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https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=lawreview

Uncharitable Think Tanks 207

Institution—also led in the earlier one, with only slight shifts otherwise.229 • From 2010 on, the top funders were Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, and the Scaife, Bradley, and Koch family foundations. The Devos family foundations rose to join the ranks of the top ten. • Grants channeled through Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund accounted for 13.7% of the total. • 74% of all contributions came from completely unidentified sources. • }:}:

After AEI, Heritage and Hoover, the largest recipients were Cato, the Manhattan Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Mercatus Center, the Acton Institute, the State Policy Network, the Reason Foundation, Heartland, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. From 2003 to 2018, Brulle and his co-authors tallied total gifts to this cohort of $9.77 billion 230—a sum that refutes the mistaken notion that charitable giving is small dollars, and influential only at the margin. Now for the thought experiment.

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Training Europeans, on the ‘front lines of the Culture War’

A number of groups spending smaller amounts of money appear to have increased their activities in Europe in recent years.

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, which combines a conservative Christian worldview with free-market economics, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Koch family foundations.

This group spent more than $1.7 million in Europe since 2008, with its spending in the region rising in recent years (from around $166,000 in 2008 to almost $240,000 in 2017).

In Italy, it has collaborated with the Dignitatis Humanae Institute—of which Steve Bannon is a trustee—that has locally controversial plans to use a monastery outside Rome as a “gladiator school for culture warriors.”

Also on the list is the U.S. branch of the Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), an ultra-conservative transnational Catholic movement that says it’s “on the front lines of the Culture War, peacefully defending the values of tradition, family and private ownership.”

This group said it spent about $100,000 in Europe since 2010. Its filings don’t detail where this money went, but the TFP has been linked to a controversial think tank in Poland that has helped develop policies for far-right Law and Justice (PiS) politicians.

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http://blog.acton.org/archives/83501-the-illiberal-religious-campaigners-behind-fossil-fuel-divestment.html

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The recent decline in oil prices is a boon for consumers but a bust for oil companies. Collectively, profits of the four supermajors – Royal Dutch Shell PLC; Exxon Mobil Corp.; Chevron Corp.; and BP PLC – have plummeted 70 percent in the first nine months of 2015, according to the Wall Street Journal. Despite a “precipitous drop in profits this year,” the supermajors increased stock dividends 10 percent over 2014, disbursing approximately $28 billion to shareholders.

For the time being, that’s good news for investors unless the shareholders happen to be among the universities and religious members of the fossil-fuel divestment crowd. This group includes the always headline-grabbing college and university activists (10.9 percent), philanthropic foundations (31 percent) and faith-based organizations (25 percent). These figures are culled from the National Association of Scholars’ “Inside Divestment: The Illiberal Movement to Turn a Generation Against Fossil Fuels,” which was released this week. NAS is a New York City-based nonprofit dedicated to “the promotion and preservation of high academic standards in teaching and scholarship.” From the NAS Executive Summary:

The idea of fossil fuel divestment grew out of a college student campaign at Swarthmore College. 350.org, the main organization supporting divestment, emerged at Middlebury College. At least one student-run organization, the Fossil Fuel Divestment Student Network, supports divestment campaigns. But much of the organizational and intellectual framework comes from professional environmental activists and environmentalist organizations that train college students and put them forward as the face of the movement.

PowerBlog readers may recall our old friends at 350.org, which was founded by Bill McKibben about whom I’ve written at length and with whom I’ve personally engaged in this space. Interestingly, I claimed McKibben and his divestment posse hid behind the vestments of clergy, nuns and other religious in much the same manner NAS claims 350.org and other organizations enlist college students. It’s a clever yet disingenuous marketing ploy intended to indicate not only is God on the side of the divestment crowd by upping the “cute quotient” with nuns and such and young, attractive and passionate college students. The reality is divestment warriors are a well-organized and extremely well-funded professional effort.

