Driving Highway 101 through Redwood Valley and Ukiah, it is impossible to miss the Dolly Parton billboards. A huge picture of Dolly Parton, with the sentence, “Find the Good in Everybody” and below that, outlined in red, the word “Kindness,” brought to you by the website PassItOn.com, The Foundation for a Better Life.
If ever a celebrity is scandal-free and loved by everyone on all sides of the political spectrum, it’s Dolly Parton, whose Dollywood Foundation gives away books to children, provides scholarships to keep teens from dropping out of high school, and other community minded programs. She is admirable, no doubt. But why is the Foundation for a Better Life putting up these billboards in our quaint, rural county?
PassItOn.com is funded by Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz’ Foundation for a Better Life. Its website says the billboards are public service announcements:
“Our goal is to select values we feel most individuals will find inspiring and relevant. These values reflect the input of a large and diverse group of people. The Foundation does not have any political or religious agenda, so that people from all backgrounds might feel uplifted by these messages of encouragement and hope. Our objective is simply to promote a wide spectrum of values by providing an uplifting message around each one.”
Dolly Parton is the kind of success story every billionaire loves. Born into extreme poverty, she became rich and famous through sheer grit, talent, drive, and hard work. She uses her great wealth to fund a nonprofit foundation, doing good by doing well. No need for wasteful government programs to become a success in life!
As billionaires go, Anschutz seems more in line with the quiet, homespun Warren Buffett, than with loud, controversial rich men who suck up media attention, like Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
Most news articles about Anschutz are close to ten years old. He keeps a low public profile. Anschutz inherited his family’s oil and gas business and then diversified into railroads, movie theaters, film production, newspapers, sports teams, and music production (he owns the Coachella Festival). Obviously, Anschutz is a smart and savvy businessman.
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Dustin Patterson, the Production Coordinator for the Foundation for a Better Life and PassItOn campaigns, exemplified kindness and courtesy in a phone call to answer a few of our questions.
We asked if the Foundation for a Better Life would be targeting Mendocino County, or the North Coast of California, along Highway 101?
No. Patterson said, “The way it works, it’s all based on free media space. When a billboard owner has space they can’t sell, they contact our organization. The Foundation for a Better Life pays a small one-time posting fee as an incentive for [billboard owners] to put up a PSA.”
We wondered if the billboard campaign was an effort to calm public nerves in a contentious election year?
“No,” Patterson said, “these are not political.”
We asked Patterson how the Foundation went about selecting celebrities for the billboards.
Patterson explained, “Every two years, roughly, we come up with a new billboard campaign. Typically, someone in [the celebrities’] management circle will reach out.” The celebrities are not paid, they donate the media and imagery.
He went on to say the Foundation for a Better Life researches the issues that the celebrity is interested in, and tailors a campaign around that.
The large freeway billboards are made of vinyl and can be unwrapped from the billboard and stored for future use in case a paying advertiser wants to rent that space.
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This year, there are close to 5,000 billboards across the US, according to Patterson.
The Foundation for a Better Life uses freelance creatives all over the country to create artwork for billboards, TV commercials, and other messages.
We have gathered the Foundation for a Better Life is a lean, efficient operation, with few employees. Anschutz has a wide circle of celebrity managers to draw from, as he owns entertainment and sports companies. The kind of people who craft Superbowl ads are at his disposal, people very skilled at emotional manipulation through advertising. The depth and breadth of Anshutz’ contacts in these worlds is impressive, as well as his efficient business model. It is easy to see how he rose to the top in his business dealings, and the celebrities in these campaigns trust him to convey their messages.
So, who cares if Philip Anshutz, kindly billionaire, is funding billboards, radio ads, bus station shelter ads, TV commercials, articles for newspapers, and posters for schools, and daily Instagram posts, with happy messages?
Well, it turns out, quite a few people.
Some musicians do not want their performances at Coachella to generate revenue for a billionaire who, despite protests to the contrary, seems to be aligned with conservative right-wing causes.
Anschutz has donated to political action committees that fund anti-LGBTQ+, anti-abortion, and anti-climate change groups. Paper Magazine’s January 3, 2018 article asks “How does Coachella’s problematic owner secure openly liberal artists?” But Anschutz is a study in contradictions, as openly gay Elton John is pictured on one of the Foundation for a Better Life ’s billboards.
