THINKTANKS

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newer content in CTT 2

SEE TAG

see also Non-US

see family fdn donors trust

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2025

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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http://powerbase.info/index.php/Category:Think_Tanks

==

yikes

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/06/exxon-mobil-progressive-policy-institute-climate/

chip b chart

http://www.organizedwealth.us/funding/organized-wealth-web.html

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roberts climate obstruct

4. Networks of think tanks are spreading obstruction globally

A group of think tanks—public policy institutes that perform research and

advocacy—have promoted disinformation and misinformation about climate

science and contested climate policies via reports and presentations to leg-

islatures, news and social media, and other channels.49,50,51 They present

quasi-academic positions while shifting the framing of climate change from

a science-based issue to a matter of individual liberty and economic free-

dom (Chapter 5). They have also funded research reports and conferences to

challenge the IPCC consensus on anthropogenic climate change52 and have

networked transnationally to increase their capacity to promote or disrupt

specific political discourses on the topic.53 Their institutional structure is

shaped by the predominance of men, especially in the case of European think

tanks, illustrating a documented alignment between masculinity and climate

contrarianism.54 There is also a strong convergence between the far-right,

neoliberal thought advanced by these think tanks and resistance to climate

action (Chapter 5).55

Many of the most influential think tanks are based in the United States, but

the dominance of think tanks has spread globally, thanks in part to the Atlas

Network, a global network of such organizations that advocates free-market

(libertarian) and neoliberal policies (Chapter 5). The Heartland Institute in the

United States, the Free Market Foundation in South Africa, and the Global

Warming Policy Foundation in the United Kingdom all have worked to chal-

lenge climate policies and programs (Chapter 5). Similar ideas and practices

have also spread to think tanks in the Global South, such as Andes Libre in Peru

and the Instituto Liberdade in Brazil (Chapter 8). Funding flows around the

world to support these think tanks, which share information, tactics, events,

connections, experts, board memberships, and legal support.56...

:{---

==

stashed here:

Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet

 By Kerryn Higgs

http://books.google.com/books?id=Iy9BBAAAQBAJ&dq=think+tank+coors+four+sisters&source=gbs_navlinks_s

http://books.google.com/books?id=Iy9BBAAAQBAJ&dq=think+tank+coors+four+sisters&source=gbs_navlinks_s

==

brulle 2013:

donor trust 14%

scaife 7%, bradley 5 plus 1% ed, koch 5, howard charatible fdn 4, john w pope 4, searle 4, templeton 4%, dunn's fdn for the adv of rt thinking 2, smith richardson 2, vanguard 2, ...annenbeg kohler 2, Lilly 2%

RECIPIENTS

1) aei 16%, 2)  heritage 14, 3) hoover 8% 45 mil$,  4) Manh 6%, 5)  cato 5,  6) hudson 5, 7) atlas 4, afp 4, locke 3, heartl 3, reason 3, mrc 3, mercatus 3, ncpa 3, cei 2, spn2, pacif res 2, iwf 1, landmark 1, freedomworks 1 5.3m$

==

http://www.thinktankwatch.com/

http://stinktanks.org/  state level

http://www.prwatch.org/files/spn_national_report_final.pdf

GP study 2013

Funding of Think Tanks Working on Climate Denial

1.  Donors Capital Fund

Think tanks with funding from Donors Capital Fund, 2002-2011

Total: $107,889,251

Source:IRS 990 tax forms for Donors Capital Fund

2. Donors Trust

Think tanks with funding from Donors Trust 2002-2011

Total:  $41,001,117

Source:  IRS 990 tax forms for Donors Trust, Inc.

3. ExxonMobil

Think tanks with funding from ExxonMobil, 1998-2012

Total: $27,424,735

Source: ExxonSecrets.org, aggregated from the ExxonMobil Foundation's IRS 990 tax forms and ExxonMobil's reporting for Worldwide Contributions to Public Information and Policy Research (see Exxon's 2012 Corporate Giving reportfor public policy interests).

Tags

• dealing in doubt,
• greenpeace,
• appendix 2,
• exxonmobil,
• oil,
• gas,
• donors trust,
• donors capital fund,
• foundation,
• funding,
• climate change,
• global warming,
• climate denial,
• think tanks,
• organizations,
• groups,
• deny

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09644010802055576

The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and

environmental scepticism

Peter J. Jacques a

*, Riley E. Dunlapb and Mark Freeman

Environmental Politics

Vol. 17, No. 3, June 2008, 349–385

CTTjacques&d.pdf saved

==

:{The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin, a neoconservative, has just written a piece titled "Where Did The Think Tank Go?," in which she calls the Heritage Foundation a "once great" think tank.  Here is more of what Ms. Rubin says:

}:

There is nothing approaching the conservative thought or scholarship one would expect of a think tank. It’s pure politics, and the sort of amateur, unthinking brand that has gotten Republicans in trouble both in office and in campaigns. [Heritage President Jim] DeMint is hawking a series of town hall meetings, which I am sure will generate additions to the group’s e-mail list and hence to its funding base.

Heritage folks will announce that this is all under the guise of Heritage Action, a political entity, not the think tank per se. But who is kidding whom? DeMint speaks on behalf of both, and the latter has been entirely subsumed by the hard-knuckle political screeching for which Heritage Action is famous.

In sum, DeMint isn’t really trying to run a think tank. He’s running a political racket that takes the most extreme right-wing positions imaginable, decries those who won’t go along, wails when the stances they advocate fail and then uses the burning resentment it has stoked to generate headlines and donations. When do you suppose conservatives will realize they are being fleeced by this operation?

===

:{Here is some of what The Washington Times in reporting, in an article titled "Jim DeMint Still Able to Pull Some Weight Among Senate Republicans."

}:

When he was in the Senate, Jim DeMint wasn’t shy about trying to recruit conservatives he thought would buck the Republican Party establishment and gum up the collegial workings of the legislative process.

Now on the outside, running the Heritage Foundation, the former senator from South Carolina may have even more levers to pull as he puts the full weight of the conservative think tank behind the effort to defund President Obama’s health care law — and in the process becoming a tremendous headache for many fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill.

“Some people love him, some people hate him,” said John Feehery, a Republican Party strategist. “He has never been someone who wanted to be a deal-cutter. Jim DeMint is someone who wants to push the party to the right. He seems to want to spend most of his attention going after Republicans.”

:{Here is what the article says on DeMint possibly losing clout:

}:

His hardball tactics even might have led to friction with the strongly conservative House Republican caucus. The National Journal reported last week that Heritage officials were disinvited from attending private strategy sessions of the conservative House Republican Study Group after the think tank harshly criticized the farm bill passed by the House.

The defund Obamacare tour, which started in Arkansas in mid-August, put Mr. DeMint at odds with a number his former Republican colleagues in the Senate, including fellow South Carolinian Sen. Lindsey Graham.

:{The entire article can be read here.

The Heritage Foundation was recently ranked as the 18th best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.  It was rated the 9th best think tank in the US.  It was also rated as the #1 think tank in the world in terms of best use of social media and the Internet.  Heritage was also rated as the 10th best think tank in the world in terms of most significant impact on public policy.}:

==

:{

Comedian Remy Munasifi is the new face of the libertarian think tank scene.

The Washington Post recently noted that he has teamed with Reason TV, linked to the libertarian think tank Reason Foundation, to create short rap parody videos.

Says the Washington Post:

He has lampooned the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, the debt ceiling, Jay Z and Beyoncé’s Cuban vacation, and, most recently, Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal. One of his catchier spoofs, “Tap It: The NSA Slow Jam,” satirizes the National Security Agency’s electronic-surveillance program.

Here is the debt ceiling rap video mentioned in the article above, and here is the one on Anthony Weiner.  Here is one called the TSA Pokey Pokey.  Here is one called Why They Fought.  Here is one called The Equality Song.  Here is the one called Jay-Z's Cuba State of Mind.

The Reason Foundation, based in Los Angeles, California, publishes the magazine Reason.  That magazine was first published in 1968, and the Reason Foundation was created in 1978.  The think tank also has an office in Washington, DC.

David Nott has served as Reason Foundation's President since 2001.   Previous presidents of the think tank include Reason founder Robert Poole, now director of transportation studies, and Lynn Scarlett, who left Reason in 2001 and served as Assistant Secretary of Policy, Management and Budget at the Department of the Interior for the George W. Bush Administration.

}:

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:{A new working paper was just published by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University titled "Think Tanks' Dirty Little Secret: Power, Public Policy, and Plagiarism."  The paper was written by Dr. J.H. Snider, President of iSolon.org and Non-residential Fellow at Harvard University's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

Here is an abstract of the paper:

}:

:{In academics, idea plagiarism is a sin of the first magnitude, whereas in business and politics, it is considered, well, academic - of no practical significance. Where do think tanks fit on that spectrum? Are they fish or fowl, or neither? 

Compared to academic scholars, think tank scholars have a greater incentive to plagiarize ideas. The pressure to claim credit in both scholarly communities is great, but the pressure to give credit is relatively weak in think tanks. One reason is that the problem-solution structure of think tank work doesn’t include a contribution-to-literature section. Another reason is that think tanks don’t publish their work in peer-reviewed publications, which are well-designed for cost-effectively weeding out idea plagiarism. 

Think tanks may claim to respect original work as much as universities. But that doesn’t mean it’s in their self-interest to act in accordance with those values. This paper provides eight case studies related to such behavior. The paper assumes that if think tank scholars, like academic scholars, claim to provide original work, then they should be held accountable for proving that they in fact do so. The author hopes that others will investigate the limitations of such an assumption.

Unfortunately, the two traditional approaches to discouraging idea theft, passing intellectual property law (primarily used in commerce) and relying on private institutions to cultivate social sanctions (primarily used in academics) are not well suited for think tanks. An alternative approach is a hybrid policy where law is used to strengthen social sanctions. For example, libel and transparency laws pertaining to think tanks could be reformed to encourage a more robust market in evaluations of public policy credit claims.}:

:{The paper includes case studies from think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), New America Foundation (NAF), and the Cato Institute. 

Dr. Snider has commented on think tanks in a variety of other publications, including:

}:

• Washington's Evolving Think Tanks. (Politico)
• Strengthen Think Tank Accountability. (Politico)
• The Quest to Protect Creative Policy Ideas. (Chronicle of Philanthropy)

-. (Voice of America; video interview)

:{

From 2001 to 2007 Dr. Snider was a Markle Fellow, Senior Research Fellow, and Research Director at the New America Foundation (NAF).}:

Posted by Think Tank Watchat 9:35 AM 0 co

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not critical?:  http://gotothinktank.com/dev1/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2012_Global_Go_To_Think_Tank_Report_-_FINAL-1.28.13.pdf

Below is a snapshot of more than 1950 experts and peer institutions that participated in this year’s

ranking process:

 793 expert panelists for all the regional and functional research categories

 150 journalists and scholars with expertise spanning politics, think tanks, and civil

society

 55 current and former directors of think tank programs and networks

 40 public and private donors

 100s of think tanks

 25-30 intergovernmental organizations

 120 academic institutions

...

United States

There are 1,823 think tanks in the U.S.

 90.5% created since 1951

 Number has more than doubled since 1980

 31% created between 1981-1990---End of Post WWII consensus & Challenge to the Welfare

State

 Most of the think tanks that have come into existence in the U.S. since the 1970s are

specialized

 About one quarter (or approximately 400) of the think tanks are located in Washington, DC

...

Major Findings

Think tanks have become more active players in domestic and foreign policy in the last two decades

and are now present in 182 countries.While think tanks continue to be concentrated in the U.S. and

Western Europe (sixty percent of all think tanks are located in these two regions), several factors are

driving the growth of think tanks in other areas of the world.

Mega Trends...

G20 THINK TANKS

Member GDP (PPP)Population/Think Tanks

Argentina $596 billion 41.769,726 137

Australia $882.4 billion 21.766.711 30

Brazil $2.172 trillion 203,766,711 82

Canada $1.33 trillion 34,030,589 96

China $10.09 trillion 1,336,718,015 429

European Union $14.82 trillion 492,387,344 1457

France $2.145 trillion 65,312,249 177

Germany $2.94 trillion 81,471,834 194

India $4.06 trillion 1,189,172,906 269

Indonesia $1.03 trillion 245,613,043 21

Italy $1.774 trillion 61,016,804 107

Japan $4.31 trillion 126,475,664 108

Mexico $1.567 trillion 113,724,226 60

Republic of Korea $1.459 trillion 48,754,657 35

Russia $2.223 trillion 138,739,892 122

Saudi Arabia $622 billion 26,131,703 4

South Africa $524 billion 40,004,031 86

Turkey $960.5 billion 78,785,548 27

United Kingdom $2.173 trillion 62,698,362 288

United States $14.66 trillion 313,232,044 1823

...

UNITED STATES THINK TANKS BY STATE

(FROM MOST TO FEWEST)

WASHINGTON D.C. 394

MASSACHUSETTS 176

CALIFORNIA 170

NEW YORK 143

VIRGINIA 106

ILLINOIS 55

MARYLAND 50

TEXAS 47

CONNECTICUT 46

PENNSYLVANIA 41

NEW JERSEY 36

FLORIDA 31

MICHIGAN 31

COLORADO 31

GEORGIA 29

OHIO 25

MINNESOTA 23

NORTH CAROLINA 23

WASHINGTON 23

WISCONSIN 22

ARIZONA 21

INDIANA 21

MAINE 20

RHODE ISLAND 20

TENNESSEE 19

MISSOURI 18

ALABAMA 16

KANSAS 16

OREGON 16

NEW HAMPSHIRE 13

HAWAII 12

KENTUCKY 11

OKLAHOMA 11

IOWA 10

LOUISIANA 10

MISSISSIPPI 10

ARKANSAS 8

MONTANA 8

NEBRASKA 7

...

Top 150 Think Tanks – Worldwide (US and Non-US)

Table #3

1. Brookings Institution (United States)

2. Chatham House (United Kingdom)

3. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (United States)

4. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) (Sweden)

5. Center for Strategic and International Studies (United States)

6. Council on Foreign Relations (United States)

7. Amnesty International (United Kingdom)

8. Bruegel (Belgium)

9. Rand Corporation (United States)

10. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) (United Kingdom)

11. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (United States)

12. Transparency International (TI) (Germany)

13. German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) (Germany)

14. International Crisis Group (ICG) (Belgium)

15. Peterson Institute for International Economics (United States)

16. Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) (Japan)

17. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) (China)

18. Heritage Foundation (United States)

19. Cato Institute (United States)

20. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) (United States)

21. European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) (United Kingdom)

22. French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) (France)

23. Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) (Belgium)

24. Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) (Brazil)

25. Fraser Institute (Canada)

26. German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) (Germany)

27. Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) (United Kingdom)

28. Clingendael, Netherlands Institute of International Relations (The Netherlands)

29. Carnegie Moscow Center (Russia)

30. Center for American Progress (CAP) (United States)

...

Top 55 Think Tanks in the United States

Table #4

1. Brookings Institution (United States)

2. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (United States)

3. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) (United States)

4. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) (United States)

5. RAND Corporation (United States)

6. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (United States)

7. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) (United States)

8. Pew Research Center (United States)

9. Heritage Foundation (United States)

10. Cato Institute (United States)

11. Center for American Progress (CAP) (United States)

12. Peterson Institute for International Economics (United States)

13. National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) (United States)

14. Center for a New American Security (CNAS) (United States)

15. World Resources Institute (WRI) (United States)

16. Hoover Institution (United States)

17. Atlantic Council of the United States (United States)

18. United States Institute of Peace (USIP) (United States)

19. Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (United States)

20. Earth Institute (United States)

21. James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy (United States)

22. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (United States)

23. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) (United States)

24. Urban Institute (United States)

25. Center for International Development (CID) (United States)

26. Center for Global Development (CGD) (United States)

27. Open Society Institute (OSI) (United States)

28. Freedom House (United States)

29. Human Rights Watch (United States)

30. Stimson Center (United States)

31. Hudson Institute (United States

32. New America Foundation (United States)

33. Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) (United States)

34. Acton Institute (United States)

35. Worldwatch Institute (United States)

36. Resources for the Future (RFF) (United States)

==

Top 70 Environment Think Tanks

Table #15

1. World Resources Institute (United States)

2. Brookings Institution (United States)

3. Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) (United States)

4. Worldwatch Institute (United States)

5. Earthwatch Institute (United States)

6. Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) (Sweden)

7. Resources for the Future (RFF) (United States)

8. Earth Institute (United States)

9. Chatham House (United Kingdom)

10. Ecologic Institute (Germany)

11. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) (Kenya)

12. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) (Germany)

13. International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) (Canada)

14. Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) (Germany)

15. Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) (Belgium)

16. E3G Third Generation Environmentalism (United Kingdom)

17. Center for Economic and Ecological Studies (Cen2eco) (Switzerland)

18. International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) (United Kingdom)

19. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology (ATREE) (India)

20. Center for Science and Environment (CSE) (India)

21. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) (India)

22. Forum for the Future (United Kingdom)

23. Centro Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais (Brazil)

24. Centro Mexicano de Derecho Ambiental (Mexico)

25. African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) (Kenya)

26. RAND Corporation (United States)

27. Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) (United States)

28. Center for International Forestry Research (Indonesia)

29. Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) (Denmark)

30. Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences (China)

31. Australia Institute (TAI) (Australia)

32. Centre for Population and Environmental Development (CPED) (Nigeria)

33. Chinese Academy For Environmental Planning (CAEP) (China)

34. Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) (United Kingdom)

35. Center for Sustainable Development and Environment (Iran)

36. The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) (United States)

37. Competitive Enterprise Institute (United States)

===

rt nation:

1st CTT AEAssoc  1943  ~wartime price controls, outgunned by brookings, almost shut down in 1954 when baroody hired  --> brain trust w/ friedman and econs Campbell

Hoover Inst 1919 as paper repository then pushed to do more after loss in 32; 1960 Campbell head

==

Matalin promptly signed Corsi to a lucrative deal, positioning Obama Nation as Threshold's premier release of the summer season. In anticipation of heavy sales, Matalin ordered the printing of 475,000 copies. When the book was released in early August, conservative foundations and think tanks ensured its early success with a massive bulk buy, propelling it to number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

==

"ideological marketing organizations"

 ===

march 2013 scores; cei 27/15,  2) heritage 23/13    3) aei 18/11  4) hudson 7/14

http://news.muckety.com/topics/think-tanks

~ green ngo: 

Most of the conservative think tanks attack environmentalism in some way and have provided a key role in inspiring and galvanising anti-environmentalist sentiments. They do this because environmentalists seek government regulation to protect the environment whilst conservative think tanks oppose most government regulation and because conservative think tanks believe environmental groups support an anti-business, anti-free market agenda.

