Special Report
Anheuser-Busch v. Alito
By Carl F. Horowitz
Published 1/12/2006

Fred Smith, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, knows the instincts of anti-business activists as well as anyone. And his advice to corporate leaders who contemplate buying off their tormentors is this: Don’t. Political bribery won’t work, except maybe in the short run.

“A lot of companies think that by admitting their failures to accusers, they can buy peace,” he said at a conference last November co-organized by his group, the National Legal and Policy Center and the Free Enterprise Education Institute. “Many corporations admit in effect, ‘We know we’re slimy. But we’re going to set aside some of our ill-gotten gains for good purposes.'” Too often, “good purposes” tend to be organizations threatening to sue or boycott them to advance their own anti-business goals.

Companies such as Toyota and Pepsico for years have elevated to a virtual art form the practice of buying off hard-Left plaintiffs and protesters. You can add Anheuser-Busch to the list. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or MALDEF, indicates Anheuser-Busch in a recent annual report as a “Partner.” That means that it donated at least $100,000, hardly pocket change.

A company the size of Anheuser-Busch, one would think, would orient its philanthropic giving toward organizations supportive of its interests: namely, boosting beer sales and strengthening free enterprise as a whole. MALDEF, to make a long story short, is not such an organization. For nearly 40 years it has waged a ceaseless battle to create what amounts to unofficial Mexican ethnic principalities on U.S. soil, blocking immigration reform, promoting linguistic separatism, and increasing government public-assistance spending on Hispanics. Such wish-list items are not good for any company’s bottom line, never mind Anheuser-Busch’s.

MALDEF, as its name implies, files lawsuits — lots of them. And the last thing the group’s leaders want to see is someone sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court predisposed toward making deportations easier, striking down mandatory bilingual education, or preventing issuance of driver’s licenses as IDs to illegal immigrants — in other words, opposing the sorts of things MALDEF advocates.

In Judge Samuel A. Alito, now facing long-awaited Senate confirmation hearings, MALDEF has such an opponent. Alito, having served 15 years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, has left a modest-sized paper trail suggesting as much.

MALDEF, let us understand, plays to win. And win it often does. Over the years the organization has filed successful suits to mandate affirmative-action hiring in Denver public schools, force employers to refrain from requiring Hispanic employees to speak English on the job, and require Virginia public colleges and universities to accept illegal immigrant students at in-state tuition.

Alito’s presence on the Supreme Court could derail some of these victories. Let’s take a brief look at his track record. The rest here.

Bonus info here. The Open Borders Lobby and the Nation’s Security After 9/11
By William Hawkins and Erin Anderson
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 21, 2004