12 SEPTEMBER 26-OCTOBER 2, 2024 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Charles and David Koch and Richard Mellon Scaife were also spurred to action. But as Maher explains, “Coors is the one that really took the Powell Memo to heart. He truly wanted to branch out and really put his money in a bunch of different pots. He takes another paragraph from another sec- tion that Powell focused on, which was the media, and television specifi cally.” In February 1973, Coors launched TVN, Television News Inc., a syndicated news service. Coors installed an ideological aide, Jack Wilson, at the company to ensure a conservative bent, and Weyrich also exer- cised infl uence over news operations. A slate of journalists initially rebelled against the conservative mandate — until TVN hired a new vice president for news operations at the start of 1975, a political television adviser named Roger Ailes. Although TVN was shuttered later in 1975, Ailes would go on to found and lead Fox News, a reincarnation of what Coors and Ailes attempted with TVN, funded by another right-wing multi-millionaire, Ru- pert Murdoch. And Coors wasn’t stopping there. Heed- ing the Powell Memorandum’s call to con- front regulatory enemies in the courts, he established the Mountain States Legal Foundation. “[MSLF] followed the model of similar legal groups, but focused on the West,” Maher says. “Powell said you need to focus on the judiciary and create alterna- tives to what Ralph Nader had done with the Public Interest Research Group and Common Cause, who would go and use the courts to litigate, fi le lawsuits to really push regulators to enforce environmental regulations or enforce campaign fi nance law. Powell said, ‘We need this also, these legal groups that will advocate for what the Chamber of Commerce and the business community needs.’” The Lakewood-based Mountain States Legal Foundation continues to advocate to- day. Its fi rst president was James Watt, who went on to become Reagan’s controversial Secretary of the Interior; it was also headed by William Perry Pendley, a former director of the Bureau of Land Management who’s been credited with the section of Project 2025 that suggests selling off federal public lands. Maher fi nally has the Coors recording in hand. Archival audio is priceless in the pod- cast world, so the team is already working on a special episode of Master Plan that will delve into this 1996 conversation in which Joseph Coors reveals the inspiration for the funding of ultra-conservative organizations like the Heritage Foundation. The recording is the smoking gun of the podcast’s premise — that the Powell Memo- randum was the blueprint that oligarchs like Coors followed to create the modern conservative movement. “This Powell, Powell Memorandum — you ever see that?” Coors asks Edwards on the tape. “I don’t think so, no,” Edwards replies. “Old Powell, uh, just before he was nomi- nated to the Supreme Court, wrote this memorandum,” Coors says. “It’s called the Attack on the American Free Enterprise System. Written August of ’71.” Pages rustle. “And I’ll tell you, it had, it just, it stirred me up because of some of the things that it said. ‘No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack’ — things of that nature,” Coors tells Edwards, quoting Powell. “‘The assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum.’ ‘The painfully sad truth is that business, including the boards of directors and top executives of corporations great and small and business organizations at all levels often have responded, if at all by appeasement, ineptitude and ignoring the problem.’ “That’s the type of thing that just set me thinking,” Coors says. “Good God, it’s about time maybe that business executives should get more involved. Do something proactive, as they call it these days.” Email the author at [email protected]. News continued from page 10 Colorado’s Joseph Coors was greatly impacted by the Powell Memorandum. RONALD REAGAN LIBRARY