Moreover, in order to downplay environmental problems (see casting doubt) think tanks "portray environmentalists as 'radicals' who distort evidence and exaggerate problems". Environmentalists are also portrayed as being opposed to progress and threatening economic prosperity and comfortable lifestyles. Various think tanks have also claimed that environmentalists have been responsible for millions of malaria deaths in the developed world because of their opposition to DDT.

In its journal, Policy Review, the Heritage Foundation has labelled the environmental movement as “the greatest single threat to the American economy”. Cato Institute books include:

• Apocalypse Not, which argues that “much of the environmental movement is a broad-based assault on reason” and freedom;
• Ecoscam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypsein which Ronald Bailey criticises environmentalists for “their faulty analyses, their wildly inaccurate predictions, their heedless politicization of science, their opportunism, and their courtship of the media”.

In 2007 the Cato Institute held a forum entitled "Do NGOs Harm Growth in the Developing World?" which clearly argued that they do by advocating anti-growth policies.

 Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) NGO Watch Project, Don D'Cruz (pictured) attacked Malaysian NGOs — Consumers' Association of Penang (CAP) and the Third World Network (TWN), who were opposing genetically-engineered crops, as being 'local front organisations' for American environmentalists because some of their funding cam from a US environment group.

Jennifer Marohasy, when she was director of the IPA's environmental unit, argued that "The tangible environmental benefits of GM are being ignored because it seems that Greens hate technology more than they care about the environment" and that the opposition of environmentalists to GM crops was "a clear illustration of their narrow and backward-looking approach to environmental protection".

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabe-elsner/fossil-fuel-front-groups-_b_2287167.html

http://checksandbalancesproject.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/fossilfuelsonthefrontpage1.pdf

heritage gets 2x mentions vs CEI,AEI,Cato, then IER and Heartland

Our research found that:

• Between 2006 and 2010, fossil fuel interests spent $16.5 million on these 10 organizations.

• The following 10 organizations attacked clean energy, solutions to climate change and other environmental

issues while advocating for fossil fuels:

1. American Enterprise Institute
2. Cato Institute
3. Competitive Enterprise Institute
4. Heartland Institute
5. Heritage Foundation
6. Hudson Institute

7. Institute for Energy Research

8. Marshall Institute
9. Manhattan Institute
10. Mercatus Center

• These 10 organizations have garnered 1,010 mentions on energy issues in 58 mainstream newspapers, as well as the Associated Press and Politico, receiving coverage every other day on average between 2007-2011.

• Ties to fossil fuel donors were not included in most mentions.

• If these organizations were described, it was usually by the self-professed function of the

organizations (e.g., “think tank”) or their location (e.g., “Washington, DC-based”).

:{• Almost all descriptions that alluded to the groups’ motivations referenced the groups’

self-identified ideology (i.e., “conservative,” “free market” or “libertarian”), not their financial

ties to the fossil fuel lobby.}:

• Financial ties between the mentioned organizations and fossil fuel interests were noted only 6%

of the time in articles or editorial pieces in which the organizations appeared.

• These organizations disproportionately received coverage in influential newspapers that help

shape the national agenda, including Politico, The Washington Post, USA Today and The New

York Times.

•:{ Despite being labeled as “free market” or “libertarian,” these organizations focused their criticism

almost exclusively on the costs of clean energy policies, with little to no references to the

far-larger amounts of government money that underwrites fossil fuel use.}:

....In our review of news coverage, most mainstream media reports omitted any mention of the relationship

between the organizations we identified in this analysis and their financial ties to fossil fuel

interests. In fact, our review showed that the media described the link to fossil fuel interests only

six percent (6%) of the time. Several outlets mentioned these organizations repeatedly during the

five-year period, yet never communicated to readers the groups’ financial ties to fossil fuels. Of the

60 publications surveyed, the Houston Chronicle had the highest percentage (15%) of descriptions

informing its readers of the financial ties between the 10 organizations and their fossil fuel funders....

...The frequency of coverage that these organizations received is notable not only for quantity, but also

for the quality of their placement. Nearly one third (31%) of the 1,010 mentions came from six national

outlets: Associated Press, Politico, The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and Christian

Science Monitor.The average rate of media coverage for the respective organizations ranged one

every other month to more than once a month between 2007-2011. Table 13 shows that a large majority

of appearances in major national publications included no mention of the organizations’ ties to

fossil fuel interests....

FINDING 7: Despite being labeled as “free market” or “libertarian,”

these organizations focus their criticism almost exclusively on

clean energy policy investments. They make few – if any – references

to government support for fossil fuels.

The appellations “conservative,” “libertarian” and “small government” are terms used both by these

organizations themselves, as well as by media outlets, to define the organizations’ motivations. Specifically,

they are used to define the organizations’ rationale for opposing policy investments for clean

energy, legislation to fight climate change and anti-pollution standards.

However, a review of the 1,010 stories surveyed illustrates that these groups’ criticisms almost completely

omit references to far-higher levels of taxpayer support for mature, highly profitable fossil fuel

industries that least need taxpayer money.

Of 75 stories we reviewed that mentioned “subsidies” or “taxes,” more than half (51%) opposed clean

energy policies, 12% opposed all subsidies, 4% opposed all energy subsidies, 5% opposed fossil fuel

subsidies and 1% supported fossil fuel subsidies and clean energy subsidies.

These results stand in contrast to what is actually spent by taxpayers on different energy sources. For

example, a study by the Environmental Law Institute16 found that thefossil fuel industry received

six times more subsidies than clean energy. Earth Track, which has done the most comprehensive

study to date, found that fossil fuels receive up to 20 times more taxpayer money than clean energy.17

Despite the large disparity in fossil fuel support versus clean energy support, these “limited-government”

organizations almost exclusively...

recs:

In our view, the issues discussed in this analysis are due significantly to the:

• Growing influence of the corporate lobbying industry.

• Declining size of the press corps available to fact check and accurately define that industry.

• Drastic cutbacks in the size and depth of the press corps, combined with the acute time pressures

of blogging, iterative reporting and tweeting have led to severely time-impoverished newsrooms.

• Often-technical nature of energy and environmental issues that makes it easy to cloud the debate

and crowd out honest brokers, such as NREL, with authoritative-sounding pronouncements.

In our view, these four factors have enabled the fossil fuel-funded groups to largely avoid having

their ties to fossil fuel donors discussed in any meaningful way with readers and citizens.

But the national conversation about our energy future is vitally important, as is the need for the media’s

vigilance in informing readers on “expert” sources’ possible motivations. If the media does not

demand answers, these organizations certainly will not supply them.

We confirmed that firsthand when, as part of our True Ties campaign, we attempted to pin down

whether Manhattan Institute’s prolific pro-fossil fuel pundit, Robert Bryce, had ties to the fossil fuel

lobby. When asked if he had direct or indirect ties to fossil fuel interests, :{Mr. Bryce repeatedly refused

to answer the question.18 19}:

The unwillingness of fossil fuel-funded advocacy groups to report their financial support from fossil

fuel lobbying interests demands the media strengthen its watchdog role on the “expert” sources they

mention.

Mr. Bryce and fossil fuel-funded organizations have every right to participate in the public debate.

But readers have every right to know that those who are mentioned are financially tied to lobbying

interests that benefit from their point of view.

We have developed the following recommendations, based on guidelines20 put forth by The New

York Times’ Public Editor Arthur Brisbane, on how to ensure that sources are more accurately described

in the future:

1. Media outlets should report that sources in news stories receive

funding from industries that stand to benefit from their viewpoints.

2. Author lines for op-eds should include the writer’s current paid role.

3. Media outlets should require op-ed contributors to provide a

document listing all current paid positions and to publish a link to

the document.

:{4. Media outlets should require op-ed contributors to list donations

to their organizations from companies or foundations within

industries that stand to benefit from their viewpoint.}:

5. Online editions should include links for these organizational

ties so readers can investigate, if they wish.

Major News Outlets Give Fossil-Fuel-Funded Think Tanks a Free Platform

National newspapers publish anti-green-energy articles—without disclosing that the authors work for industry-backed groups, a new study finds.

By Kate Sheppard | Thu Dec. 13, 2012

The fossil fuel industry has long been a source of talking points and "studies" aimed at spreading doubt about climate change, and over the past few years, it has broadened its scope to undermine support for clean energy, as well. Often, this criticism is published in the form of articles in major media outlets—penned by employees of think tanks who don't disclose their groups' industry funding, a new study [1] finds.

The Checks and Balances Project [2], a pro-clean-energy watchdog group, surveyed stories published over the past five years in 60 news outlets, including national and regional newspapers, the Associated Press, and Politico. Researchers found that only 6 percent of the stories disclosed the funding when they cited "experts" from those think tanks. Typically, the stories referred to the groups as "free-market" or "libertarian," without mentioning the dirty-energy support.

Among the most frequent op-ed contributors is Robert Bryce, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute [3], a think tank that has made promoting fossil fuels and downplaying climate change a central focus—and that has received $1.21 million in funding from the likes of ExxonMobil and Claude R. Lambe [4], a Koch-owned charitable organization. Bryce is quite deft at mowing down clean energy, which is probably why he's become a regular in the op-ed pages of theNew York Times and the Wall Street Journal, on TV, and speaking at events.

The Checks and Balances report notes that Manhattan Institute was mentioned 65 times in the papers it surveyed. That count includes pieces like Bryce's April 2010 op-ed in the *Washington Post* [5], "Five Myths About Green Energy," which includes lines like, "[I]n in the electric car's century-long history, failure tailgates failure." The piece describes Bryce as a senior fellow at Manhattan Institute, but doesn't mention the funding. Nor does his Wall Street Journal piece from August 2010, "Wind Power Won't Cool Down the Planet," which claims that increasing the use of wind will actually increase our emissions of carbon dioxide. Bryce also popped up in [6] a Christian Science Monitor piece on lessons from the BP oil spill, arguing that nothing can compete with oil—again, with no indication that his organization has a dog in the fight. (Media Matters also posted a piece in 2011 [7] that noted Bryce had made 39 different media appearances that failed to disclose the fossil fuel ties.)

Fossil-fuel-funded AEI fellow Steven Hayward has penned WSJ op-eds with titles like "No: Alternatives Are Simply Too Expensive."

Other conservative think tanks have jumped in the clean-tech-bashing game, too. Take the American Enterprise Institute, recipient of at least $2.8 million in money from fossil-fuel interests like ExxonMobil since 1998. AEI fellow Steven Hayward has penned Wall Street Journal op-eds with titles like "No: Alternatives Are Simply Too Expensive." [8] Then there's the Institute for Energy Research, an industry aligned [9] nonprofit that has taken money from Exxon and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, one of the Koch family foundations. The institute's president, Thomas Pyle, appeared in a January 2010 Houston Chronicle article [10] arguing that the government should not provide tax credits to renewable energy, because it's been proven that they are "not economically viable in the marketplace."...http://www.motherjones.com/print/210806

==

purge b2 dissenters: 

The Wall Street Journal ran a wildly misleading chart last week, hoping to “prove” that increasing taxes on the wealthy is a poor way to address the deficit. To its credit, the Tax Foundation, a conservative outfit generally aligned with the Wall Street Journal editorial page, published a piece noting how wrong the newspaper was.

Brendan Nyhan noted what makes this especially interesting: the fact-checking item disappeared soon after.

At this point, you’re probably wondering why this post doesn’t contain any links to the Tax Foundation website. The reason is that this sort of intra-movement criticism has a short shelf life — so short that the post had already vanished by this morning. Scott Hodge, the president of the Tax Foundation, confirmed that the post had been removed: “we withdrew the post for editorial and content reasons.” He did not elaborate further.

Paul Krugman added:

Obviously someone at the Tax Foundation forgot what their job was: they’re movement conservatives, and they’re supposed to serve the movement, not point out inconvenient facts.

And in a way we should be grateful for this episode, which clarifies what the Foundation is really about for anyone who might have been confused.

This seems to come up quite a bit on the right, especially when it comes to conservatives’ intellectual infrastructure, where ideas are supposed to be scrutinized and challenged.

When Cato moved to the right, Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson were shown the door. David Frum was forced out at the American Enterprise Institute after failing to toe the Republican Party line. Bruce Bartlett was shown the door at the National Center for Policy Analysis for having the audacity to criticize George W. Bush’s incoherent economic policies.

In perhaps the most notable example, John Hulsman was a senior foreign policy analyst at the right’s largest think tank, the Heritage Foundation. Hulsman was a conservative in good standing — appearing regularly on Fox News and on the Washington Times’ op-ed page, blasting Democrats — right up until he expressed his disapproval of the neoconservatives’ approach to foreign policy. At that point, Heritage threw him overboard. Cato’s Chris Preble said at the time, “At Heritage, anything that smacks of criticism of Bush will not be tolerated.”

And now the Tax Foundation doesn’t feel comfortable — even when it’s correct — noting an error on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Intellectually, modern conservatism is facing a painfully sad state of affairs.

Steve Benen is a contributing writer to the Washington Monthly, joining the publication in August, 2008 as chief blogger for the Washington Monthly blog, Political Animal.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal/2011_05/conservatives_limited_toleranc029624.php

The CAP report finds:

• Grassroots organizing for big business. The Koch brothers use their considerable wealth to bankroll the right wing, including the Tea Party. This serves the purpose of furthering not only their right-wing ideology but also their bottom line. Koch Industries has a lot to gain from gutting government oversight and electing candidates who oppose government regulation, especially in the oil-and-gas industry.
• $85 million to 85 think tanks. Identification of at least $85 million the Koch brothers have given to at least 85 right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups over the past decade and a half.

easterbrook overview https://www.evernote.com/shard/s1/sh/cdffbc08-75e4-4617-9c4b-349e3a65627f/696c2ab079d78fcc157fb75f46ec6283

January 1986

"Ideas Move Nations"

How conservative think tanks have helped to transform the terms of political debate

by Gregg Easterbrook

January 1986

"Ideas Move Nations"

How conservative think tanks have helped to transform the terms of political debate

by Gregg Easterbrook

As recently as 1950 Lionel Trilling could proclaim, as if it were incontestable, that American Conservatives had no ideas, only "irritable mental gestures." Today, though many conservatives remain irritable, ideas they possess in abundance. Conservative thinking has not only claimed the presidency; it has spread throughout our political and intellectual life and stands poised to become the dominant strain in American public policy. While the political ascent of conservatism has taken place in full public view, the intellectual transformation has for the most part occurred behind the scenes, in a network of think tanks whose efforts have been influential to an extent that only now, five years after President Reagan's election, begins to be clear.

Conservative think tanks and similar organizations have flourished since the mid-1970s. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) had twelve resident thinkers when Jimmy Carter was elected; today it has forty-five, and a total staff of nearly 150. The Heritage Foundation has sprung from nothing to command an annual budget of $11 million. The budget of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has grown from $975,000 ten years ago to $8.6 million today. Over a somewhat longer period the endowment of the Hoover Institution has increased from $2 million to $70 million.

At least twenty-five other noteworthy public-policy groups have been formed or dramatically expanded through the decade; nearly all are anti-liberal. They include the Cato, Manhattan, Lehrman, Hudson, Shavano, Pacific, Sequoia, and Competitive Enterprise institutes; the committees on the Present Danger, for the Survival of a Free Congress, and for the Free World; the institutes for Foreign Policy Analysis for Contemporary Studies, and for humane Studies: the centers for Study of Public Choice, or the Study of American Business, and for Judicial Studies; the Political Economy Research Center; the Reason Foundation; the Washington, American, Capital, and Mountain States legal foundations; the Ethics and Public policy Center; the National Center for Policy Analysis; the National Institute for Public Policy; and the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy.

Today conservative commentators have their liberal counterparts outgunned by a wide margin. Conservative thinking has liberal thinking outgunned as well. In vigor, freshness, and appeal, market-oriented theories have surpassed government oriented theories at nearly every turn. This feat has been accomplished in the main by circumventing the expected source of intellectual developments--the universities. Conservative thinkers have taken their case directly to Congress, the media, and the public--to the marketplace of ideas.

THE NEW NEW CLASS

Think tanks are an American phenomenon. No other country accords such significance to private institutions designed to influence public decisions. Brookings, the progenitor of think tanks, began in the 1920s with money from the industrialist Robert S. Brookings, a Renaissance man who aspired to bring the new discipline of economics to backwater Washington. During the New Deal the Brookings Institution was market-oriented--for example, it opposed Roosevelt's central planning agency, the National Resources Planning Board. Only much later did the institution acquire a reputation as the fountainhead of liberalism.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, as Americans enjoyed steady increases in their standard of living and U.S. industry reigned over world commerce, institutional Washington came to consider the economy a dead issue. Social justice and Vietnam dominated the agenda: Brookings concentrated on those fields, emerging as a chief source of arguments in favor of the Great Society and opposed to U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In the Washington swirl where few people have the time actually to read the reports they debate, respectability is often proportional to tonnage. The more studies someone tosses on the table, the more likely he is to win his point. For years Brookings held a monopoly on tonnage. Its papers supporting liberal positions went unchallenged by serious conservative rebuttals.