Mark Hogan’s January 5, 2017 article in Pitchfork, quotes Coachella artist Ted Leo, who “recognized Anschutz’s name from investigative reporter Jane Mayer’s 2016 book Dark Money, which recounts how anti-government oil billionaires the Koch brothers and other like-minded peers, including Anschutz, have used their enormous wealth to back far-right causes. Leo directed followers to information about Anschutz’s ‘history of shadowy money in conservative causes.’”
The Foundation for a Better Life also provides free feel-good articles for newspapers. The newspaper business has drastically declined over the past 20 years, mainly due to the loss of advertising revenue to the Internet. There is no need for a local business to buy an ad in the newspaper when they can set up a website that people will find using Google. Craigslist and other internet sites have replaced most printed newspaper classified ads. Some of the newspapers that are still left are being purchased by groups of extremely wealthy people, who now control the media. The news is broadcast through a narrow funnel, with a narrow point of view. Anschutz owns several newspapers across the country. Through the Foundation for a Better Life, feel-good stories that he approves of are distributed to any paper that wants them, for free, as a “public service.”
The Foundation for a Better Life distributes free materials to schools, inspirational messages about being the best that you can be or overcoming adversity. Patterson confirmed in a follow-up email that only a handful of schools and newspapers in Northern California have requested materials from the Foundation for a Better Life.
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The Foundation for a Better Life is a supporter of the ArtCenter College of Design, an expensive art school in Southern California, with an emphasis on advertising, entertainment, and industrial design. In other words, art that serves the corporations.
The Foundation for a Better Life sponsored a campaign for students of ArtCenter to submit short videos with positive PSAs. Successful graduates go on to work in advertising, as industrial designers for corporations like Apple, and at entertainment companies such as Disney. The trustees of the school are heavy hitters in the advertising and entertainment world. For example, Trustee Bill Gross is a Silicon Valley legend. ArtCenter’s website says, “Among the transformative changes that Bill has wrought is the invention of the business model that powers most of the monetization of the internet. Bill invented the ‘paid click’, or CPC (cost-per-click) model . . . .” Gross saw the money-making possibility of the internet long before most people. Art, meet commerce. The Foundation for a Better Life has a hand in training the next generation of corporate artists and designers.
Here’s where it gets a bit complicated to understand. But it’s worth thinking about, if you want a true understanding of how this country is run, and the enormous influence big money has on politics. In 2006 Anschutz petitioned the Bush White House to appoint Colorado attorney Neil Gorsuch to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. This led to Gorsuch’s eventual appointment to the Supreme Court. Gorsuch is on record saying that he is in favor of ending what is known as the “Chevron Defense,” which would reduce power of federal agencies to regulate, and instead allow judges to interpret regulations. For an explanation of this complicated legal doctrine, click on this definition from Cornell Law School.
The bottom line is that ending the Chevron Defense would be a gift to corporations in the form of less oversight from federal regulators and a blow to environmental and social justice groups.
It is widely expected that the fate of the Chevron Defense will soon be decided in the pending Supreme Court Case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. There have been many calls for Gorsuch to recuse himself from the case, because if the Supreme Court decides to remove the Chevron Defense, it would be a wonderful gift to those in the oil and gas business, such as Gorsuch’s friend Anschutz. Gorsuch has not recused himself.
Meanwhile Anschutz is letting his feel-good billboards distract the public from real issues. Stephen Prager’s December 2023 article in Current Affairs, “The Sinister Politics of Pass it on Billboards” is critical of the Foundation for a Better Life’s billboard campaign, arguing that the messages urge people to be generous and kind, without revealing Anschutz’ extensive political lobbying.
Democratic billionaires influence our government, too, through their foundations. They use their tax-free money to fund causes they feel are just and worthy. When you are this high up in the stratosphere, political parties are meaningless. Both parties are very eager to have the support of billionaires. In a democracy, the people’s elected representatives are supposed to decide on public projects and policies, funded through tax dollars. Instead, the non-profit foundations run by billionaires have an outsize influence on our government.
The next time you see an inspirational message, such as a Dolly Parton billboard, take the time to figure out where it is coming from. You may be surprised.
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