Freshman Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) has decided against holding public town halls during the August recess, instead choosing to hold community meetings at coffee shops throughout the district. The coffee meetings, however, have not been publicly listed on Herrera Beutler’s Congressional web site, nor has the schedule been made available for the press.

Herrera Beutler’s office claims five meetings have been held but that they aren’t listed publicly because “a coffee shop can only accommodate so many people.” But Herrera Beutler’s constituents are upset that she isn’t holding public town halls, The Columbian reports:

“I’d love to talk to her about the debt limit,” said Jan Watson, a high school teacher in Rochester. “I’d like to have her listen to people. In a town hall, when somebody asks a question and the person responds, you can get a real good fact check by the groans. That gives a real indication that your comment isn’t quite right or isn’t reflecting the community.”

Watson said she encourages her students to attend politicians’ town hall meetings so they can experience democracy up close.

“The real underlying reason this congressional district has not seen public meetings is that the congresswoman is aware enough of the real world to understand that Congress, in general, is not held in high esteem,” said Tom Shofner of Kalama in an email. “If we add to that her allegiance to the far right, … she just doesn’t feel at home any more in this area, I think.”

The only other meetings Herrera Beutler has held are telephone town halls, but constituents are not invited to call in to those. Instead, they receive a phone call on their home phones asking if they have a question. “If you are home and pick up the phone, you can participate,” Herrera Beutler’s spokesperson said. The representative, however, provides no notice for when the calls may come.

Herrera Beutler isn’t the only member of Congress to avoid town halls during recess, particularly as Republicans seek to avoid answering for the political brinksmanship that nearly caused the country’s default and led to a downgrade of America’s credit rating. Representatives have avoided scheduling events, only to relent under protest from constituents, while others have charged attendees to ask questions, banned recording devices, and put constituents who have asked questions before on a watch list.

Herrera Butler has only held two town halls since taking office in January, but her campaign assured The Columbian that more were coming. But as of the article’s publication, no future events have been scheduled.

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation serves as a legacy for brothers Lynde and Harry, co-founders of the Allen-Bradley Company, and contributed $5.37 million to the Islamophobia network tracked in our new report, Fear Inc.

The Bradley Foundation has a reputation as a supporter of right-wing causes and its philanthropy is intended to “support limited, competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, intellectual and cultural activity; and a vigorous defense, at home and abroad, of American ideas and institutes,” according to the foundation’s website.

But the Bradley Foundation’s idea of defending “American ideas and institutes” has meant funding Islamophobes within the U.S. and promoting the militant foreign policy which left the U.S. military overextended in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a key funder in the Islamophobia network, the Bradley Foundation contributed $4.25 million to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, $815,000 to Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy and $305,000 to Daniel Pipes’s Middle East Forum.

When not funding some of the key groups responsible for propagating misinformation about Muslim-Americans, the Bradley Foundation uses its financial resources to promote a militarist foreign policy, most notably through their $1.2 million in support for the Project for the New American Century, a highly influential group which helped promote a neoconservative foreign policy during the Bush administration.

Indeed, the Bradley Foundation has played an instrumental role in bringing neoconservatives into the halls of power in Washington. Irving Kristol, one of the movement’s key intellectuals, commented that AEI’s efforts to recruit neoconservatives in the 1970s and 1980s was “facilitated by the appearance on the scene of a rejuvenated Bradley Foundation and John M. Olin Foundation.”

The foundation also generously supports various right-wing institutions such as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, the Hoover Institution, the Institute for American Values and the Hudson Institute.

While both Lynde and Harry Bradley are deceased, the foundation is run by a board comprising an influential list of American conservatives.

Board members include: columnist George Will; Terry Considine, Chief executive of AIMCO Apartment Homes, who serves as the foundation’s chairman; David V. Uihlein, president of Uihlein-Wilson Architects; Michael W. Grebe, the foundation’s president and chief executive officer; Princeton University Professor Robert P. George, whom the New York Times describes as “his country’s most influential Christian thinker; Marshall & Ilsey Corporation Chairman Dennis J. Kuester; Wasau-Mosinee Paper Corporation Chairman San W. Orr Jr.; attorney Thomas L. Smallwood; and the president of Milwaukee’s Messmer Catholic Schools, Brother Bob Smith.

With a staggering $622,913,819 in assets at the end of the 2009 tax year, it’s safe to assume the Bradley Foundation will have a lasting impact on the American political debate for years, if not decades, in the future.