Though the force of liberal ideas grew during the Great Society, few liberal think tanks were founded. During this period young men and women on the make in Washington formed consulting companies. Federal consulting was a growth industry, because by hiring consultants agencies could evade Civil Service ceilings and expand even as their official size remained the same. The first big consulting boom was in poverty-fighting. When the environment became the hot issue, many poverty consultants switched to that field. Energy was the next bankable issue, with a related boomlet in Arab studies.

But consultants with liberal backgrounds were ill equipped for a transition to the hot issue of the late 1970s, the economy. And as the conceptual emphasis changed, so did the money flow. Poverty, the environment, and energy were fields in which consultants generally argued for increased government authority: the bureaucracy was happy to fund such thinking. Most economic research, however, called for reduced government involvement. Funding for that would have to come from somewhere else.

Together with Washington commentators and regulators, liberal consultants were condemned during the 1970s by conservative intellectuals as representing a "new class" of overeducated spongers who performed no productive labor but merely issued edicts regarding the labor of others, while living comfortably off the surplus. With each passing year, warnings about the new class went, the proportion of talkers to doers would increase, and the prestige of talking rather than doing would grow, until U.S. society became so top heavy that paralysis set in.

As the 1970s progressed, a core of politically active conservative intellectuals, most prominently Irving Kristol, began to argue in publications like The Public Interest and The Wall Street Journal that if business wanted market logic to regain the initiative, it would have to create a new class of its own--scholars whose career prospects depended on private enterprise, not government or the universities. You get what you pay for, Kristol in effect argued, and if businessmen wanted intellectual horsepower, they would have to open their pocketbooks.

Traditionally, corporate philanthropy had been directed either toward charity or toward independent organizations like the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations. Pressured by the media and by academics to make gestures of broadmindedness, businessmen seemed to feel that they could gain social approval only by sharing their proceeds with credentialed intermediaries who would use the money to fund attacks on capitalism. Paying to have oneself attacked was a kind of corporate ablution.

The rise of Nader's Raiders and similar public-interest groups--which achieved remarkable results, considering how badly outgunned they were--brought a change in business thinking about money and public affairs. So did the frustration felt by oil companies, which were being fattened by rising prices but dreamed of being fatter still if federal regulations were abolished. They were willing to invest a sliver of their riches in changing Washington's mood.

In 1977 Henry Ford II angrily resigned from the board of the Ford Foundation, saying that he was fed up with its anti-capitalist output. Many companies started political-action committees and created "corporate foundations" whose giving habits were tightly controlled by management. And a handful of wealthy right-wing foundations representing Richard Mellon Scaife, Joseph Coors, and the Olin Chemical and Smith Richardson pharmaceutical fortunes began to dedicate themselves to influencing politics. Just as liberal analysts had once discovered that they could do well billing the government to advocate government expansion, so conservative thinkers now saw an attractive opportunity to take business funds to advocate government contraction.

In 1973 two young congressional aides, Edwin Feulner and Paul Weyrich, quit their jobs to start the Heritage Foundation. Three years later a longtime Brookings fellow, Ernest Lefever, started the Ethics and Public Policy Center. In 1977 a group of libertarians started the Cato Institute. The Committee on the Present Danger was founded nine days after Carter's election. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, which had existed quietly since its creation in 1962 by David Abshire, a retired Army officer (now ambassador to NATO), sensed its moment. Liberal consultancies had found their causes in poverty, energy, and the environment; the new think tanks would find bankable issues in the windfall-profits tax, the SALT II treaty, the nuclear freeze, Star Wars, industrial policy, and comparable worth.

When plum positions started going to them, conservatives discovered that the new class wasn't so bad after all. Norman Ture, one of the original supply-siders, supported himself through the late 1970s by taking donations for his Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation. While Ronald Reagan was composing his first cabinet.Ture wrote a paper for the Heritage Foundation advocating--in the best new-class style--the creation of a new government post, that of Treasury Department undersecretary for tax policy, and, after some assiduous circulating of the paper with resume attached, landed the job for himself.Following the change of administrations in 1980 some conservatives found think tanks useful vehicles for advancing their ideas and their careers. Colin Gray, a nuclear hard-liner known for a Foreign Policy article titled "Victory Is Possible," failed to land a top position at Defense or the National Security Council, so he started the National Institute for Public Policy, which produces studies on beam weapons and other Star Wars components. Meanwhile, the major conservative think tanks hardly had to chase money: it was brought to them eagerly.

WARMING THE IDEAS

"Historically, conservatives in the United States have come across as racists and know-nothings," Michael Horowitz, who did work for AEI and Heritage in the late 1970s and held a high position in the Office of Management and Budget before being nominated to a federal judgeship, told me. "It was essential to create a moral and intellectual basis for conservative beliefs which had its own vision and wasn't just a reaction against liberalism."

To a point this image problem was inevitable. The slogans of capitalism (Every man for himself, and Don't expect any favors) sound horrible, while the usual effects (prosperity and freedom) are terrific. The slogans of socialism (Everybody is equal, and We'll look after you) sound stirring, while the usual effects (stagnation and statism) leave something to be desired. For conservatism to capture the intellectual market it would have to sound like more than the nay-saying of wealthy old white men. It would have to speak, as liberalism did, of a better future.

A turning point for the movement's world view was George Gilder's Wealth and Poverty, funded through the new think-tank network and published just as Reagan won in 1980. In the book Gilder argued for tax cuts, a long-standing conservative cause. But rather than employ the traditional negative line (which boils down to "Get your hands out of my pockets"), Gilder stood the argument on its head. Adam Smith, he said, had it wrong. Capitalism isn't a voodoo through which many selfish acts inexplicably advance the whole. It's a magnanimous organism in which everybody wants the best for everybody else--since, after all, one person cannot prosper selling his product unless many others are prosperous enough to buy. Big tax cuts, Gilder said, will trigger an outburst of altruism.

Gilder may or may not have been right, but he had found a whole new vocabulary for market thinking, one that was progressive and kind-hearted rather than dour. In the late 1970s Jeane Kirkpatrick had written, "Sometimes Republican speakers communicate a warmer concern for fiscal abstractions than for any other subject and sometimes Republican audiences respond like a group of accountants who can conceive no greater good than a balanced budget." How quickly and how completely the priorities would be reversed! Conservative theorists would lose all interest in mere fiscal abstraction, such as the federal debt (Heritage's Mandate for Leadership, Volume II, wouldn't use the word deficit until page 219), while learning to frame their ideas in terms of the "greater good." By 1985 the Ethics and Public Policy Center would hold a conference on the underclass at which the speeches would be focused entirely on market mechanisms to help the poor.[paul ryan et al 2014 redux?] Not once were welfare queens or ghetto Cadillacs, the sort of small-minded crotchets that would have dominated a similar conservative conference a decade ago, even mentioned. Conservatism, by acquiring a positive vision, had become warmer.

HOUSING THE CONVERTS

All movements treasure converts, and the growing conservative think tanks became instruments for the care, feeding, and display of theirs. AEI was home to Kirkpatrick, Michael Novak, Ben Wattenberg, and others who wasted no opportunity to point out that they had switched sides. Ernest Lefever, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Max Kampelman, the general counsel to the Committee on the Present Danger (now a special arms negotiator), had been conscientious objectors during the Second World War. Charles Murray, whose Losing Ground, a critique of social spending, was written for the Manhattan Institute, is a former Peace Corps volunteer and the child of a factory worker. Thomas Sowell, Glenn Loury, and Walter Williams, all rising conservative theorists, are black, which qualifies them as converts regardless of when they began thinking in market terms.

The more spectacular the conversion the better. Michael Horowitz began an article about his: "I am Jewish, was student body president at City College of New York, taught civil rights law in Mississippi during the sixties, now grieve at the loss of Al Lowenstein, the remarkable friend who most taught me to care about the political process. The best man at my wedding was a Democratic Congressman with a 100 percent ADA rating." Just as a former drunkard who beat his wife and stole from the collection plate will be the star of any revival meeting, so reformed liberals became the headliners at many conservative get-togethers. Conservatives wanted to win not just elections but hearts and minds.

For public-policy impact, intellectuals and journalists make prime converts, because there is nothing (at least nothing obvious) in it for them. All manner of lobbyists, some even lapsed Democrats, were running around Washington preaching capital formation and market magic, but who believed them? They were fabulously paid to read their lines. Public-interest advocates and liberal academics often had more standing on Capitol Hill than corporate vice-presidents, precisely because they made relatively little money and did not gain personally from the outcome of political decisions. By establishing think tanks, conservatism could acquire the same sheen of detachment. The beauty of it all was that thinkers come cheaper than lobbyists.

AEI, Heritage, and CSIS became exceptionally press conscious. Any time the elite media mentioned a Heritage or Cato study, the movement would score points in heaven. Think-tank managers who swore oaths in private about the liberal biases of the big media nevertheless found themselves longing for their stamp of approval.

Understanding that many reporters hunger to feel important, the new think tanks courted and flattered reporters in a way Brookings never had, inviting them to conferences not as observers but as participants. Catering to the journalists' convenience, they sent reams of information free (Brookings, the old profiteer, actually charged for its work) and provided messenger service for reporters on deadline. Having an impressive AEI study hand-delivered to a reporter while its Brookings counterpart was lost in the mail was often half the battle for a mention in a news column. Also, it helped that most conservative think tanks prefer writing that makes for pleasant reading and vivid quotation to dense academic prose. Someone snowbound in a mountain cabin would far rather find back copies of AEI's Regulation (with headlines like "Curse of the Mummy's Tomb") or Heritage's Policy Review than the soporiferous Brookings Review.

As the new think tanks have grown and the quality of their work has improved, members of the Washington press corps have become more dependent on them, more likely to quote AEI than puzzle out a topic on their own--which, of course, fits the plan quite well. Once journalists began paying attention, they served as an important cross-check of developing theory. To play in Newsweek or on CBS, an idea had to be phrased in the new good-for-society terms. In turn, a favorable mention in the media was taken as proof that a conservative proposal had so much power that even liberals were forced to acknowledge it.[fdbk?]

STAR ATTRACTIONS

Jeane Kirkpatrick became the greatest think-tank discovery. Only Reagan himself was received with more enthusiasm at the 1984 Republican Convention. A former professor at Georgetown University, a board member of the Committee on the Present Danger, and (to the everlasting embarrassment of CSIS, which is affiliated with Georgetown) a fellow at AEI, she wrote a much discussed article for Commentary magazine, "Dictatorships and Double Standards," in 1979. Kirkpatrick ridiculed Carter's decision not to reinforce the Shah and Somoza in their waning hours. We shouldn't be so choosy about our allies, she declared. This one article propelled Kirkpatrick to national prominence--the academic's most deeply cherished fantasy. Since then there has been a scramble among the new think tanks to link their names to Kirkpatrick's. She has been featured at forums sponsored by Heritage, CSIS, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Hoover, and others, all of which display her photograph prominently in promotional literature. When Kirkpatrick returned to AEI last year, the institute's Foreign Polity and Defense Review devoted its back cover to a full-page announcement.

There have been many discoveries besides Kirkpatrick. Christopher DeMuth, Reagan's first-term "deregulation czar," won his post on the strength of a series of articles in Regulation on cost-benefit analysis for federal safety rules. Lawrence Korb, formerly an assistant secretary of defense, was an AEI fellow who wrote a paper that Frank Shakespeare--an influential, behind-the-scenes conservative who would later become the chairman of Heritage--showed to former National Security Advisor Richard Allen, who in turn gave it to Reagan. In 1980 Regulation's editors were Murray Weidenbaum and Antonin Scalia. Weidenbaum became the first Reagan chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Scalia was named a federal appeals judge.

Martin Anderson, Reagan's domestic-policy adviser until 1982, came from Hoover. James C. Miller III, Reagan's first Federal Trade Commission chairman and now the administrator of the Office of Management and Budget, came from AEI. James Watt, the former secretary of the interior; William Bennett, the secretary of education; John Svahn and Marshall Breger, presidential assistants; William Niskanen, a former member of the Council of Economic Advisers (now the chairman of the Cato Institute); Chester Crocker, an assistant secretary of state; Kenneth Adelman, the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency--this is a far from complete list of think-tank alumni who took prominent roles in the Administration.

What follows is a discussion of four of the leading conservative think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute, the most nearly centrist of the new tanks; the Heritage Foundation, the one with the most influence in the Reagan Administration; the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the toniest; and the Cato Institute, which takes market thinking further than any of the others--to that point on the continuum of opinion where right becomes left.

AEI

Without AEI, Reagan never would have been elected," an informed white House official says. "AEI made conservatism intellectually respectable." This is perhaps true--and is also a sore point with the New Right, the name usually given to the extremist side of Reagan's political support. Because the American Enterprise Institute pre-dates the New Right and has become, through its success, part of permanent Washington, New Right conservatives hold it in suspicion. When The Washington Times, the movement's Pravda, ran a wall-poster-style chart of major conservative organizations, AEI was not included.

AEI was founded in 1943 by Lewis Brown, an industrialist who hoped to match the influence of Robert S. Brookings. In its early years the institute was transparently a mouthpiece for big business. Serious work at AEI did not begin until a man named William Baroody took charge, in 1954. Baroody restructured AEI to resemble Brookings, with fellows given wide latitude and expected in return to produce the sort of work usually described as "major." AEI as a result is more scholastic in tone than the newer think tanks, more concerned with propriety and dignified behavior. "We aim to be in the mainstream," says William Baroody, Jr. who has run the institute since his father died, in 1977. In addition to Kirkpatrick, Novak, and Wattenberg, AEI lays claim to Gerald Ford, Arthur F. Burns, Philip Habib, the Congress specialist Norman J. Ornstein, the legal expert Bruce Fein, the Harvard scholar James Q. Wilson, and the economist Herbert Stein.

Most of AEI was rooting for George Bush in 1980, and though alliances gracefully shifted as the primaries progressed, AEI doesn't subscribe to "the movement," as, say, Heritage does. AEI has been critical of the MX missile, and attacks on the Reagan deficit that Rudolph Penner made as a fellow seem to have helped him win his current post as the head of the Congressional Budget Office, traditionally a Democratic enclave.

AEI was the first think tank to discover the power of taking ideas directly to the public, bypassing the formal big-university filtering system. In 1975, when AEI was still small, it began to distribute op-ed articles written by its adjunct scholars. Then it started to send free taped commentaries to radio stations--now a practice of many think tanks--and later packaged a television show.

Around the time of the Carter-Ford election, when conservative money was beginning to flow, AEI sharply increased its roster of resident scholars--thinkers physically located in the Washington office, as opposed to adjunct scholars, whose main jobs are elsewhere--and gave them impressive, academic-sounding titles,such as the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Public Policy Research (this is Michael Novak's position). "My father always said we would need to achieve a critical mass of people in the city"--people available to meet with congressmen and reporters, and press home conservative views--Baroody, Jr., told me. Such a mass would also make a pool of ready candidates for appointment to Administration positions.

A primary objective of all think tanks, regardless of ideology, is to be employment agencies for Presidents, in order both to influence policy and to crown the organization with prestige. Getting a high-level job "is what you live for in a think tank," says Lawrence Korb, formerly of the Defense Department and now an executive of Raytheon Corporation. "Talk centers on it obsessively." Korb notes that think-tank personnel make good appointees partly because they are eagerly available. "All you have to do to move from AEI to the Administration is walk across the street," he says. "You don't have to move your family to D.C., because you're already there. You don't have to give up a good job you might not get back, because the think tank will always take you back. You don't have to put your assets into some kind of complicated trust, because if your background is academics, you don't have any assets. And a businessman or lawyer coming into government usually has to make a financial sacrifice. To someone from academia, on the other hand, $60,000 [the typical pay for high-level appointees] is a raise."

Essential to all think tanks are events at which donors rub shoulders with Washington personages. The less such events seem like fund-raisers, and the more like Meet the Press, the better. Each summer AEI stages a World Forum, hosted by Gerald Ford, in Vail, Colorado, for chief executives of corporations that make contributions. In December it holds a Public Policy Week, during which the institute's offices are converted into a sort of intellectual theme park. In 1984 the week was topped off by a "gala Public Policy Dinner" at which Reagan addressed 1,200 guests in evening clothes. Lesser luncheons and breakfasts are held almost continually: conservatives seem to think best while eating. Even the Ethics and Public Policy Center, with a staff of just sixteen, in 1984 held one "major" conference and two medium ones, a black-tie dinner, a reception in the Capitol building, eight "dinner seminars," many luncheons, and a breakfast at which Representative Jack Kemp and National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane spoke.

Like most think tanks, AEI raises money each year; only Brookings and Hoover have substantial endowments. AEI drew 51 percent of its $12 million budget for 1985 (up from $4 million a decade ago) from corporate donations, the highest corporate support percentage of the major think tanks. The institute has twenty-seven trustees, most of them executives of corporations that are donors. Fourteen of the twenty-seven are from defense contractors, drug companies, or banks--businesses with a special interest in government decisions. An advocate of relaxed antitrust laws, AEI notes in its current annual report that "the wave of corporate mergers led to a reduction of more than $100,000" in its support last year, because several friendly companies were gobbled out of existence.

AEI has a new headquarters building (about half of which it plans to lease) under construction on Pennsylvania Avenue, halfway between the White House and the Hill. "The historic Pennsylvania Avenue location, Washington's corridor of power, will enable our scholars and fellows to interact more readily with key policy makers," an AEI publication reads. Aside from suggesting a picture of scholars poised on the roof, arms outstretched like antennae to receive emanations from Congress and the executive, this invocation of a large new building, and the commitment to the future that it represents, shows that AEI does not expect government to wither away. "Very little of our output involves calls for the abolition of government agencies," says Walter Olson, an AEI fellow.

