Quote Originally Posted by rkumetz View Post
You do realize that the overly dramatic self-promoting press releases cross the boundary between inaccurate and simply laughable, right?

If AFC believes in the cause AND really cares about falconry you should have gone at this without the PLF nuts. I realize you are well intentioned despite our distance on various issues but PLF has a vastly different agenda than either of us. PLF is a Trojan horse disguised as a bunch of constitution thumping do-gooders.
They may not align with my personal political beliefs in a lot of areas, but it seems that they are pretty good at what they do and I'm glad to have them fighting on the behalf of falconers rights.

"The Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) was established in 1973-74 by a group of attorneys from California's Justice Department (then under the control of Attorney-General Ed Meese) to counter reform of the welfare system, and the liberal public interest legal groups that were pressing for better environmental and health regulations. Especially targeted were the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Governor Ronald Reagan of California appears to have provided the required financial links to Pittsburg billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife who funded the initial office in Sacramento, and his friend and counsellor, Ed Meese (III) became one of the founders and its chief supporter. Its expressed aim was to use its financial and litigation power to "impact the public policy agenda."

An article in the Washington Post in May 1999 reveals that "Scaife's first grants in this area (conservative public interest law movement) were made in 1974 to the Pacific Legal Foundation. In its early years Scaife kept the PLF alive. Since the mid-'70s more than $20 million in Scaife money has gone to the conservative public interest law movement "on behalf of a market-oriented economics system, traditional property rights and limited government," in the words of an internal memo written by a Scaife aide in December 1980."

The day-to-day operations of the Foundation were in the hands of Ronald A Zumbrun, who's law firm Zumbrun & Findley ran most of the cases. Before his elevation to CEO of the PLF, Zumbrun had been a lawyer with the California Department of Public Works, the California Department of Social Welfare and the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

By 1983 the organization was seen as a "growing force in public interest work" with an annual income of $2.5 million per year [3] and it had already begun to spawn other regional legal centers of a similar kind using Scaife funding. Not all of these, however, focussed on the aggressive use of litigation as did the PLF. According to a Philip Morris document urging the company to develop stronger links with the foundation: "It has participated in hundreds of cases at all court levels, winning the vast majority of those reaching final decision - including several before the U.S. Supreme Court."