The Southern Poverty Law Center Is Everything That’s Wrong With Liberalism

...The most damning quotes about Dees and the SPLC all come from former associates on the political left.

...As the SPLC publicizes the names of ever more hate groups to "raise awareness" of intolerance and to tap into ever new sources of funds, its donors should keep in mind a genuine larger truth. Heightened awareness has never by itself helped the actual victims of anything, anywhere, at any time. At best, it is entirely self-referential. At its worst, it serves as a useful ploy to make a donor who hasn't done much in the way of due diligence about an organization's finances feel good about sending money to what appears to be a righteous cause....

What has infuriated the SPLC’s liberal critics is their suspicion that Morris Dees has used the SPLC primarily as a fundraising machine fueled by his direct-mail talents that generates a nice living for himself (the SPLC’s 2010 tax filing lists a compensation package of $345,000 for him as the organization’s chief trial counsel and highest-paid employee) and a handful of other high ranking SPLC officials plus luxurious offices and perks, but that does relatively little in the way of providing the legal services to poor people that its name implies.

CharityWatch (formerly the American Institute of Philanthropy), an independent organization that monitors and rates leading nonprofits for their fundraising efficiency, has consistently given the SPLC its lowest grade of “F” (i.e., “poor”) for its stockpiling of assets far beyond what CharityWatch deems a reasonable reserve (three years’ worth of operating expenses) to tide it over during donation-lean years. But even if the SPLC weren’t sitting on an unspent $256 million, according to CharityWatch, it would still be a mediocre (“C+”) performer among nonprofits.

The sun is dipping low in the evening sky over the Republican Party as the Other Leading Brand... It's also horrible news for people who raise money and make money selling the notion there's a right resurgence out there in the hinterland with massed legions of haters, ready to march down Main Street draped in Klan robes, a copy of "Mein Kampf" tucked under one arm and a Bible under the other.

What is the arch-salesman of hate mongering, Mr. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, going to do now?...

Dees and his hate-seekers scour the landscape for hate like the arms manufacturers inventing new threats and for the same reason: It's their staple.

...Morris Dees [founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center] won a judgment for a black woman whose son was killed by Klansmen. She received $51,875 as settlement. Mr. Dees, according to an investigation by the Montgomery Advertiser, pulled in $9 million from fund-raising solicitation letters that featured a particularly gruesome photograph of the grieving mother's son. Mr. Dees, who pays himself an annual salary of $275,000, offered the grieving mother none of the $9 million her son's death made for him.

Mr. Dees, in fact, earns - or is paid, which is not necessarily the same thing - more than nearly any officer of other advocacy groups surveyed by the National Journal, more than the chairmen of the ACLU, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Children's Defense Fund.

"You are a fraud and a con man," Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, which actually takes on dozens of death-penalty appeals for poor blacks every year, once told him. "You spend so much, accomplish so little, and promote yourself so shamelessly."...

White guilt can be manipulated with black pain, but it has to be done carefully. It's a sordid scam. Some people would call what Morris Dees does a hate crime, but it's a living, and a very good one.

... human nature being what it is, there always seems to be a lump of coal lurking among the sugarplums. We were reminded of this unpleasant fact again by a Journal reader in Arlington who considered making a contribution to the Southern Poverty Law Center, listed as No. 0454 in the Combined Federal Campaign...

In fact, unknown to most CFC donors, the tax-exempt SPLC flunked an audit by the Arlington-based Better Business Bureau's Wise Giving Alliance, which requires that "a reasonable percentage, at least 50 percent of total income from all sources, should be applied to programs and activities directly related to the purposes for which the organization exists."

...SPLC...spent 89 percent of its total income on fund-raising and administrative costs...

Granted, administrative costs tend to run high when executive salaries are in the six-figure range. For example,... Morris Dees, SPLC's chief trial lawyer, pulls down a cool $280,699...

... give your hard-earned dollars to a real charity, not a bunch of slick, parasitic hucksters who live high on the hog by raising money on behalf of needy people who never see a dime of it.

In 1986, the center's entire legal staff quit in protest of Dees's refusal to address issues--such as homelessness, voter registration, and affirmative action--that they considered far more pertinent to poor minorities, if far less marketable to affluent benefactors, than fighting the KKK. Another lawyer, Gloria Browne, who resigned a few years later, told reporters that the center's programs were calculated to cash in on "black pain and white guilt."

There have never been any left-wing groups on the SPLC’s lengthy list of "hate groups." It’s "Hate Watch" Web site clearly states that it is supposedly "Keeping and Eye on the Radical Right." There is no mention of the Radical Left, such as the organizations the SPLC’s board members all have founded or belong to and associate with. When pressed, the professional political haters at the SPLC will admit, as Mark Potok, author of the laughingly-named "Intelligence Report" did, that his "hate group" list is "all about ideology," as Menzies writes.

Significant revenue can be generated from peddling hate, and the SPLC knows how to rake it in. Here's their complete Form 990 as required by IRS for tax-exempt non-profit orgs (here's a snapshot of salaries from the form). It includes a list of the schools and local governments that have signed on to disseminate their hate ("tolerance") propaganda. Total salaries exceed $4.5 million.