HERITAGE

"We're not here to be some kind of Ph.D. committee giving equal time," says Burton Pines, a vice-president of Heritage. "Our role is to provide conservative public-policy makers with arguments to bolster our side. We're not troubled over this. There are plenty of think tanks on the other side."

Although Heritage officially calls itself "nonpartisan" (tax laws require this charade), in practice it is actively aligned with the Administration. Just after the 1980 elections Heritage published a thousand-page book called Mandate for Leadership which contained an elaborate series of policy recommendations for nearly every federal agency. When Reagan was re-elected, Heritage issued a successor volume; the pair are popularly known as Mandate I and Mandate II.

Probably no other documents have been as widely circulated in Washington during the past five years as Mandate I and Mandate II, and by any standard they are impressive. Each reflects a detailed understanding of how the federal government actually works (as opposed to how it officially works) and addresses the sort of questions that are short on media appeal but critical in Washington: how to motivate the bureaucracy, how to get bills through committee and so on. Recommendations range from the hard-to-dispute (greater competition in health care) to the intriguing (private management of wilderness areas, and "transportation enterprise zones") to the suspiciously pro-regulatory (a requirement that U.S. attorneys file "victims impact statements") to calls for that Washington perennial the presidential commission. There are discussions of government offshoots as obscure as the Federal Financing Bank Advisory Board and the Interagency Coordinating Council.

Heritage also produces a blizzard of lesser materials: more than 200 books, monographs, and legislative analyses in 1984, and numerous "executive memos," many labeled "RUSH!" Just how much of Heritage's advice is actually taken by the Administration is hard to judge. Heritage likes to assert that 60 percent of the policy recommendations in Mandate I were adopted, but it's impossible to say how many of the developments for which it claims credit would have happened anyway. For instance, Heritage associates itself with the idea for Star Wars,because the book High Frontier, by the retired general Daniel Graham, was released under its auspices in 1982; but pressure for a space defense program had been building quietly in many Washington quarters for several years. In other cases Reagan's action went beyond what Heritage advised. Mandate I said that the mission of the Community Services Administration should be "redefined." In his first budget David Stockman abolished the CSA altogether (one of the few government-program terminations that Reagan has actually carried out).

At one time Heritage had an image as a warren of loonies. But by 1985 even The Washington Post was treating it with respect. One reason for this grudging acceptance is that the warming trend in conservative theory has reached Heritage, too. Since Reagan's election Heritage publications have rarely employed New Right rhetoric and have been surprisingly quiet on "social agenda" questions. Mandate II contained only a single paragraph on school prayer--making the nebulous recommendation that Reagan publicize the efforts of the states to restore public praying--but offered eighteen pages on the Department of Commerce. Paul Weyrich, a founder of Heritage, resigned from it in 1975 in order to start the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, which is now closer than Heritage to Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell. Many Heritage analysts are uncomfortable with these cable-TV style conservatives, in part because some items on their wish list are unconstitutional and in part because the anti-intellectual hostility that animates the far right is as likely to find its target at Heritage as anywhere else.

In fact, when reading studies like the Mandate volumes, one gets the feeling that Heritage is trying to calm down its own constituency as much as to flay the liberals. Sections patiently explain why even the President can't just shut down whole agencies or cancel programs overnight. Having preached for some time that "if only we had the White House there'd be a few changes around here," organizations like Heritage now need to produce convincing reasons why many of the promised changes haven't been made. There is a more immediately practical consideration here too. If government actually did wither away, Heritage fellows would be out of jobs. Donors must be gently given to understand that the touch is going to be put on them far into the future.

The foundation's office is on capitol Hill, and this choice of location is significant. Being on the Hill allows Heritage to woo the young staff aides in Congress, the ones who will someday occupy heavy-hitting positions downtown. Almost every day Heritage holds an event at which food is served--cold cuts and beer being reliable bait for young staff. It also hosts biweekly networking sessions called the Third Generation Lectures, which consistently draw a hundred or more Hill staffers.

Heritage fellows are expected to get out of the office and work the congressional committees. By doing this kind of grunt work--the kind that more self-important think tanks shun--Heritage keeps a step ahead of the news and avoids depending heavily on the kind of official statements that are impressive from afar but bear little relation to what's really going on. Most of its leading thinkers--Dinesh D'Souza, Stuart Butler, Milton Copulos, Anna Kondratas, Adam Meyerson, Phil Truluck--are young and not yet names. "I worry about losing the courage to send a twenty-seven-year-old in to brief a senator or testify about a Heritage position," Burton Pines says. "If we started hiring older people with safe, established reputations, we would lose our cutting edge." Heritage's young Turks make more mistakes than the cautious, experienced analysts at AEI, but they are also willing to take chances on ideas that have not been sanctioned by the capital's mentioning apparatus. Their pay is good but not grand--the development of conservatives willing to pursue something other than money being, perhaps, the most significant sign of changed times in institutional Washington.

Heritage has a media strategy similar to its personnel policy: it goes after the little fish in the press as well as the big. "During the time the elite media was ignoring us, we discovered that there are l,600 dailies and weeklies around the country," Pines says. "Statistically, most people don't get their news from the big media; they get it from little papers." So Heritage began to send copies of its studies topped by press releases in what Pines calls "easy-to-read form specially designed for reporters and editors," to the small papers. Each study mailed, Heritage found, produces 200 to 500 stories. Often the press release is published verbatim. When the story comes in, Heritage sends a copy of the clipping to the congressman in whose district it appeared.

Preaching government contraction has helped Heritage expand rapidly. Its largest source of money--providing at least $5 million over the past decade--has been Richard Mellon Scaife, a great-grandson of the banker Thomas Mellon. From a personal fortune estimated at $150 million Scaife gives about $10 million annually to conservative causes through the Carthage, Allegheny, and Sarah Scaife foundations. The next largest conservative donor, the Olin Foundation, gives about $5 million annual to various causes, while the Coors and Smith Richardson foundations each give about $3 million a year.

Scaife cultivates a secretive demeanor and refuses to speak to reporters. When Karen Rothmyer, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and the author of what is now the standard work on Scaife, approached him for an interview, Scaife assailed her with a volley of obscenities. Scaife's name rarely appears in Heritage promotional literature, though there are frequent references to Joseph Coors, an affable person associated with a high-quality yuppie product.

Unlike AEI, which received about $500,000 in federal grants last year, and CSIS, whose budget is roughly 15 percent federal, Heritage takes no government grants. It draws by far the highest proportion of general public support, getting about a third of its budget from small donors. Heritage receives major donations from itstrustees Shelby Cullom Davis, a wealthy New fork financier, and the one time New York gubernatorial candidate Lewis Lehrman (who, despite having his own, competing think tank, was the head of a recent Heritage fund drive), the Reader's Digest Association, and many corporations, primarily oil and defense firms. Recently it has amassed its first endowment, for an Asian Studies Center. Several conservative think tanks are active in Asian affairs, because Taiwanese and South Korean industrialists are big givers acutely concerned with Washington access.

CSIS

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, like Hoover at Stanford, is a conservative policy center attached to a generally liberal university (in this case, Georgetown). Unlike Hoover, CSIS is located well away from the parent campus: its offices on K Street, Washington's legal row, have the aspect of an investment banking firm.

Perhaps because of its emphasis on international affairs CSIS is the most aristocratic of the think tanks, and the most ceremonial. Big names abound. Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and James Schlesinger are "senior scholar-statesmen in residence." Other CSIS names are Thomas Moorer, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Ray Cline, a former deputy CIA director for intelligence; the authors Walter Laqueur and Michael Ledeen; the military analyst Edward Luttwak; and the economist Paul Craig Roberts. The most recent CSIS annual report resembles a social directory, listing a sixty-five person advisory board, a fourteen-person executive board, a twenty-seven-person international research council, staff and a hundred scholars. The 1984 report listed 578 CSIS forum participants, plus more roundtables, symposia, and colloquia than any one person could ever attend. It also managed to drop Kissinger's name thirty-four times.

Because CSIS is heavy with people who would accept only top positions, it sent few into the Reagan Administration--Chester Crocker, the author of the Administration's "constructive engagement" policy toward South Africa, is its only prominent alumnus. Big names mean big overhead: Kissinger, Brzezinski, and Schlesinger have separate suites, perhaps to keep their ego fields from interacting. The big names are expected to "bring money with them" (to use the think-tank argot), raising a portion of the overhead from foundation contacts or on the cocktail party-circuit. A recent CSIS newsletter noted, "James Schlesinger...met with senior leadership of Texaco Inc. to discuss a number of defense and energy policy issues and to share a personal perspective on contemporary geopolitics.

Geopolitical perspectives are also shared at the annual shoulder-rubbing roundtables that CSIS holds in Washington, Dallas, Houston, and Miami (additional events in Los Angeles and Chicago are planned). Entree to such occasions generally requires about a $5,000 donation. The chief executive officers of large corporate donors received a "high-level CSIS briefing" in Washington for the second Reagan inauguration (whenever CEOs come to town, they expect important sounding things to do), and CSIS stages a prestigious annual retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia, similar to AEI's Colorado gathering.

CSIS's output in the press and on TV is second to none. "We had more than 2,500 media appearances in 1984, and it's going to add up to more in 1985, because Beirut has been a big story and we have most of Washington's world-class terrorism experts here," William Taylor, the executive director of CSIS, told me recently. He handed over a copy of the center's media guide: "When a big story breaks, this is a media bible." The guide is cross-referenced and includes the home phone numbers of several CSIS officers who run an "alert system." If an important international story develops at night or over a weekend, CSIS fellows call in to the office, forming a duty rotation of experts available for interviews and television appearances.

CSIS thus performs a valued service for the major media, creating instant access to former officials who are presumed to have inside information. Some of the media return the favor: The New York Times and NBC News are among CSIS's financial supporters. Brzezinski, Cline, Laqueur, the retired CIA director Richard Helms, a retired chief of staff of the Army, General Edward Meyer, and others make up the center's Steering Committee on Terrorism, as if CSIS itself had something other than words to steer. (Committees are a favorite think-tank gambit for lending the appearance of formal policy-making responsibilities. After Reagan's re-election the Hudson Institute announced a Committee on the Next Agenda composed of many prominent names. This committee earned the president of Hudson, Thomas Bell, lunch at the White House and a photo opportunity with Reagan, but compared with the thoughtful Mandate II its report was a comic book. The thirteen single-spaced pages of generalities advocated for example, "a national commission to report on the quality of family life" and the creation of yet another government post, for a cabinet-level "broker" who would "play an important coordination function in government" by reconciling "overlapping defense, foreign, economic and trade areas"--which sounds suspiciously like what the President is supposed to do.)

CSIS also performs a valued service for the State Department, staging forums for visiting diplomats whom the department doesn't quite know what to do with (whenever foreign leaders come to town, they too expect important-sounding things to do) and sometimes conducting semi-sanctioned negotiations that avoid the tortuosities of official government contacts. A CSIS team preceded Reagan on his visit to China.

Both Taylor, the executive director and Amos Jordan, who has succeeded David Abshire, the founder, as president, were once Army instructors at West Point. Nevertheless, CSIS has not refrained from criticism of the military. Senior Fellow Edward Luttwak's recent The Pentagon and the Art of War is scorching; CSIS's most successful project in 1984 was a study, signed by six of the seven living former secretaries of defense, calling for reform of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The test of this study's success is that it made Navy Secretary John Lehman--whose service would stand to lose in most JCS reform plans--furious. Melissa Healy and Michael Duffy reported in Defense Week a trade newsletter for the defense industry, that Lehman worked behind the scenes to block the CSIS report.

Scaife--who was also unhappy about the Joint Chiefs of Staff study--is CSIS's biggest donor, having given at least $7 million in the past decade. (CSIS and Georgetown raise funds separately; there is some hostility between the center and the school, mainly because CSIS fellows can make twice as much as Georgetown professors while being spared the drudgery of correcting blue books.) Other important donors include the Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur, and Noble foundations; the Prince Charitable Trust; Hallmark Cards, Inc.; eleven defense contractors; and Sheikh Salman al Hethlain and Prince Turki bin Abdulaziz (CSIS has a "Middle East" project, appealing to Arab-American interests, and also a "Near East" project, of more interest to pro-Israel groups).

CATO

Last June, on a day when savings accounts in Maryland were frozen because the state's private deposit-insurance company had collapsed, the Cato Institute held a Capitol Hill forum to advocate that private deposit-insurance companies replace the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. "It is my belief that consumers would be willing to give up their federal guarantees in return for deposits backed by triple-A corporate bonds," Catherine England, a Cato analyst, declared. Senior staffers from the Joint Economic Committee, the Treasury Department, the Federal Trade Commission, the Office of Management and Budget, and other agencies had come to listen.

In a sense, no one took the session seriously. At a time when banks were teetering, the political prospects of abolishing federal deposit insurance were slim to nonexistent. Yet in another sense there was great interest, as the attendance showed. Cato is in the vanguard of market thinking, and Washington is as fascinated today by market theories as it was twenty years ago by big-government theories. During the forum Bert Ely, another Cato speaker, said that banks could protect their deposits through a system of self-insurance. An official from the Farm Credit Administration rose to protest: that was the way that FCA affiliates had been insured, the system hadn't worked, and Cato was "completely ignoring the real world." To a libertarian this is not necessarily an insult.

Cato was once close to the Libertarian Party, whose presidential candidate managed to win one percent of the vote in 1980. The Libertarian Party believes that government should go away, period. Its candidate in 1984, David Bergland, vowed to abolish the CIA, the FBI, the IRS, Social Security, and public schools. If citizens wanted national defense, he said, they could band together and contract for it voluntarily.

That was too much even for Cato. It continues, however, to say that almost all government regulation should and; that in an information-rich society like ours, consumers exert enough pressure on industry through their buying habits to prevent abuses, and to the extent that they fail to exert pressure, that's their problem. Cato wants a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and South Korea, and an end to other entangling alliances. Government, in its view, should exist only to provide police protection, enforce contracts, and repel invasions. Cato's hero is Friedrich Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1974 and is the godfather of the "Austrian school," dear to the hearts of many on the right. Hayek recently attached his name to Cato by becoming a senior fellow, the institute having campaigned long and hard to get him. Hayek proposes abolishing the uniform national currency and instead using private-label money issued by business. "What is so dangerous and ought to be done away with is not government's right to issue money but the exclusive right to do so and their power to force people to use it and accept it at a particular price," he has written.

In summary form, this sounds like a crackpot idea. It's not, although neither is it practical--and that sums up much of libertarian thinking. As a logical exercise one can imagine competing "brands" of currency driving monetary exchange values to a perfect level and increasing economic efficiency. In the real world, where people's hopes and fears add non-logical considerations, private currency might spawn catastrophe. Still, speculation about such matters can result in smaller insights that are applicable under real conditions. An example is the work for Cato done by Peter Ferrara, an attorney, who proposes that Social Security be replaced with a form of private super-IRA accounts. The plan has faults, but it is the kind of not-so-crazy-as it-sounds idea that may ultimately inspire practical change.

Libertarianism springs from the American West: Cato, the Pacific Institute, and the Reason Foundation, all libertarian, were all started in California. On its good side libertarianism reflects the dream of the American West of the individual above all, with society constantly forming and reforming itself to reflect individual aspiration. Culturally, the eastern United States is Europe transplanted, with many Old World habits and class expectations continuing to operate at a subtle level. The West is the world made new, and its residents need not honor what they left behind. Here, though, is libertarianism's bad side--a desire to renounce all social obligations and live as if the United States had no poverty and no enemies.

Cato gets the largest portion of its $1.3 million annual budget through Charles Koch, the son of a Kansas oilman, who has given around $5 million to libertarian causes and it has also received significant support from his brother David, the Libertarian Party's vice-presidential candidate in 1980. Other donors include Shelby Cullom Davis, several oil and chemical firms, and theAmerican Broadcasting Company. Scaife is a major sponsor, but he insists that his money be spent only on economic studies, not on international affairs, because Cato favors reduced military spending. Cato is the only one of the new think tanks to have no major defense contractors among its supporters.

The chairmanship of Cato was assumed last year by William Niskanen, a former member of the Council of Economic Advisers. Niskanen entered the libertarian hall of fame when, in 1980, as director of economics at Ford Motor Company, he was fired for publicly opposing the company's campaign for quotas on imported cars, which he said would only hurt consumers.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Intellectually, it is always easier to be the party out of power, and conservative think tanks often exhibit a certain nostalgia for the good old days, when Carter was President and taking the blame. Indeed, their work sometimes gives the impression that he is still President.

Failures of federal agencies to reduce regulation are decried as though Reagan did not now control the agencies. Recent issues of Heritage's Policy Review have declared that a government agency director is "judged by the standard of whether what he does corresponds to the conventional (liberal) wisdom" and that "one faces intellectual ostracism for uttering the words 'Cold War.'" (A mantra popular among conservative intellectuals is the sentence that begins with a phrase like "No one dares say...") A Policy Review critic called the book I, Martha Adams, in which Russian troops invade the united States and slaughter millions, "a conservative's dream novel." An article by Midge Decter, the head of the Manhattan-based Committee for the Free World, announced, "As a society we do not even any longer have the moral courage to cast out in horror--a horror we all feel--the child pornographer, the pedophile, the committer of incest. We hem and haw and let the courts decide." Unless Times Square is a microcosm of middle America, this last is as far out of touch with the nation's political mood as the left ever strayed. And by the way, aren't courts supposed to determine the punishment for crimes?

It's good business for conservative think tanks to suggest that even after five years of a strong conservative President, a Republican Senate, and a popular conservative mandate, liberalism is still secretly controlling Washington. Foreign affairs are the focus of many such complaints: liberals are somehow preventing bomber pilots from spotting terrorists; many of the new think tanks have demanded full economic sanctions against Libya, even as lobbyists for U.S. oil companies, which continue to operate there, have petitioned the Administration for more trade freedom.

