in some shabby labor conditions. Thus the phrase “They do jobs Americans won’t Do”.
I think a good idea to handle this is to go “Left” on the employers of them. Force them to pay at least minimum wages and apply strict labor conditions for internationals that are here illegally. Force the employers to help get the workers proper documentation, and to relieve an employee without documentation is serverely punished.
Forced the Employer into a situation in which hiring Americans look desirable. Or risk facing losses if they are found to hire illegals and do not take “responsibility” for not providing proper labor rights and documentation at the emplyers expense.
This will solve some of the problem. The rest has alot to do with the Mexican government.