Joseph Coors

According to Watch.Pair.com database, Joseph Coors is the founder of the Council for National Policy:

"'The founder,' beer magnate Joe Coors, donated the first-year Heritage Foundation budget of $250,000 for 1973 from the coffers of the Coors Corporation...For the next two years Coors gave $200,000 to the group...then pledged $15,000 per month... Eventually, Coors and Paul M. Weyrich set up the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress to carry out political activities and the Heritage Foundation as a tax exempt educational research entity. The Coors company provided Heritage Foundation with $20,000 per month during the foundation's first year. Weyrich was Heritage president until February 28, 1974.

"In 1980, Heritage published Mandate for Leadership to guide the incoming Reagan Administration (Ronald Reagan) and its transition team.... Working the high-level inside track on these personnel hirings was Reagan's 'Kitchen Cabinet,' of which Joe Coors was probably the best known member. A Reagan loyalist since the 1968 GOP convention, Coors began spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C. and the White House. The attempt at governance by the Kitchen Cabinet became so elaborate that they actually established an office in the Executive Office Building across from the White House. Embarrassed by the image of a covey of millionaires seeming to run parallel and sometimes conflicting personnel recruitment operations, senior White House staff produced legal opinions saying that it was illegal for a private group to occupy government property, in this case a White House office. Although Coors produced a legal opinion arguing there was no violation of law, Coors and friends were evicted. Heritage could hardly claim diminished relations with the Reagan Administration, however, as an estimated two-thirds of its Mandate recommendations were adopted in the first year of the Administration. Further, Heritage was using a letter of endorsement from White House Chief of Staff Edwin Meese III in a December 1981 fundraising effort. In his letter of endorsement, Meese promised Dr. Edwin J. Feulner, Jr. that 'this Administration will cooperate fully with your efforts.' After leaving the Reagan Administration, Meese joined the staff of the Heritage Foundation."

Washington Babylon, p. 11:

Coors put up the initial $250,000 in seed money to start Heritage in 1973. Since then, he has funded Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation, the reclusive Council for National Policy (the far right's answer to the Council on Foreign Relations), the Hoover Institution, the American Defense Institute, and Accuracy in Media.

Affiliations

According to the Watch.Pair Database:

• Board of Governors, Council for National Policy (CNP)(1982)
• Executive Committee, CNP (1984-85)
• Chairman, CNP Governmental Affairs Committee
• President, Adolph Coors Company
• Chairman of the Board, Coors Porcelain Company
• Former Regent, University of Colorado
• Former member of the Board of Directors, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM)
• Member, Citizen's Legal Defense Fund for the FBI
• Member, Ad Hoc (closely allied with National Lay Committee of the National Council of Churches)
• Prime donor at the founding of the Heritage Foundation
• Former Member of Advisory Council, National Strategy Information Center

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External links

• Paul M. Weyrich (attributed to), The most important legacy of Joe Coors, web posted March 24, 2003.
• "The Coors Connection", namebase.org, 1990, a list of Joseph Coors affiliations.