Perhaps the climactic moment of conservative nostalgia for the days when somebody else was to blame occurred last May. The Shavano Institute, a think tank affiliated with Hillsdale College, in Michigan--which is to the right approximately what Antioch is to the left--held a Washington conference. Kirkpatrick was the featured guest. Frank Shakespeare who was serving as chairman, had helped arrange $45,000 in federal funding--the type of self-serving use of public money that drives conservatives wild when liberal groups are the beneficiaries. The purpose of the conference was to prove that the United States and the Soviet Union are not "morally equivalent." The idea that they are equivalent carries no weight in the United States except with fringe groups, but does have some respectable backing in Europe. All the heavy artillery of conservatism was there, and the participants were speaking to their own.

The writer Tom Wolfe kicked off the event by saying, "I want to congratulate you all on the courage that you've shown in coming here," as though secret-police agents were circulating in the audience, jotting down names, when in fact attendance was a career plum. Joseph Sobran, an editor of National Review, suggested that nefarious forces were blocking the production of anti-Communist movies, adding, "Sometimes I wonder if there's some sort of ideological Hays Office operating in Hollywood, protecting the viewing public from the indecorous manifestations of the Cold War mentality." The conference was held two weeks before the premiere of Rambo.

The secretary of education, William Bennett, said, "Much of what goes on in the American classroom today is expressly designed to prevent our future intellectuals from telling the difference between American and Soviet values." Irving Kristol complained that PEACE has become "a Stalinist word" and that it has "acquired such momentum that no one dares come out and speak against the use of the word peace. He then dared, objecting to the name of the Peace Corps.

Michael Novak predicted that "over the next five years the greatest historical expansion of Soviet power beyond the postwar boundaries of the USSR is likely to be attempted." (What, then, did the Reagan defense buildup accomplish?) Tom Bethell, a former AEI fellow and a writer for The American Spectator, said that "the ideology which undergirds the American press is congruent with, in some sense, the ideology of the Soviet Union" (though "to make any such observation is a complete violation of etiquette") and that "we do not hear...any explicit discussion of the socialist ideology and we certainly do not find any criticism of it in the news" -which requires one to exclude from "the news" the papers with the largest and second largest circulations in the country, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover fellow said that "we are debating and negotiating among ourselves while the Soviet Union need debate nothing, protected as it is by a powerful liberal-left phalanx in the American media, the academy, the professions, and above all in the Congress of the United States." R. Emmett Tyrrell, the editor of The American Spectator, declared that the rock singer Madonna wore funny clothes because she was "influenced by American liberalism."

DIRECTED CONCLUSIONS

"The whole transformation of conservative philosophy was really begun by just a handful of people," Michael Horowitz says, and he names Richard Larry, the grant director for the Sarah Scaife Foundation; Michael Joyce, the grant director for the Olin Foundation; and Leslie Lenkowsky, who once controlled grant awards for the Smith Richardson Foundation and moved to AEI after his nomination as deputy director of the U.S. Information Agency fell through because he became embroiled in the conflict over the agency's blacklisting of liberal speakers. "They understood that just by funding a few writers and a few chairs they could make a breakthrough." Scaife and Olin are principal donors to Heritage, CSIS, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Cato, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, The American Spectator magazine, the Committee on the Present Danger, the Manhattan Institute, the Capital Legal Foundation, the Reason Foundation, and other new conservative think tanks and foundations. Walter Williams--whose recent book The State Against Blacks contains such nuggets as "Discrimination may be defined as an act of choice based upon utility maximization"--Irving Kristol, the conservative criminologist Ernest van den Haag, and Richard McKenzie, a rising young market economist affiliated with Heritage and Cato, all hold John M. Olin chairs at their universities.

The regularity with which the same thinkers' names appear on think-tank rosters is as remarkable as the regularity with which Scaife and Olin are listed as donors. Kristol, the editor of The Public Interest is also the publisher of the new neo conservative journal The National Interest, a member of the board of editors for Regulation, an AEI fellow, a Hudson fellow, and an adviser to the Lehrman and Manhattan institutes. Midge Decter is a Heritage trustee, an Ethics and Public Policy Center director, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), a Hudson fellow, and an advisors-board member for The National Interest. Martin Anderson, of Hoover, is also a Hudson fellow, a Reason adviser, and a member of the board of the CPD. Michael Novak has affiliations with AEI, the CPD, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, and Hudson; Ernest Lefever with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the CPD, and Heritage; Thomas Gale Moore, of Hoover and recently named to the Council of Economic Advisers, with AEI, Cato, and Reason. James Buchanan, of the Center for Study of Public choice, is also an adjunct scholar at AEI and Cato, and an adviser to Hoover, Reason, and the Political Economy Research Center. The leaders of the three major conservative think tanks--William Baroody, of AEI, Edwin Feulner, of Heritage, and David Abshire, of CSIS--once served together as aides to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.

The recurrence of the same names makes it fair to ask if what appears to be a conservative intellectual groundswell is really just multiple manifestations of one phenomenon. Perhaps twenty years must pass before this question can be answered fully, but a reasonable guess is no. Since ideas run in cycles, an uprising against liberal theory was bound to occur someday (just as there will someday be a liberal revival in which some of the currently regnant conservative ideas are discredited). Equally important, during the 1970s millions of Americans came to the conclusion that liberalism was asleep at the wheel.

But now that conservatism is the fashion, the overlap of names and places suggests a society of like-minded people reinforcing one another's preconceived notions and rejecting any thinking that does not fit the mold--practicing what consultants call the art of "directed conclusions."

Cato, for example, flatly states that it will not release any study that calls for a government program. The institute's president, Edward Crane, says that he receives one or two commissioned reports each year that are "inconsistent," and he does not publish them. The analyst Jonathan Stein lost his job at CSIS several months after he published a book highly critical of Star wars, the study of which is worth millions to think tanks that toe the line. (CSIS denies there was any connection.) AEI has criticized Reagan Administration decisions, but When I skimmed through its publications catalogue, I was hard pressed to find any title that looked as if it would upset a corporate sponsor--and the 1977 study "Lobbying: A Constitutionally Protected Right" probably did not damage that year's fund-raising campaign.

In 1983 Navy Secretary Lehman awarded management of the Center for Naval Analyses, a semi-independent organization similar to the Rand Corporation, to the Hudson Institute. This added $17 million to Hudson's consolidated revenues. Hudson, for its part, named Lehman's friend Francis West a vice-president and put under him a project on a "history of the 600-ship Navy," the Navy Secretary's most treasured goal. On contract to Hoosiers for Economic Development, Hudson issued a report on whether acid rain is really a problem. Hudson's headquarters is in Indianapolis; Indiana is a producer of the sulfur-bearing coals that cause acid rain. Take a wild guess as to what the Hoosiers for Economic development study concludes.

The Heritage Foundation was among the first to notice the rising "military reform" movement (which is by no means anti-defense). In 1979 Heritage released a study endorsing military reform in general terms. Later it commissioned George W. S. Kuhn, a former Army captain, to write about the subject. Kuhn produced a report called "Ending Defense Stagnation," which was published as a chapter of the book Agenda '83, midway through the Mandate series. Kuhn's report named names of weapons that didn't work and military commands that were redundant. He concluded, "Increased spending is not buying improved strength."

Heritage management was initially enthusiastic about the study. A publicity blitz was mounted and copies were sent to the White House; there was considerable press coverage. Then the repercussions began. Casper Weinberger was infuriated, probably because the report struck too close to home (several of the weapons and practices Kuhn criticized have been canceled or modified in the years since). Weinberger ordered each of the four services to write rebuttals. Lehman--who had been a roommate of Edwin Feulner's in Georgetown--sent the Navy rebuttal and an angry letter to Coors, who in turn called Feulner. Publicity efforts for the study instantly stopped. Kuhn was given the silent treatment, and no further Heritage work. References to his study have disappeared, Kremlin style, from Heritage literature.

To replace Kuhn, Heritage hired Theodore Crackel, a recently retired Arms lieutenant colonel. According to Heritage sources, Crackel was chosen because it was believed that he would write nothing controversial: he was expected to produce ruminations about grand strategy, a general subject, without mentioning anything concerning money for specific contractors. To Heritage's dismay, Crackel proceeded to advocate reform of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the other big taboo. Reportedly, Lehman went through the ceiling.

"There was pressure brought to bear to scuttle certain aspects of that story," Crackel, who now works for General Electric's military-planning division, told me recently. At first the report was to be published separately, but Lehman persuaded Feulner to withhold it, Crackel said. Eventually it was included as a chapter in Mandate II. "When it finally came out, Heritage made no effort to publicize it," Crackel said. "I had to call up newspapers myself to point out to them that it was in there."

While coming down hard on most government subsidies, Heritage has tiptoed lightly around the subject of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation. This federal agency is headed by Edward Noble, a trustee of the Samuel Robert Noble Foundation--which is one of Heritage's major contributors, having given more than $1.2 million. Mandate II contained a single paragraph criticizing the SFC; a thick Heritage book called Free Market Energy barely mentioned synfuels. In the spring of 1985, when abolition of the SFC began to seem likely (the House voted to terminate all synfuels spending, and Noble made an abortive attempt to award $744 million in extra subsidies before his authority expired), Heritage issued a backgrounder on "salvaging the Synthetic Fuels Corporation." The two synfuels projects that would have received most of the extra $744 million that Noble tried to confer are owned by Dow and Union Petrochemical. Both are listed by Heritage as "major" contributors.

Several conservative analysts to whom I mentioned these incidents answered by saying, Would Brookings in the 1960s have published a report attacking federal funds for mass transit or education? Perhaps not. But one side's mental blind spots hardly justify the other's.

LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE

A common complaint about Washington institutions is that no matter how well intentioned they are at birth, by adolescence they have learned to put self preservation ahead of purpose. Anti-poverty agencies provide nice livings for Ph.D.s and "service facilitators" but not much in the way of poverty reduction. Idealistic young lawyers come to town to file class-action suits and end up on K Street defending the Teamsters. Think tanks are established to fight the deficit and end up adding to it.

Since all the new conservative think tanks are nonprofit, donations to them are tax deductible--which means that each time their budgets grow, the federal debt grows as well. Inasmuch as most large individual contributors are in the 50 percent bracket, a $100 donation to a conservative think tank costs the donor $50 and the U.S. Treasury $50. A $100 corporate donation costs a company in the top 46 percent bracket $54 and the Treasury $46. The government, in effect, pays half the cost of condemning government spending. Nonprofit status also permits conservative think tanks to use federally subsidized postal rates.

Walking through the halls at Heritage and Cato not long ago, I had to remind myself continually that, as a reporter, I was the one who represented private enterprise. The new think tanks are tax favored. They make their money not by selling products but by taking gifts. A high percentage of their scholars began at tax supported universities, and the greatest aspiration for many is a government job. The major publications of conservatism--the think-tank periodicals, plus Commentary, The Public Interest, and The American Spectator--are produced by tax exempt foundations operating off the dole.

Tax preferences are another of those phenomena that people object to "in principle" when what they really mean is that they object to who gets the deal. Since the liberal think tanks make use of nonprofit status, it would be unreasonable to expect the conservative think tanks not to. But their philosophy might lead one to expect them to call for the abolition of this indulgence, as part of the general campaign to reduce the federal deficit and lower taxes. This they most definitely do not do. In fact, one Reagan initiative that many new think tanks have fought is tax reform--because, while helping most taxpayers, it would hurt them.

Reagan's tax manifesto of November, 1984, known as Treasury I, proposed cutting the top individual rate to 35 percent and the top corporate rate to 33 percent, which would have substantially reduced the basic tax burden but would have raised the effective cost of $100 think-tank donations to $65 for an individual and $67 for a corporation. Treasury I would further have barred non-itemizers from claiming deductions for contributions and would have allowed itemizers to claim deductions only for gifts in excess of two percent of adjusted gross income (a level that few reach). These proposals were part of a plan to make taxes lower, simpler, and more neutral. The think tanks were not amused.

Heritage called on Reagan to stop "flirting with these 'flat' tax proposals" and instead seek gradual changes "over the next few years." The Heritage recommendations were written by Norman Ture, whose own Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation receives more favorable tax treatment under the status quo. When the second Reagan tax plan, Treasury II, which did away with the two-percent floor and made other concessions to nonprofit organizations, was released last spring, Heritage fired off a RUSH! memorandum labeling the new plan "a clear improvement."

Those who don't like government may chortle at the idea of using tax preferences to support anti-government theorizing, but the practice is offensive for two reasons. First, if the ultimate goal is to reduce the portion of GNP consumed by government -a fine goal--somebody somewhere must agree to surrender his special favors and pay his own way. No matter how much is done to cut the budget, as long as net spending is in deficit every dollar deducted from one person's taxes must be added either to someone else's or to the debt. Second, by using tax preferences the think tanks are dodging the "true cost" test that they advocate everyone else undergo. If giving $100 to thinkers creates $100 worth of value in the form of profound opinions, press clips, or whatever, why shouldn't it cost $100?

THE TERMS TRANSFORMED

Besides using up every conceivable variation on titles like "In Defense of a Free Market" and "Strategic Realities for the Eighties," what, on balance, have the new think tanks accomplished?

They've routed a generation of assumptions about government; today even Brookings's hottest scholar, Robert Crandall, is a market thinker. By and large the new conservatives have been graceful in victory--certainly more graceful than the liberal intellectuals who, during their heyday, in the 1960s, held the losing side in scalding contempt. They've created an intellectual competitor for the university system, which is good, and rendered it dependent on not offending corporate patrons, which is bad. They have produced a substantial body of worthwhile commentary but few true thunderbolts, considering the sums of money and time invested. "The really big ideas are not going to be funded," Kenneth Adelman says. He is both a think-tank alumnus and a paying customer of think tanks in his role as the director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. "Think tanks are good at controlled studies of specific questions. But the really big ideas, the breakthroughs, come from outside the system. They pop up in journals written by someone you never heard of who had no outside help."

Perhaps the most lasting contribution of the new think tanks is that they have transformed the terms of public-policy debate. In politics, words are map coordinates that show on whose territory a battle is being fought. Whenever liberalism succeeded in defining its goals as the public interest, in opposition to the private interest, victory was near. To the extent that conservatism can now define its goals in terms of the greater good, it can win on merit what it could once win only by quantity of campaign contributions.

One example of the transformation of terms is that discussions of entrepreneurship are now conducted using words like spent and vision--glorifications, to be sure, but closer to the truth than some words of the 1960s, such as greed. Another example is the reaction to Charles Murray's Losing Ground, the Washington intellectual event of 1985. Murray's basic contention--that too much aid harms the poor--differs little from what George Gilder said in 1980 and Martin Anderson said in 1981. But Gilder and Anderson were mocked; Murray has been taken seriously. Now Glenn Loury and others have begun to say much the same thing without evoking a backlash--for example, that in public schools where the great Society prescription of admission formulas, lower standards, and due process has been administered, minority achievement has declined.

It may be that thinkers like Murray and Loury will ultimately be judged wrong. But the terms of debate will never again be the same. Government-imposed solutions will no longer automatically be considered to be in the best interest of the poor, leaving only the question, How much can we afford? Nor will market-mediated approaches automatically be considered apologies for the rich, leaving only the question, How much will we let them get away with?

Equally important--and here's the good part--transforming the terms of debate has transformed conservatives themselves. The great fear regarding "warmed" conservative philosophy is that it conceals a hidden agenda: nice new reasons to ignore the luckless and the left out replace the nasty old ones. There's an element of this especially in the Republican country-club set. But just as the new terms of political discourse make it harder to be a limousine liberal, they make it harder to be a troglodyte. Reagan himself, in discussing the issues, now uses a vocabulary entirely different from that of his campaign days. His mean little anecdote about vodka bought with food stamps has disappeared, and it's hard to imagine it making a comeback. Precisely because the new think tanks have raised the standard of conservative thinking, conservative ideas that are poorly thought through or merely selfish stand much less chance today than they did in 1981.

"Look what happened to Anne Gorsuch," Michael Horowitz says. "She never spent any time at a think tank. She wasn't comfortable in the world of ideas. When it came time to make a decision, she would just check the box marked C for conservative without understanding why or following any vision other than her desire to be loyal to the Administration.

"But for her loyalty the White House caught hell over and over again, and the EPA was reduced to a circus. Other people, like William Baxter [the former assistant attorney general for antitrust] and Jim Miller [the Office of Management and Budget administrator], have accomplished far more in real policy terms than Gorsuch, without causing any shouts in the night, because they were at home in the world of ideas."

Horowitz, who when I interviewed him was working in the Old Executive Office Building, ranked among the very few people in Washington who actually had a window commanding a view of the White House. "Look out that window," he said. "Do you know how I got here? Ideas. Ideas do count. Ideas move nations."

Copyright © 1986, Gregg Easterbrook. All rights reserved. 

"Ideas Move Nations"; The Atlantic Monthly, January, 1986. Volume 257, Number 1 (pages 

ucs 5/12

Heartland Institute, George C. Marshall Institute,

and Competitive Enterprise Institute [Oreskes

and Conway 2010; Hoggan and Littlemore

2009; Begley et al. 2007]).

Begley, S., E. Conant, S. Stein, E. Clift, and M. Philips. 2007.

The truth about denial. Newsweek, August 13.

For example, General Electric Company has funded

climate-science-supporting groups, such as

Brookings Institution and Worldwatch Institute

(Antholis and Talbott 2010; McKeown and Gardner

2009), while also donating to groups, such as the

Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise

Institute (Hoggan and Littlemore 2009), known

to misrepresent established climate science.