The NAS report continues:

The superficial goals of the movement are to convince institutions to pull out of coal, oil, and gas investments. But the movement’s abiding purpose has been to pressure governments to favor wind, solar, and hydro power, and to make colleges and universities pressure cookers of sustainability. The sustainability movement, in turn, combines environmental extremism, global warming alarmism, opposition to modern industrial economies and market economics, an affinity for global regulation, and a distaste for representative government….

The fossil fuel divestment campaign is more than a foolish distraction from environmental conservation. It represents an affront to academic freedom and the purpose of higher education, and an assault on the heritage of American political theory. Advocates of fossil fuel divestment sidestep real debates about energy and environmental policy and scorn discourse as needless delay. The campaign smears opponents and bullies dissenters. It treats colleges and universities primarily as instruments of political activism and only secondarily, or even thirdly or fourthly, as places that exist to cultivate the character of an inquiring mind and to pursue truth.

If NAS issues such strong words against the harm rendered by divestment advocates in academia, one wonders how they would characterize the like-minded groups and individuals in the faith-based community who have thus far had a 15 percent larger role in the divestment movement. In addition, the NAS report states:

The fossil fuel divestment campaign also denies the merits of an American-style representative democracy. The central premise of the campaign is that the political system is so indissolubly wedded to the fossil fuel industry that government action on environmental policy is illegitimate. That premise casts anyone who disagrees with divestors as a mercenary of the fossil fuel industry and litters with political landmines the grounds for legitimate debate. It asserts that mob rule by street-marching activists is better than representative democracy, and that the tradition of civic debate is a hopeless waste of time.

To the obvious question about the negative economic impact on fossil-fuel investors from divestment, NAS reports (citing Bradford Cornell’s “The Divestment Penalty”):

Studies that examine 20 to 50 years of investment history find that divestment would shrink endowment returns. One study, looking back 20 years, estimated that if five American universities—Columbia, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, and Yale—had divested 20 years ago, they would have forfeited about $195 million in investment returns every year. Over a 50-year period, these short-falls would reduce the endowment sizes by a weighted average of 12.07 percent. Harvard alone, by those estimates, would lose an average of $107.81 million each year by divesting fossil fuels.

It’s a shame, really. As noted by my friend and former co-worker Joy Pullman over at The Federalist:

The latest in centuries of proof that the Left deliberately targets and enlists young people in its efforts to revolutionize America comes from a huge report recently put out by the National Association of Scholars. It chronicles the seemingly overnight rise of the campus fossil-fuel divestment movement, which is a boring way of saying that leftist groups are stoking and channeling uninformed young people’s hatred of free markets and agitating them into demanding collectivism, most particularly on the campuses that produce American’s leaders of commerce and politics….

Given all the striking similarities between these political-academic agitators, people who want to counter their anti-free-speech and anti-deliberation tactics from obliterating public discourse should read the full report. This isn’t just a campus thing. The Left used similar tactics in, for example, Wisconsin, during the union protests that made Gov. Scott Walker a national figure.

We can expect more of this kind of agitprop, not just on college campuses, but in all of political and public discourse. If you’re used to having your Facebook discussions shut down by that one annoying and really rude guy (or gal) who wants to hurl invective rather than actually sift ideas, even just the short summaries of this report … will give you many aha! moments. Realizing that it’s a deliberate tactic, and understanding its particulars, is the first step towards overcoming it.

Just so. And religious activists represent 25 percent of the divestment movement. More’s the pity.

BRUCE EDWARD WALKER has more than 30 years’ writing and editing experience in a variety of publishing areas, including reference books, newspapers, magazines, media relations and corporate speeches. Much of this material involved research on water rights, land use, alternative-technology vehicles and other environmental issues, but Walker has also written extensively on nonscientific subjects, having produced six titles in Wiley Publishing’s CliffsNotes series,including study guides for "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." He has also authored more than 100 critical biographies of authors and musicians for Gale Research's Contemporary Literary Criticism and Contemporary Musicians reference-book series. Most recently, he was managing editor of The Heartland Institute's InfoTech & Telecom News. Prior to that, he was manager of communications for the Mackinac Center's Property Rights Network. He also served from 2006-2007 as editor of Michigan Science, a quarterly Mackinac Center publication. Walker has served as an adjunct professor of literature and academic writing at University of Detroit Mercy. For the past three years, he has authored a weekly column for the mid-Michigan Morning Sun newspaper. Walker holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Michigan State University. He is the father of two daughters and currently lives in Midland, Mich., with his wife Katherine.

