How to Win Henry Ford’s Fortune
Ford Motor Company lost almost $65k per electric vehicle sold last year. But even that wicked waste of money pales next to more than half a century of bad decisions made by the Ford Foundation.
I'm makin' you money. Take the money. Invest it somewhere else. Maybe, maybe you'll get lucky and it'll be used productively. And if it is, you'll create new jobs and provide a service for the economy and, God forbid, even make a few bucks for yourselves.
– Lawrence “Larry the Liquidator” Garfield (played by Danny DeVito) in Other People’s Money (1991)
Too much of Henry Ford’s fortune hasn’t been used productively.
As has been piteously chronicled by
, the electric vehicle cult has been thieving away shareholder value from Ford Motor Company. It’s a deep black hole of red ink that sucked up almost $65,000 per EV sold last year.But even that incineration of wealth pales next to the Ford Foundation, nominally a charity that holds as much as $14 billion of Henry’s money.
When most Americans think of charities, we think of services such as curing cancer in children, soup kitchens or saving kittens and puppies. That’s probably what Henry was thinking back in the 1940s when FDR-era tax policy pushed him to fork over a lot of his fortune to his eponymous foundation.
But at the Ford Foundation, the money is there for communists. And that’s not an exaggeration, as I repeatedly point out in my latest report on Ford Foundation grants:
. . . Ford grants are also showered upon those who help inject left-wing messages into media and culture. Since the beginning of 2023, those in charge of Henry’s money have shipped out at least $40 million of it to these sorts of recipients.
Setting the tone is a $750,000 grant in March 2024 for Hammer & Hope [. . .] so far left-wing that its very name is partly derived from the imagery that eventually landed on the Soviet Union’s hammer and sickle flag.
Not as overtly Marxist, other recipients were just relentlessly anti-capitalist:
. . . Law for Black Lives (L4BL) is a fiscally sponsored project of NEO Philanthropy. NEO received a $300,000 grant for the L4BL in August 2023 [. . .] Those seeking Henry’s money are advised to regurgitate lots of left-wing phrases such as “social justice,” as this correlates highly with receiving a grant. A sustained barrage can be found on the mission statement on the Law for Black Lives website, which defines the nonprofit as “a Black-led, queer, abolition minded, multiracial, feminist and anti-capitalist movement.”
Similarly, “Dismantling Racial Capitalism” is the headline of a September 2024 event sponsored by the Action Lab, recipients of at least $285,000 in Ford grants since the start of 2023. [. . .] The main web page for the Center for Economic Democracy claims they are “building a post-capitalist world that puts people and the planet first.” Ford staffers thought post-capitalism was worth a $300,000 “general support” grant in February 2024.
Tragically, this has been going on for more than half a century. In early 1976, Henry Ford II (grandson of Henry Ford) was the chairman of the auto firm. At that time, “The Deuce” resigned from the board of the Ford Foundation, and in so doing fired off a nasty-gram to the “philanthropoids” mishandling grand-dad’s charity:
“I’m not playing the role of the hardheaded tycoon who thinks all philanthropoids are socialists and all university professors are Communists,” he wrote, in his sharply worded resignation letter. “I’m just suggesting to the trustees and the staff that the system that makes the foundation possible very probably is worth preserving.”
Unfortunately, by that point, the Ford family no longer controlled the charity:
He [Henry Ford] died in 1947, and it has been more than a half century since the family had the votes to control the foundation. So, this isn’t the much-maligned “dark money” you read about, but instead dead money, zombie billions under the direction of little-known left-wing ideologues . . .
The full four-part report, both hilarious and nauseating, is available here:
Hoovering Up Henry Money: A Guide to Ford Foundation Grants