6. Conservative policy groups have shown increasing

sophistication in waging high-intensity battles over

extended periods of time, better coordinating their

activities with lobbyists in the private sector,

political operatives in Washington and the states, and

activists at the grassroots. Major policy battles

between 1993 and 1996 over telecommunications and health

care have taught these institutions important lessons

and helped them to refine their advocacy operations.

Many operate like “extra-party” organizations, adopting

the tactics of the permanent political campaign by

incorporating a fund raising arm, a lobbying arm, a

policy analysis and development arm, a public relations

arm, and a grassroots mobilization or constituency

development arm.

 CALLAGHAN

http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/archive/1-billion-for-ideas-conservative-think-tanks-in-the-1990s

$1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s

Introduction

Ideas are the very stuff of politics.

– Deborah Stone

Whoever decides what the game is about also decides who gets into the game.

– E.E. Schattschneider

How the national debate is framed, and what options are put before the public, can be more important ultimately than the immediate choices made. The   framing defines the breadth of the nation’s ambitions, and thus either raises or lowers expectations, fires or depresses imaginations, ignites or deflates political movements.

– Robert Reich

Long before Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences was first published in 1948, an appreciation was growing of the role that ideas play in the nation’s political life. As many have noted, ideas matter in a variety of ways. They can and do serve as the flagships of ideological and intellectual movements. They can help create new social understandings of old issues. They can weaken existing political coalitions or pave the way for the formation of new ones. And they can also provide lawmakers and others with the architectural frameworks within which to build policy agendas and justify governing decisions.

In fact, the more fundamental changes in American politics may not be in election results, but rather in the rise and fall of different ideas and their attendant policy agendas. Given this, significantly more attention needs to be directed to the issue raising, issue framing and issue suppression process in American politics today. How is it that some ideas become public ideas, or politically influential, while others do not? How are issues defined for public attention, framed in policy terms or suppressed in public policy debates? How do nonprofit research and advocacy organizations frame issues in the marketplace of ideas? And what role does private money play in supporting ideas and helping to set the agenda of American political life?

On the premise that ideas and the institutions that promote them matter, this NCRP report focuses attention on the top 20 conservative policy institutions of the 1990s. Included among them are some of the most powerful and well known institutions operating in the nation’s capital today. The Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute have become veritable household names to those even remotely familiar with conservative think tanks’ ascendant role in structuring the nation’s political conversation. Given their unflagging commitment to the marketing of their policy products and the sophistication of their political communications, their brand name status should not be surprising. This report, however, also focuses needed attention on seventeen additional, lesser-known think tanks whose work promotes the same broad ideological themes and whose activities buttress those of “star” institutions like the Heritage Foundation.

The rising influence of numerous smaller conservative think tanks has been a notable development during the 1990s. Together, these and other conservative policy groups have been able to define policy issues and approaches for public attention, skillfully using mainstream and alternative media outlets to create a powerful echo effect in and beyond the nation’s capital.

In focusing on the operating philosophies and policy activities of 20 top national conservative policy institutions, $1 Billion for Ideas builds on two earlier NCRP research reports that examined the burgeoning of state-level conservative think tanks (1991) and the funding side of the conservative political renaissance (1997). The latter report documented the grantmaking strategies of 12 ideologically conservative foundations, concluding that their philanthropic investments contributed in substantial ways to building and sustaining and intellectual and activist infrastructure on behalf of conservatives’ anti-government and unregulated markets agenda.

This 1999 report picks up the threads of that analysis to provide an expanded and more detailed analysis of 20 leading conservative think tanks.

Summary of Findings

The top 20 conservative think tanks studied in this report are:

• American Enterprise Institute
• American Legislative Exchange Council
• Atlas Economic Research Foundation
• Cato Institute
• Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Citizens for a Sound Economy
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Empower America
• Employment Policy Foundation
• Ethics and Public Policy Center
• Family Research Council
• Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
• Heritage Foundation
• Hoover Institution
• Hudson Institute
• Manhattan Institute
• National Center for Policy Analysis
• National Center for Public Policy Research
• Progress and Freedom Foundation
• Reason Foundation

Based on a review of their annual reports, websites, policy products and other publicly available information, the following findings stand out:

1. Expenditures by the 20 institutions examined were $158.1 million in 1996. This amount was a significant increase from 1992, with many organizations more than doubling their budgets over the four-year period. To put this figure in perspective, the Republican Party raised and spent $138 million in “soft money” contributions in 1996, $20 million less than the 20 policy groups profiled here.

2. Partial data from 1997 indicates that spending by center-right and far-right think tanks continues to grow rapidly, suggesting that the 1990s has been a period of continued institution-building by political conservatives. Overall spending by these institutions between 1990 and 2000 is likely to top $1 billion.

3. Early generous support by conservative foundations and wealthy individuals has enabled many of these institutions to develop impressive fund raising apparatuses, allowing them to diversify their finding bases and attract even higher levels of donor support. Many of the institutions examined now receive as much as two-thirds of their funding from individual and corporate supporters.

4. A number of smaller and relatively new conservative think tanks have risen to new positions of visibility in recent years.While the five largest and most well-known policy institutions (the Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies, American Enterprise Institute and Free Congress Research and Education Foundation) expended half of the $158 million total, the remaining $80 million was spent by 15 smaller policy organizations working to advance core elements of the conservative agenda.

5. Conservative policy organizations continue to promote a highly ideological world view, working on multiple policy fronts to privatize the public sphere and elevate the market as the prime mechanism for social arbitration and resource allocation. These policy groups have pushed aggressively to privatize Social Security and Medicare, loosen laws governing workplace safety and the rights of workers to organize, roll back environmental and consumer safety regulations, cripple the ability of nonprofit organizations to engage in public policy debate and advocacy, privatize systems of public education, and pare back the scope, size and cost of government in numerous other areas. They also saw their long-standing crusade to end the federal welfare entitlement come to fruition in 1996.

6. Conservative policy groups have shown increasing sophistication in waging high-intensity battles over extended periods of time, better coordinating their activities with lobbyists in the private sector, political operatives in Washington and the states, and activists at the grassroots. Major policy battles between 1993 and 1996 over telecommunications and health care have taught these institutions important lessons and helped them to refine their advocacy operations. Many operate like “extra-party” organizations, adopting the tactics of the permanent political campaign by incorporating a fund raising arm, a lobbying arm, a policy analysis and development arm, a public relations arm, and a grassroots mobilization or constituency development arm.

7. The structure of political opportunities continues to advantage conservative policy entrepreneurs. Contributing factors include the continued demobilization of large swaths of the American electorate, the decisive role that special interest money plays in national politics, the media’s political importance, the transformation of political parties from citizen mobilization vehicles into top-down fund raising machines, organized labor’s declining ability to help set broad national budget and policy priorities, the single issue focus of many liberal and left institutions, and their failure to develop and communicate to the American electorate an overarching public philosophy for the country.

8. There is no mainstream left-of-center parallel to the critical mass of conservative policy institutions currently operating in the United States today. Conservative policy institutions tend to be multi-issue organizations with multi-million dollar budgets, powerful corporate boards, and significant media access. They work along dual tracks, promoting a broad public philosophy while tying specific policy initiatives to it. They also tend to pursue bold structural reforms with the potential to change both the substance of police and the rules of the political game for decades to come.

Conclusions

For policy entrepreneurs on the right, the conservative takeover of Congress in 1994 provided major opportunity to implement a political vision and related policy agenda on which they had worked for some three decades. Battling the Clinton Administration during 1993 and 1994 had energized their ranks and swelled their budgets, but working with the new Congress presented them with a chance systematically to transform America’s public policy agenda. As this report shows, that opportunity was not squandered. Since 1995, the national policy discussion in numerous areas has moved noticeably to the right. The federal welfare guarantee has been eliminated. Partial Social Security Privatization, unthinkable a decade ago, is supported by numerous members of Congress, including some moderate Democrats. Sweeping telecommunications deregulation has been enacted. New tax breaks for the rich have been passed by Congress, with more proposed. Legislation authorizing school vouchers has been endorsed by the House of Representatives. Efforts to stem global warming have been slowed. The flat tax is now a proposal being seriously discussed by many in Washington.

It is impossible reliably to gauge the exact role of conservative think tanks in bringing about this rightward shift in American politics. Clearly, many other factors have been at work, including the changing political attitudes of the American public, the skill of conservative political leaders, and the well-funded lobbying efforts of a multitude of private sector interests. But to those who play or observe the Washington game, on both left and right, the influence of conservative think tanks is inescapable. Most impressive is the way in which conservative policy entrepreneurs have successfully won support for their grand story of American politics. If national politics can be seen largely as a contest of broad frameworks, there is little question that conservatives have won this game in recent years.

In 1993 and 1994, the ideological framework underpinning American public policy was in major flux. The Clinton Administration was vigorously putting forth a new story of public policy that combined elements of the traditional liberal agenda with centrist thinking. That story stressed the critical importance of fresh government initiatives to correct for market failures, as in the area of health care, and also to equip American workers to compete in the global economy through education and job training. While highlighting new arguments about personal responsibility and values, especially on the issue of welfare, the Clinton Administration’s story also reaffirmed the enduring value of long-standing government programs for assisting elderly Americans and protecting the environment. During 1993 and 1994, conservative leaders likeNewt Gingrich were deeply concerned that the success of this story– and particularly the passage of a national health insurance program – would inaugurate a new era of middle class support for activist government.

But between 1994 and 1997, the Clinton Administration’s fledgling grand story was effectively demolished as a basis for a public policy agenda. While the current political climate is often characterized as “centrist” in nature, such an assessment is deceiving since the entire gravity of American politics has shifted radically to the right in recent years, delimiting a range of policy options that once occupied a central place in the political mainstream. Major new efforts to expand the role of government in order to solve social or economic problems appear to be virtually unthinkable, despite the strong economy and a budget surplus. At the same time, many government programs which were previously protected from political attack – most notably entitlements for the elderly and environmental protections – are now under legislative assault.  Even as public trust for government has edged up slightly in recent years, the long-standing conservative crusade to discredit government as a vehicle for societal progress has come to fruition as never before. And even as market failures have become more evident in areas such as managed health care, housing, and in the growing ranks of the working poor, conservative arguments extolling the virtue of an unfettered free market have gained ever wider currency in national policy discussions.

Today, conservative think tanks are well positioned to help consolidate and extend the major conservative policy gains of recent years. In terms of research and advocacy, these think tanks have learned important lessons during the Clinton era about how successfully to move policy debates in a climate characterized by public disengagement from politics and the growing influence of special interest groups. In particular, they have perfected their strategies for building elite and public support for policy ideas through extended campaigns that reframe broad arguments, popularize specific blueprints for action, and mobilize grassroots support.

The infrastructure now in place to support these efforts is extensive. If current trends hold, it is likely that some of the smaller conservative think tanks like NCPA, Reason, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute will expand in significantly larger institutions. Of special importance is the human capital that conservative think tanks have at their disposal. Over the past two decades, these institutions have nurtured a large class of professional conservative policy intellectuals and marketers that is not found elsewhere on the political spectrum. By giving particular attention to developing the careers of younger policy specialists, conservative think tanks have assured a large reservoir of new leadership that can guide these institutions into the 21st century. Currently, many of the top leadership positions in conservative think tanks are filled by individuals who played founding roles in these organizations during the 1970s and 1980s. As these leaders retire, they will likely be replaced by policy entrepreneurs who, if anything, are more ideologically aggressive and more sophisticated in the area of media technology.

Beyond its reservoir of human capital, the national conservative policy institutions are well endowed with allies in the state and local arenas, along with strong networks to manage these alliances. If conservatives can sustain the recent trend toward devolving federal responsibilities to the state level, these relationships will become ever more important for implementing long-term strategic efforts to reduce the size and scope of government. But even in the absence of further devolution, the growing sophistication with which national and local conservative policy activists coordinate their efforts is likely to yield rising dividends. Likewise, conservative think tanks can be expected to leverage the strengthened links that they have forged with the private sector during the 1990s, closely coordinating future policy campaigns.  

In terms of resources, there is every indication that the funding stream that currently supports the conservative policy infrastructure will continue to grow. For the core group of foundations that have been heavily funding conservative think tanks in the past two decades, recent political developments have represented a major payoff of their long-term strategic investments. These funders can be expected to move with as much vigor in the future as they have in the past to assure the continuing transformation of America’s public policy agenda. Clearly, as well, corporations have developed a new appreciation for the importance of underwriting policy work and their giving to conservative think tanks can be expected to continue. The passage of major campaign finance reform legislation would be sure to increase corporate funding of the conservative policy infrastructure as private sector actors redirect resources into other channels for influencing political developments.

Overall, the rising strength of conservative policy institutions is likely to reinforce trends toward a greatly narrowed public policy debate in the United States. At a time when national wealth and economic inequality are rising hand in hand, no real discussion is on the horizon for reviving the American ideal of shared prosperity. At a time of growing public disengagement from politics, there are few serious proposals under debate for strengthening America’s impoverished democracy. And at a time of enduring racial problems in the United States, no major new initiative to alleviate this blight on our society are under consideration. In all of these areas, finding solutions that would improve American life will not be easy. Unfortunately, as the conservative story becomes ever more influential, the search for such substantive solutions become an ever lower priority on the national agenda.

Link to purchase a copy of the full report,$1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s, or contact:

National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy

2001 S Street NW #620

Washington, DC 20009

Telephone: 202-387-9177

Fax: 202-332-5084

e-mail: info@ncrp.org

website: www.ncrp.org

Lakoff: The conservatives have a superior message machine: Dozens of think tanks with communications facilities, framing experts, training institutes, a national roster of speakers, booking agents to books their speakers in the media and civic groups...

think tanks orig indep pol shops, but 70's on rt wing used to ctr

creeping socialism 81 hoggan

Curtis Moore, "Rethinking the Think Tanks," Sierra Magazine, July/August 2002. kochs!

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200207/thinktank_printable.asp

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A46598-2000Jan28

How industry-funded "experts" twist the environmental debate.

By Curtis Moore

"You know us better than you think," boast the ads of Koch Industries, a conglomerate owned by reclusive billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. And it’s true: Most of us have unknowingly wolfed a burger ground from Koch beef, ridden on tires made from Koch’s Trevira polyester, or escaped the rain beneath a roof covered with Koch asphalt.

But there’s a darker side to the boast. Turn on National Public Radio most any afternoon, leaf through a newspaper or news magazine, watch a congressional hearing, or surf the Internet, and you will likely encounter the thoughts of Charles and David Koch (pronounced "coke"). The views will seem to be coming from an independent think tank–the Cato Institute or Citizens for a Sound Economy, for example. Yet behind these groups stands the brothers’ vast fortune: Koch Industries is the nation’s second-largest privately owned company and the largest privately owned oil company, with annual revenues of more than $30 billion. Charles cofounded Cato in 1977; in 1986 David helped launch CSE. The brothers are following in dad’s footsteps: Fred Koch was a charter member of the ultraconservative John Birch Society in 1958.

Today, Koch money–and cash infusions from corporate allies such as Exxon, Philip Morris, General Motors, and General Electric–funds industry-friendly messages that fill our airwaves and editorial pages, and influence outcomes in the halls of Congress and courtrooms across the country.

Consider, for example,Citizens for a Sound Economy,the Washington, D.C.—based organization bolstered by periodic bursts of funding from both cofounder David Koch and brother Charles. CSE is often described as a "consumer group," but according to internal documents leaked to the Washington Post, 85 percent of CSE’s 1998 revenues of $16.2 million came not from its 250,000 members, but from contributions of $250,000 and up from Koch Industries as well as other corporations, including U.S. West and Philip Morris.

What kind of exposure can such money buy? In 1995, for instance, CSE’s $17 million budget (made possible that year with grants from the Kochs, Archer Daniels Midland, DaimlerChrysler, and General Electric, among others) was spent producing more than130 policy papers, delivering them to every single congressional office, sending out thousands of pieces of mail, and getting coverage of its viewpoints in more than 4,000 news articles around the nation. CSE’s representatives have appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows and published 235 op-ed articles. What do they tell us? Among other things, that "environmental conservation requires a commonsense approach that limits the scope of government,"acid rain is a "so-called threat [that] is largely nonexistent," and global warming is "a verdict in search of evidence."

These opinions were echoed on MSNBC, C-SPAN, PBS’s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, and elsewhere by representatives from the libertarian Cato Institute. Cato "experts" are working hard to pound home a variety of anti-environmental points. They have argued that the global ban on chlorofluoro-carbons–the chemicals that destroy stratospheric ozone–is a case of science being "distorted, even subverted." They’ve suggested that concerns over lead paint, asbestos, radon, and similar in-home poisons amount to "hysteria." And they’ve maintained that federally funded research at Harvard and other universities–used, for example, in the regulation of air pollution–"has frequently been tainted by poor methodology . . . and even borderline cases of fraud."

Fashioning themselves after the very university research centers they deplore (or old-style "think tanks" that are only a step removed from universities), these groups have neither the neutrality nor the expertise of their academic counterparts. They are simply self-described as "libertarian" or "market liberals," as if this explains why their conclusions differ so sharply from those of academic or government researchers. No mention is made of the corporate money that is lavished on them–or the corporate agenda, which is, at heart, their raison d’être.

Indeed, if the voices denying the existence of global warming or decrying tighter fuel-economy standards were obviously those of the oil, coal, auto, and similar industries, the messages would be seen for what they are–half-truths at best, and outright lies at worst–and ignored. But when the voices appear to be those of disinterested, public-spirited organizations advocating "economic freedom" or "sound science," the messages are often accepted uncritically by journalists–and then by the public at large.

John Stossel, an ABC correspondent, has become notorious for blurring the line between industry spin and science. On June 29, 2001, in a one-hour special called "Tampering With Nature," Stossel interviewed a scientist identified as "Pat Michaels of the University of Virginia" who not only discounted the dangers of global warming, but said, "Maybe a little warming is better." It is true that Michaels is a professor at the University of Virginia–but he is also a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and has been on a personal retainer from the Western Fuels Association, a group of coal-owning, coal-burning electricity generators located in the West and upper Midwest.