POSTED IN Fossil Fuel Divestment, Shareholder Activism, Shareholder Proxy Resolutions

TAGGED 350.org, Disinvestment, Divestment, Fossil fuel, National Association of Scholars

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http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/betsy-devos-child-labor

Now that we know President-elect Donald Trump has tapped right-wing megadonor Betsy DeVos as his pick to lead the Department of Education, now is a good time to examine some of the many shady organizations she’s funded.

One such organization is the Acton Institute, a think tank on whose board DeVos has served, and whose self-described goal is “to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles.”

And one way to promote a virtuous society, it seems, is to bring back child labor.

As *Politico’s*Blake Hounshell notes, a blog post on the think tank’s official website extols the virtues of child labor, which it says is a “gift” to children everywhere.

In praising child labor, author Joseph Sunde acknowledges that the practice has gotten something of a bad reputation over the years, and he points to a *Washington Post* photo gallery of children working in harsh conditions as evidence for why.

Nonetheless, he sees a lot of upside to it.

“The photos surely point to times of extreme lack, of stress and pain,” he writes. “But… they also represent the faces of those who are actively building enterprises and cities, using their gifts to serve their communities, and setting the foundation of a flourishing nation, in turn. Turns out there is dignity and meaning in that, too.”

He concludes that many kids today have it too easy, and that doing well in school just isn’t enough to properly cultivate good character.

“Let us not just teach our children to play hard and study well, shuffling them through a long line of hobbies and electives and educational activities,” he writes. “A long day’s work and a load of sweat have plenty to teach as well.”

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Acton Institute 1990
From SourceWatch

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty (founded 1990) is a Classical Liberal think tank, part of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation network, which promotes laissez-faire economics and public policy within a Christian framework. "Together, empowered by faith in God and belief in human freedom, we truly can make a difference."

Contents[hide]

Mission

The Institute organises seminars for religious leaders, academics and business leaders which aim to link economics and religion. It publishes books, journals, and opinion about related issues, and it runs a Center for Economic Personalism for producing academic literature

Acton Institute Core Principles

Dignity of the Person - The human person, created in the image of God, is individually unique, rational, the subject of moral agency, and a co-creator. Accordingly, he possesses intrinsic value and dignity, implying certain rights and duties both for himself and other persons. These truths about the dignity of the human person are known through revelation, but they are also discernible through reason.

Social Nature of the Person - Although persons find ultimate fulfillment only in communion with God, one essential aspect of the development of persons is our social nature and capacity to act for disinterested ends. The person is fulfilled by interacting with other persons and by participating in moral goods. There are voluntary relations of exchange, such as market transactions that realize economic value. These transactions may give rise to moral value as well. There are also voluntary relations of mutual dependence, such as promises, friendships, marriages, and the family, which are moral goods. These, too, may have other sorts of value, such as religious, economic, aesthetic, and so on.

Importance of Social Institutions - Since persons are by nature social, various human persons develop social institutions. The institutions of civil society, especially the family, are the primary sources of a society's moral culture. These social institutions are neither created by nor derive their legitimacy from the state. The state must respect their autonomy and provide the support necessary to ensure the free and orderly operation of all social institutions in their respective spheres.

Human Action - Human persons are by nature acting persons. Through human action, the person can actualize his potentiality by freely choosing the moral goods that fulfill his nature.