Doubtless at least a few of ABC’s 9 million viewers that evening believed Michaels’s assertion that "maybe a little warming is better"–but would they have believed it had they known that they were hearing the voice of the coal industry, speaking through a scientist on its dole?

Stossel is by no means alone in failing to adequately identify his sources. Michael Dolny, a senior research associate at the Center for Criminal Justice Research at California State University, San Bernardino, has used the LexisNexis database to study article citations in major newspapers as well as transcripts from major radio and television outlets.Dolny found that none of the four most-cited think tanks–the Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, and Cato Institute–was described as "corporate-backed" or anything similar, even though big-business money supplied a third of their support. The business-backed centers not only outspent their "liberal" counterparts such as the Economic Policy Institute, the Urban Institute, and the Freedom Forum four to one, but were also quoted more often.

Cato and CSE are only 2 of roughly 300 industry-funded groups that are helping businesses and the wealthy convert their vast economic and market power into political might. Their messages are invariably the same: Government regulation–most especially environmental protection–is bad, and any science that justifies it is "junk." Usually these messages are reinforced by money deployed to campaign coffers.

Take the Clinton administration’s ill-fated 1993 proposal for an energy tax.Designed to curb the nation’s appetite for imported oil and gasoline, the legislation was defeated with the help of a massive press and public-relations campaign mounted by CSE. It targeted Senator David Boren (D-Okla.), the swing vote on two key committees. After being hammered on radio and television as well as in print, Boren, who now heads the University of Oklahoma, agreed to oppose the Clinton tax, thus effectively killing it.  BTU?

Within days of his decision, Boren was being supported by the same Koch interests that were funding CSE. In the three-month period from April 22 to July 8, 1993, in fact, Boren received at least $22,500 from the oil industry.

Corporate think-tank influence extends even into the branch of government designed to be immune to it: the judiciary. Some of that influence is exerted by intervention inlawsuits to make arguments that favor industry. In 1999, for example, the Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, the funding arm of CSE, paid for "friend of the court" briefs that sought to declare the Clean Air Act unconstitutional. Where might a nonprofit charity like CSEF come up on short notice with the money required to pay lawyers who can charge $5,000 an hour? Answer: the Claude Lambe Foundation, also controlled by the Kochs, which gave CSEF $600,000 for "general operating support"; the DaimlerChrysler Corporation Fund, which kicked in another $250,000; and General Electric, which matched the DaimlerChrysler Fund’s donation. There’s no way of knowing whether that $1.1 million paid for the legal briefs, but that amount buys a lot of lawyers, even at Washington prices.

Influence is also exercised less directly. For example, the same Lambe Foundation that gave to CSEF also donated $150,000 to the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), based in Bozeman, Montana. FREE conducts seminars for federal judges–including those at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where CSEF’s briefs were filed. FREE is in ideological lockstep with organizations like CSEF: While the foundation works the legal angle, FREE "educates" the judges who will hear the cases. Indeed, the two judges, Douglas Ginsburg and Stephen Williams, who held the Clean Air Act unconstitutional (a ruling that was later overturned by the Supreme Court), based their decision largely on the arguments advanced by CSEF. And both judges had enjoyed the all-expenses-paid FREE seminars. (Ginsburg attended them each year from 1993 to ’98; Williams went in 1993 and 1998.)

The Montana seminars feature horseback riding and hiking at FREE’s dude ranch near Big Sky. In each of two years, 1999 and 2000, 6 percent of the federal judiciary took in these junkets.A typical day includes morning presentations, free time in the afternoon, an evening cocktail hour, and then dinner with a speech by, say, Alfred DeCrane Jr., retired head of Texaco, called "The Environment–A CEO’s Perspective."

FREE says its seminars focus on "economic implications of science, risk, and environmental issues." Sounds innocent enough, until you peruse some of the reading material. One seminar handout discusses the "bureaucratic pathologies of . . . agencies like the EPA" and the "irresponsible efforts [of] . . . environmentalists hostile toward industrial civilization." FREE defends its seminars and its reliance on quasi-corporate funding on the grounds that "federal judges are smart, mature, sophisticated men and women . . . disposed by training to be discerning, critical, and alert to shoddy arguments."

It appears that FREE seminars have been successful at winning over these discerning judges. According to the Community Rights Counsel, a public-interest law firm based in Washington, D.C., that has gathered and analyzed an immense amount of data on FREE, in one case, "the judge ruled in favor of a litigant that [was] funded by the same special interests that helped fund his seminar." That judge, Stephen Williams (the same one who ruled the Clean Air Act unconstitutional), reversed himself in a highly publicized suit brought by the timber industry to gut the Endangered Species Act. At issue in Sweet Home v. Babbitt was the power of the government to protect endangered species by regulating habitat. In a two-to-one opinion issued on July 23, 1993, Williams and another judge upheld that power. Two weeks later, Williams attended his first FREE seminar. When he returned to Washington, he granted a rehearing to the timber industry, switched his vote, then wrote an opinion (later overturned by the Supreme Court) striking down the habitat regulations.

Central to the functioning of American democracy is a judicial system that dispenses justice with an even hand. Yet CSEF, FREE, and other like-minded groups seem intent on reshaping the judiciary in their own image. Chief among these groups is the shadowy but powerful Federalist Society. Another regular recipient of Koch largesse, the Federalist Society is described by the Washington Monthly as "the best-organized, best-funded, and most effective legal network operating in this country." (See "Lay of the Land," March/April 2002.) Lawyers who belong to or are active in the society include at least two Supreme Court justices–Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas–as well as dozens of other federal judges, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Solicitor General Ted Olson, and Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. The society boasts a total membership of "20,000 legal professionals [and] active chapters in 60 cities." Yet, according to its 1998 federal tax return (which was provided to me when researching this story and which mistakenly included its list of donors), theFederalist Society’s income that year included $4,934,325 in grants from the Kochs’ and other such foundations but zero–yes, zero–in membership dues.

The full extent of industry funding for these myriad front groups is impossible to determine with certainty. Although information on donors is provided to the Internal Revenue Service, this is not (for the most part) available to the public. However, bits and pieces gleaned from searching a variety of databases–the Foundation Directory Online, for example–can be stitched together to provide a rough idea of the scope of special-interest spending. According to one such tally, the Kochs gave more than $21 million to the Cato Institute alone between 1977 and 1994. And in 1999, at least $1.4 million came to CSEF from just two of the several foundations controlled by the Kochs.

For Koch Industries, the amounts of money it can save by sabotaging environmental rules make the sums diverted to the think tanks that do the dirty work pale in comparison. The year 2000 was particularly rough for the Kochs. In January, Koch Industries agreed to pay about $35 million for violations of the Clean Water Act related to 310 oil spills in six states. Two months later, Koch admitted to environmental violations at its oil refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, and was forced to cough up another $8 million in penalties. Then in July, it agreed not only to spend about $80 million to cut emissions from its Rosemount facility and from two other refineries in Texas, but also to pay a $1 million fine for air-pollution violations.

The Koch brothers’ fortune is generated a dollar at a time from its complex web of industries. Like drops of water falling from a swollen cloud, the profit stream forms trickles, rivulets, then rivers, finally flowing to industrial impoundments, where a small fraction is released in controlled, coordinated flows. Some of that money goes to pay fines and operate machinery. But a nice pool of it is directed toward Cato, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and CSEF and other foundations. All so you can know them better.

Curtis Moore is a lawyer, consultant, and investigative journalist based in Virginia. He was counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works from 1978 to 1989.

McCright and Dunlop:

Defeating Kyoto

http://ireswb.cc.ku.edu/~crgc/NSFWorkshop/Readings/Defeating%20Kyoto.pdf

earlier art'l

The Coherence of Public Support for Eight Progressive Social Movements* Aaron M. McCright Environmental Studies Program Department of Sociology The University of Chicago and Riley E. Dunlap Department of Social and Political Sciences Åbo Akademi University (Finland) *

http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/0/9/5/0/pages109502/p109502-3.php

Austin, Andrew. 2002. "Advancing Accumulation and Managing its Discontents: The U.S. Antienvironmental

Countermovement." Sociological Spectrum 2:71-105.

uppie:  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it ...

The Organization of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Scepticism

Co-authored with Riley E. Dunlap and Mark Freeman published in the journal Environmental Politics, June 2008

Abstract

Environmental scepticism denies the seriousness of environmental problems, and self-professed 'sceptics' claim to be unbiased analysts combating 'junk science'. This study quantitatively analyses 141 English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005. We find that over 92 per cent of these books, most published in the US since 1992, are linked to conservative think tanks (CTTs). Further, we analyse CTTs involved with environmental issues and find that 90 per cent of them espouse environmental scepticism. We conclude that scepticism is a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism, and that the successful use of this tactic has contributed to the weakening of US commitment to environmental protection....Summary

Our analyses of the sceptical literature and CTTs indicate an unambiguous linkage between the two. Over 92 per cent of environmentally sceptical books are linked to conservative think tanks, and 90 per cent of conservative think tanks interested in environmental issues espouse scepticism. Environmental scepticism began in the US, is strongest in the US, and exploded after the end of the Cold War and the emergence of global environmental concern stimulated by the 1992 Earth Summit.

Environmental scepticism is an elite-driven reaction to global environmentalism, organised by core actors within the conservative movement. Promoting scepticism is a key tactic of the anti-environmental counter-movement coordinated by CTTs, designed specifically to undermine the environmental movement's efforts to legitimise its claims via science. Thus, the notion that environmental sceptics are unbiased analysts exposing the myths and scare tactics employed by those they label as practitioners of 'junk science' lacks credibility. Similarly, the self-portrayal of sceptics as marginalised 'Davids' battling the powerful 'Goliath' of environmentalists and environmental scientists is a charade, as sceptics are supported by politically powerful CTTs funded by wealthy foundations and corporations.

Given the success of CTTs in promoting environmental scepticism, particularly obvious in the case of climate change (Antilla 2005; Boykoff and Boykoff 2004; McCright and Dunlap 2003; Mooney 2007), it seems reasonable to conclude that the CTT-based countermovement has contributed to the decline of US support for environmental protection in recent decades. The ability of CTTs to influence environmental policy replicates their accomplishments in other policy domains (Covington 1997; Callahan 1999; Krehely et al. 2004; Stefancic and Delgado 1996), and thus should come as no surprise.

Lakoff: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

Why do conservatives appear to be so much better at framing?

Because they've put billions of dollars into it. Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, [Supreme Court Justice] Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell's agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that. [There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from the 1940s.]

And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.

Why haven't progressives done the same thing?

There's a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, 'Here's several million dollars, do what you need to do.' And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I analyzed in "Moral Politics," has as its highest value preserving and defending the "strict father" system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.

Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the "nurturant parent" has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, 'We're giving you $25,000, but don't waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don't use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.' So there's actually a structural reason built into the worldviews that explains why conservatives have done better.

make your own: http://lts.spn.org/article/3/8/0/incorporating-your-think-tank-and-filing-for-tax-exempt-status

Atlas Economic Research Foundation

http://atlasnetwork.org/global-network-directory/

A think tank (also called a policy institute) is an organization, institute, corporation, or group that conducts research and engages in advocacy in public policy.^[1] Many think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax exempt status. While many think tanks are funded by governments, interest groups, or businesses, some think tanks also derive income from consulting or research work related to their mandate.^[2] In some cases, think tanks are little more than public relations fronts, usually headquartered in state or national seats of government and generating self-serving scholarship that serves the advocacy goals of their industry sponsors.

Of course, some think tanks are more legitimate than that. Private funding does not necessarily make a researcher a shill, and some think-tanks produce worthwhile public policy research. In general, however, research from think tanks is ideologically driven in accordance with the interests of its funders.

"We've got think tanks the way other towns have firehouses," Washington Post columnist Joel Achenbach says. "This is a thoughtful town. A friend of mine worked at a think tank temporarily and the director told him when he entered, 'We are white men between the ages of 50 and 55, and we have no place else to go.'"

"In 1970, Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell's agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that. There are many others, including the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute at Stanford, which date from the 1940s." --George Lakoff [1]

Think tanks are funded primarily by large businesses and major foundations. They devise and promote policies that shape the lives of everyday Americans: Social Security privatization, tax and investment laws, regulation of everything from oil to the Internet. They supply experts to testify on Capitol Hill, write articles for the op-ed pages of newspapers, and appear as TV commentators. They advise presidential aspirants and lead orientation seminars to train incoming members of Congress.

Think tanks may have a decided political leaning. There are twice as many conservative think tanks as liberal ones, and the conservative ones generally have more money. One of the important functions of think tanks is to provide a way for business interests to promote their ideas or to support economic and sociological research not taking place elsewhere that they feel may turn out in their favor. Conservative think tanks also offer donors an opportunity to support conservative policies outside academia, which during the 1960s and 1970s was accused of having a strong "collectivist" bias.

"Modern think tanks are nonprofit, tax-exempt, political idea factories where donations can be as big as the donor's checkbook and are seldom publicized," notes Tom Brazaitis, writing for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Technology companies give to think tanks that promote open access to the internet. Wall Street firms donate to think tanks that espouse private investment of retirement funds." So much money now flows in, that the top 20 conservative think tanks now spend more money than all of the "soft money" contributions to the Republican party.

In the wake of the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004 Democratic-inclined supporters sought to bolster funding for centre-left think tanks. "Scores of the US's richest people have pledged $1 million or more towards a new attempt to reinvigorate the American left and counter the powerful Republican political machine," writes David Teather inThe GUardian (UK). "The money will be funnelled through an organisation called the Democracy Alliance which, according to a report in the Washington Post, will help fund a network of thinktanks and advocacy groups seeking to halt the shift to the cultural and political right." Democratic strategist Rob Stein, who organized the effort, thinks "there is a big imbalance in the amount of cash that goes into left and rightwing thinktanks. Over the past two years, he said, think tanks pushing the conservative agenda had received $295 million, while leftwing institutions were given just $75 million." [2]

A think tank's resident experts carry titles such as "senior fellow" or "adjunct scholar," but this does not necessarily mean that they possess an academic degree in their area of claimed expertise. Outside funding can corrupt the integrity of academic institutions. The same corrupting influences affect think tanks, only more so.

Think tanks are like universities minus the students and minus the systems of peer review and other mechanisms that academia uses to promote diversity of thought. Real academics are expected to conduct their research first and draw their conclusions second, but this process is often reversed at most policy-driven think tanks. As writer Jonathan Rowe has observed, the term "think" tanks is a misnomer. His comment was directed at the conservative Heritage Foundation, but it applies equally well to many other think tanks, regardless of ideology: "They don't think; they justify."

US Government

Government think tanks are also important in the United States, particularly in the security and defense field. These include the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Institute for Homeland Security Studies, and the Center for Technology and National Security Policy, at the National Defense University; the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College and the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College.

A Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) is a special category of think tank. As described by the National Science Foundation [3], FFRDCs are "R&D-performing organizations that are exclusively or substantially financed by the Federal Government and are supported by the Federal Government either to meet a particular R&D objective or, in some instances, to provide major facilities at universities for research and associated training purposes. Each center is administered either by an industrial firm, a university, or another nonprofit institution." The government funds, wholly or in part, activities at approximately 30 Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs). FFRDCs typically assist government agencies with scientific research and analysis, systems development, and systems acquisition. They bring together the expertise and outlook of government, industry, and academia to solve complex technical problems. These FFRDCs include the RAND Corporation, the MITRE Corporation, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Aerospace Corporation, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and other organizations supporting various departments within the U.S. Government.

The Department of Defense (DOD) sponsors ten FFRDCs, which are listed below with other North American think tanks. Many of these DOD FFRDCs, and the institutions that operate them, have used their privileged status, and tax dollars, to venture beyond their charters. Such ventures have incurred the wrath of the Professional Services Council (PSC), an association of for-profit consulting firms, which has fought the aggrandizement of FFRDCs since the early 1970s. PSC's task force on FFRDCs "is charged with the challenging task of containing [FFRDCs] and similar quasi-governmental entities that benefit from sole-source contracting or otherwise are subsidized unfairly by the federal government..." [4]. The efforts have paid off, to some extent, in tighter controls on the funding of FFRDCs and the types of research they are allowed to undertake.

Similar to the above quasi-governmental organizations are Federal Advisory Committees. These groups, sometimes referred to as commissions, are a form of think tank dedicated to advising the US Presidents or the Executive branch of government. They typically focus on a specific issue and as such, might be considered similar to special interest groups. However, unlike special interest groups these committees have come under some oversight regulation and are required to make formal records available to the public. Approximately 1,000 these advisory committees are described in the FACA searchable database.