Sin: Although human beings in their created nature are good, in their current state, they are fallen and corrupted by sin. The reality of sin makes the state necessary to restrain evil. The ubiquity of sin, however, requires that the state be limited in its power and jurisdiction. The persistent reality of sin requires that we be skeptical of all utopian "solutions" to social ills such as poverty and injustice.

Rule of Law and the Subsidiary Role of Government - The government's primary responsibility is to promote the common good, that is, to maintain the rule of law, and to preserve basic duties and rights. The government's role is not to usurp free actions, but to minimize those conflicts that may arise when the free actions of persons and social institutions result in competing interests. The state should exercise this responsibility according to the principle of subsidiarity. This principle has two components. First, jurisdictionally broader institutions must refrain from usurping the proper functions that should be performed by the person and institutions more immediate to him. Second, jurisdictionally broader institutions should assist individual persons and institutions more immediate to the person only when the latter cannot fulfill their proper functions.

Creation of Wealth - Material impoverishment undermines the conditions that allow humans to flourish. The best means of reducing poverty is to protect private property rights through the rule of law. This allows people to enter into voluntary exchange circles in which to express their creative nature. Wealth is created when human beings creatively transform matter into resources. Because human beings can create wealth, economic exchange need not be a zero-sum game.

Economic Liberty - Liberty, in a positive sense, is achieved by fulfilling one's nature as a person by freely choosing to do what one ought. Economic liberty is a species of liberty so-stated. As such, the bearer of economic liberty not only has certain rights, but also duties. An economically free person, for example, must be free to enter the market voluntarily. Hence, those who have the power to interfere with the market are duty-bound to remove any artificial barrier to entry in the market, and also to protect private and shared property rights. But the economically free person will also bear the duty to others to participate in the market as a moral agent and in accordance with moral goods. Therefore, the law must guarantee private property rights and voluntary exchange. huh?

Economic Value - In economic theory, economic value is subjective because its existence depends on it being felt by a subject. Economic value is the significance that a subject attaches to a thing whenever he perceives a causal connection between this thing and the satisfaction of a present, urgent want. The subject may be wrong in his value judgment by attributing value to a thing that will not or cannot satisfy his present, urgent want. The truth of economic value judgments is settled just in case that thing can satisfy the expected want. While this does not imply the realization of any other sort of value, something can have both subjective economic value and objective moral value.

Priority of Culture - Liberty flourishes in a society supported by a moral culture that embraces the truth about the transcendent origin and destiny of the human person. This moral culture leads to harmony and to the proper ordering of society. While the various institutions within the political, economic, and other spheres are important, the family is the primary inculcator of the moral culture in a society.

Their policies include:

Personnel

Directors

Advisory Board

Senior Fellows

Funding

Institutional donors provide much of the funding for the Institute. The Bradley Foundation provided $225,000 during 2001.

There are only two known corporate donors. In 1995, Philip Morris gave $10,000 [6] and in 2002 ExxonMobil gave $30,000 to the Acton Institute.

Contact Details

Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty

161 Ottawa NW, Ste. 301

Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503

Telephone: (616) 454-3080 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              (616) 454-3080      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

Fax: (616) 454-9454

Email: info@acton.org

Web: http://www.acton.org/contact.html

External links

INhofe: 

The origins of his 2003 Senate speech attacking the science behind global climate change, for example, reveal his two masters: the speech is traceable to fossil fuel industry think tanks and petrochemical dollars -- but also to the pseudo-science of Christian right websites. In that two-hour diatribe, Inhofe dismissed global warming by comparing it to a 1970s scientific scare that suggested the planet was cooling -- a hypothesis, he fails to note, held by only a minority of climatologists at the time. Inhofe's apparent source on global cooling was the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, a Christian-right and free-market economics think tank. In an editorial on that site called "Global Warming or Globaloney? The Forgotten Case for Global Cooling," we hear echoes of Inhofe's position. The article calls climate change "a shrewdly planned campaign to inflict a lot of socialistic restriction on our cherished freedoms. Environmentalism, in short, is the last refuge of socialism."