Global examples

• Club of Rome
• Global Business Dialogue on e-Commerce/GBDe
• International Crisis Group
• World Business Council on Sustainable Development/WBCSD

US Examples

• Accuracy in Media
• The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition
• Aerospace FFRDC at The Aerospace Corp.
• Air Hygiene Foundation
• Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
• American Academy in Berlin
• American Academy in Rome
• American Academy of Diplomacy, The
• American Beverage Institute
• American Council for Capital Formation
• American Council on Germany
• American Council on Science and Health
• The American Councils on Foreign Relations
• American Defense International
• American Ditchley Foundation
• American Enterprise Institute
• American Eugenics Society
• American Family Foundation
• American Foreign Policy Council
• American Industrial Health Council
• American Jewish Council
• American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
• American Life League
• American Majority Institute
• American Petroleum Institute
• American Policy Center
• American Security Council
• ANSER Institute for Homeland Security
• Ariel Center for Policy Research
• Arroyo Center (FFRDC) at RAND Corp.
• Atlantic Council of the United States
• Atlantic Institute / Atlantic Institute of International Affairs
• Aspen Institute / Aspen Strategy Group
• Baker Institute for Public Policy
• Bilderberg
• Morton Blackwell Leadership Institute
• Brookings Institution
• The Business Council
• Business Council for Sustainable Development
• C3I FFRDC at MITRE Corp.
• Campaign Finance Institute
• Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
• Capital Research Center
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Carter Center
• Catalyst Institute
• Cato Institute
• Center for American Progress
• Center for an Urban Future
• Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies
• Center for Consumer Freedom
• Center for Defense Information
• Center for Democracy
• Center for Digital Democracy
• Center for Environmental Education Research
• Center for Global Development
• Center for Governmental Studies
• Center for International Policy
• Center for Jewish and Christian Values
• Center for Middle East Policy at Hudson Institute
• Center for Middle East Public Policy (CMEPP); RAND Corporation
• Center for National Policy
• Center for Naval Analyses (FFRDC) at The CNA Corp.
• Center for New American Century
• Center for Peace and Security Studies
• Center for Regulatory Effectiveness
• Center for Research on Population and Security
• Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
• Center for Responsive Politics
• Center for Security Policy
• Center for State Homeland Security
• Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments[www.csbaonline.org]
• Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Center for the American Founding
• Center for the New West
• Center for the Study of Terrorism
• Center for the Study of the Presidency
• Center for The 21st Century
• Center of International Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
• Century Foundation (The); formerly The Twentieth Century Fund
• Chicago Council on Foreign Relations
• Christian Coalition of America
• Citizens for a Sound Economy
• Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy
• Climate Council
• Commonwealth Institute
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Concord Coalition
• Conference Board
• Congressional Institute
• Consumer Alert
• Consumers' Research
• Contributions Watch
• Core Knowledge Foundation
• Corporate Europe Observatory
• Council for Government Reform
• Council for National Policy
• Council for Responsible Nutrition
• Council for Solid Waste Solutions
• Council for Tobacco Research
• Council of American Muslims for Understanding
• The Council on American-Islamic Relations
• Council on Foreign Relations
• Council on Middle Eastern Affairs
• Council on the Americas
• East-West Center
• Economic Club of New York
• Economic Strategy Institute
• Employment Policy Foundation
• Employment Policies Institute
• Empower America
• Environmental Issues Council
• Ethics and Public Policy Center
• Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
• Federation of American Scientists
• Feminist Majority Foundation
• Foreign Policy Association
• Foundation for Clean Air Progress
• The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
• Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment
• Free Congress Education and Research Foundation
• Free Congress Foundation
• Freedom Forum
• Freedom House, Inc.
• Frontiers of Freedom
• George C. Marshall Institute
• Global Action Plan
• Global Climate Coalition
• Global Climate Information Project
• Global Compact Partners
• Goldwater Institute
• Gorbachev Foundation of North America
• Greening Earth Society
• Healthcare Leadership Council
• Heartland Institute
• Heritage Foundation
• Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
• Hudson Institute
• Independent Institute
• Independent Women's Forum
• Information Council for the Environment
• Institue Économique de Montéal
• Institute for Advanced Studies / Princeton
• Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies
• Institute for American Strategy
• Institute for Contemporary Studies
• Institute for Defense Analyses - Communications and Computing FFRDC
• Institute for Defense Analyses - Studies and Analysis FFRDC
• Institute for International Economics
• Institute for Middle East Peace and Development
• Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy
• Institute for Regulatory Policy
• Institute of Economic Affairs
• Institute of World Politics
• Inter-American Dialogue
• International Fellowship of Christians and Jews
• International Food Information Council
• International Institute for Strategic Studies
• International Intellectual Property Institute
• Iran Policy Committee
• Israel Policy Forum
• Japan Policy Research Institute
• The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development
• Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
• John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies
• Joint Center
• Lexington Institute
• Lincoln Laboratory (FFRDC) at M.I.T.
• Logistics Management Institute
• Ludwig von Mises Institute
• Manhattan Committee on Foreign Relations [5]
• Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
• George C. Marshall Institute
• McKinsey Global Institute
• MEMRI: Middle East Media Research Institute
• Middle East Forum
• The Middle East Institute, School of International and Public Affairs/Columbia University
• Middle East Policy Council
• Mountain States Legal Foundation
• National Anxiety Center
• National Bureau of Economic Research
• National Center for Policy Analysis
• National Center for Privatization
• National Center for Public Policy Research
• National Council Against Health Fraud
• National Council on Sustainable Development
• National Defense Research Institute (FFRDC) at RAND Corp.
• National Democratic Institute
• National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
• National Environmental Policy Institute
• National Institute for Public Policy
• National Journalism Center
• National Resources Defense Council
• National Strategy Information Center
• National Urban League
• National Wilderness Institute
• New America Foundation
• New Atlantic Initiative
• New Citizenship Project
• New World Foundation
• Nixon Center
• North Florida Committee on Foreign Relations [6]
• Nuclear Threat Initiative
• Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine
• Pacific Institute
• Pacific Research Institute
• Panetta Institute for Public Policy
• Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University
• Peacekeeping Institute
• PeaceNow.org
• People for the American Way
• Pew Global Attitudes Project
• Philanthropy Roundtable
• Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research
• Political Economy Research Center
• Potomac Institute on Public Policy
• Power and Interest News Report
• Private Sector Council
• Progress & Freedom Foundation
• Progressive Government Institute
• Progressive Policy Institute
• Project Air Force (FFRDC) at RAND Corp.
• Project on Defense Alternatives
• Project for the New American Century
• Property and Environment Research Center (formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center)
• Pulse of Europe
• RAND Corporation
• Reason, Inc.
• The Reason Foundation
• Regulatory Impact Analysis Project, Inc.
• Rockridge Institute
• Rocky Mountain Institute
• Ronald Reagan Legacy Project
• The Roosevelt Institution
• Saudi Institute/Saudi Information Agency
• Science and Environmental Policy Institute
• Small Business Survival Committee
• Software Engineering Institute (FFRDC) at Carnegie Mellon University
• Southern Poverty Law Center
• Southern Research Institute
• Stanley Foundation
• StateofHumanity.org- [7]
• Statistical Assessment Service
• Synergos Institute
• United States Institute of Peace/U.S. Institute of Peace
• Urban Institute
• US-India Institute for Strategic Policy
• The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
• The Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy
• Washington Legal Foundation
• Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), Harvard University
• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• World Affairs Council, Washington, DC
• World Economic Forum
• World Water Council
• Workplace Health & Safety Council
• Yankee Institute for Public Policy
• Zionist Organization of America

Canadian Examples

• Atlantic Institute for Market Studies
• Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies
• The Centre for International Governance Innovation [8]
• The Fraser Institute
• Frontier Centre for Public Policy

...

Books

• Think Tank Directory: A Guide to Independent Nonprofit Public Policy Research Organizations, Government Research Service, 2nd Edition, 2006. Profiles of over 1,100 think tanks in Washington, D.C. and the 50 states.
• Alex Carey, "Taking the risk out of democracy: Propaganda in the US and Australia", NSW Press/ Illinois Press, 1995.
• Jacques Kinau, Start Your Own Tax-Exempt Think Tank : Effective Self-Defense Against Corporate and Political Donor Class Tax Predation, Institute for Research, May 2005. ISBN 0976443708
• James A. Smith, Idea Brokers : Think Tanks And The Rise Of The New Policy Elite, Free Press, Reprint November 1993. ISBN 0029295556
• Richard Cockett, Thinking the unthinkable: think-tanks and the economic counter-revolution, 1931-1983, Fontana Press, London, 1994. ISBN: 0006375863
• David M. Ricci, The Transformation of American Politics: The New Washington and the Rise of Think Tanks, Yale University Press, August 1994. ISBN 0300061234
• Jean Stefaniac and Richard Delgado, No mercy: how conservative think tanks and foundations changed America's social agenda, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1996. ISBN 1566394694
• James G. McGann and R. Kent Weaver, Think Tanks & Civil Societies: Catalysts for Ideas and Action, Transaction Publishers, November 2002. ISBN 0765809524
• Donald E. Abelson, Do think tanks matter?: assessing the impact of public policy pnstitutes, McGill-Queens University Press, Montreal & Kingston, 2002. ISBN 0773523170
• Andrew Rich, Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise, Cambridge University Press, April 2004. ISBN 052183029X

External links

• Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, "The Ideas Industry", Washington Post. (The Ideas Industry column ran between July 2002 and April 2003 and has been discontinued but an archives of the columns is still accessible).
• News from Reality: "The People We Pay to Think - a brief profile on the Rand Corporation and its links to the Carlyle Group.
• National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, Moving a Public Policy Agenda: the Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations, a research report from the (NCRP)[47], July 1997. A hard copy of the report can be obtained for $US25 from here
• National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy,$1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s, March 1999. A hard copy of the report can be purchased for $US25 from here
• Dan Morgan, "Think Tanks: Corporations' Quiet Weapon", Washington Post, January 29, 2000; Page A1.
• Robert Kuttner,"Comment: Philanthropy and Movements", The American Prospect, July 15, 2002. Excellent article relating "think tank" summit meeting between funders and four major conservative "philanthropies" -- American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Manhattan Institute -- observed by an invited guest "liberal". This is a virtual "how to" to build a movement.
• Jill Junnola, "Perspective: Who funds whom?", CampusWatch.org from Energy Compass, October 4, 2002. Re neo-conservative think tank funding/funders.
• Steven C. Clemons, "Thought Control", Tom Paine, November 19, 2003. "Money will always be part of the think-tank business. But when that money and the interests behind it lurk in the shadows of the policy debate, the nation's interests are put at risk."
• Lawrence Soley, "Heritage Clones in the Heartland: Local think tanks' "research" comes pre-digested", EXTRA!, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, September/October 1998.
• Sharon Beder, "The Role of ‘Economic Education’ in Achieving Capitalist Hegemony", University of Wollongong, 2005.
• Jacques Kinau, "Start Your Own Tax-Exempt Think Tank", Institute for Research, 2005.
• Allen S. Hepner, "Next-Generation’ think-tank techniques can bolster issues management results", Impact, Public Affairs Council, October 2004.
• Diane Stone, "Think Tanks and the Privatisation Band-Wagon", Manchester Metropolitan University, 1995.
• Allen S. Hepner, "Next-Generation’ think-tank techniques can bolster issues management results", Impact, Public Affairs Council, October 2004.
• Stephen Boucher, "Europe and its think tanks : a promise to be fulfilled", Notre-Europe, October 2004.
• Andrew Rich, "War of Ideas: Why mainstream and liberal foundations and the think tanks they support are losing in the war of ideas in American politics", Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2005.
• Amy Scott and Scott Tong, "Under the Influence: Think Tanks and the Money that Fuels Them", Marketplace, June 2-3, 2005. (Specific segments aired as part of this project are listed below).
• Scott Tong, "Under the Influence: what you pay for", Morning Report, June 2, 2005. (This story, which runs for just over 3 minutes, is a brief review of the Olin Foundation and its influence).
• Amy Scott, "Under the Influence: an idea takes hold", Marketplace, June 2, 2005. (This story, which runs for just under 8 minutes, is a review of the campaign to repeal the estate tax).
• Amy Scott, "Under the Influence: exercising power", Morning Report, June 3, 2005. (This story, which runs for just over 3 minutes, is looks at the blurred role between lobbyists and think tanks).
• Scott Tong, "Under the influence: left vs. right", Marketplace, June 3, 2005. (This story, which runs for just over 7 minutes, reviews the role of left and right wing think tanks).
• David Teather, "Liberals pledge millions to revive US left", The Guardian (UK), August 8, 2005.
• Chris Mooney , "Trust Us, We're Experts", TomPaine.com, September 28, 2005.
• Jim Boyd, "Editorial Pages: Why Courage is Hard to Find," Nieman Reports, Spring 2006.
• J.H. Snider, "Mixing Advocacy, Scholarly Research and Journalism: Can the New America Foundation Square the Circle?", PR Watch, February 26, 2009.
• Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory, "Think Again, Blogosphere to Mainstream Media: Get Off the Bus," Center for American Progress, May 21, 2009.

Other Related SourceWatch Resources

• academics, scholarly authors
• Funders
• Tax-exempt foundations
• talk radio
• Think Tanks:Quick Reference A-C
• Think Tanks:Quick Reference D-M
• Think Tanks:Quick Reference N-Z
• Think Tanks/Australia
• Think Tanks/Researching think tanks

Think Tank research links

• *Think Tank Explosion: Growth of the Independent Think Tank Industry in the United States* - Short white paper charting the dramatic increase in the number of independent U.S. think tanks since the end of World War II.
• Think Tanks and Policy Centers at Lehman Social Sciences Library, Columbia University.
• National Institute for Research Advancement internet search.
• Heritage Foundation Database for Public Policy Experts and Public Policy Organizations.
• International List of Think Tank links, National Institute for Research Advancement
• Statistics of Think Tank Citations
• Schema-Root.org: Think Tanks 140+ cross-referenced newsfeeds related to Think Tanks

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Think_tanks"

Categories: Tobaccowiki | Think tanks | Lists

This article is work in progress.

Koch Industries is the second largest privately-held company in the United States. Its owners, brothers Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, have set up, developed and supported a number of influential right-wing think tanks since 1977.

Koch timeline

• 1970s - Center for Market Processes (predecessor to the Mercatus Center) founded by Rich Fink
• 1977 - Cato Institute founded
• 1978 - Reason Foundation founded
• 1984 - Citizens for a Sound Economy (now FreedomWorks) and Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation (now Americans For Prosperity) founded by Rich Fink
• 1989 - CSEF rescues and restructures Tax Foundation
• 1991 - Institute for Justice founded with seed money from Charles G. Koch
• 1999 - Mercatus Center first emerges as a brand from what was Center for Market Processes
• 2003 - Independent Women's Forum affiliates with Citizens for a Sound Economy
• 2003 - CSE and CSEF split; CSEF becomes Americans For Prosperity
• 2004 - CSE and Empower America merge to become FreedomWorks

Koch links to expand on

• Reason Foundation (co-founder?)
• George Mason University ? - hosts lots of Koch things, and heavily funded by Koch
• Earthwatch Institute ?
• Instutite for Humane Studies (? - Koch board member; Mercatus is "sister institute; affiliated with George Mason)
• Aspen Institute ? - Koch board member
• Progress and Freedom Foundation ?
• Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment and the Federalist Society are both said to be substantially Koch-funded

Koch Industries and Think Thank crossovers

A number of individuals work or have worked for both Koch Industries and associated think tanks. These include:

• Rich Fink
• Wayne Gable
• Nancy Pfotenhauer

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_think_tanks"

Categories: Think tanks | United States

Think Tanks: Corporations' Quiet Weapon

By Dan Morgan

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, January 29, 2000; Page A1

Derailing a multibillion-dollar federal plan to restore the Florida Everglades is just the kind of cause that suits Citizens for a Sound Economy, a conservative think tank that fights for smaller government.

But soon after the group took on the Everglades project in 1998, the Washington-based nonprofit got an incentive that went beyond the purely philosophical. It received $700,000 in contributions from Florida's three biggest sugar enterprises, which stand to lose thousands of acres of cane-growing land to reclamation if the Army Corps of Engineers plan goes into effect.

The sugar contributions were never disclosed publicly but were outlined in internal CSE documents that detail how various corporate interests donated millions to the group to bankroll its efforts on issues of direct interest to them, from global warming to Florida tort reform.

Along with those earmarked contributions, from companies such as Exxon Corp. and Hertz Corp., the organization received more than $1 million from Philip Morris Cos. at a time when CSE was opposing cigarette taxes. Phone company US West Inc. gave $1 million as CSE pushed deregulation that would let US West offer long-distance service.

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post, provide a rare look at think tanks' often hidden role as a weapon in the modern corporate political arsenal. The groups provide analyses, TV advertising, polling and academic studies that add an air of authority to corporate arguments--in many cases while maintaining the corporate donors' anonymity.

"Corporations have discovered that funding of research, publications, media campaigns and other forms of advocacy on policy issues can serve as an adjunct to traditional corporate lobbying and political contributions," said James Allen Smith, author of a book about think tanks.

Others use harsher terms. "It's part of a rent-a-mouthpiece phenomenon," said Gary Ruskin of the Congressional Accountability Project. "There are mercenary groups that function as surrogates when industry feels it's not advantageous for it to speak directly."

CSE officials will not discuss specific donations, saying that disclosure could expose contributors to harassment by labor unions or other groups. CSE President Paul N. Beckner strongly denies picking issues with an eye to their potential for luring corporate funds--or tailoring the groups' views to mesh with those of contributors.

"We aren't a group for hire," he said. "There's a bright line that defines our independence. There is only one position we can take on most issues: the one that means less government and lower taxes. We choose the issues we work on, and we decide how that money is expended."

While corporations are prohibited from contributing directly to political candidates, there are no restrictions on their giving to nonprofit organizations such as CSE whose advocacy may help their interests. And though lobbyists representing corporations must register publicly, nonprofit groups are not required to identify the corporations financing their lobbying work.

In recent weeks, CSE has thrown itself into the political campaigns in Iowa and New Hampshire, sending out grass-roots activists--clad in signature red jackets emblazoned with the organization's Web address on the back--to obtain candidate endorsements of its position against Internet taxation.

Such outright activism is not for every think tank. Some, such as the Heritage Foundation, will not accept money for specific projects for fear of appearing beholden to the interest that funded it. Others, such as the Cato Institute, take earmarked money but go beyond the legal requirements and identify major donors.

For example, the largest supporter of Cato's study of Social Security privatization is the U.S. insurance company AIG, which manages privatized retirement systems abroad and stands to benefit if--as Cato is recommending--such an option is put in place here.

But other groups, including CSE, use donations for specific projects without making public the names of their donors--raising questions even among some of their fellow think tanks. "A nonprofit which is doing work for a very clear interest ought to reveal that," said Urban Institute President William Gorham.

On the other end of the political spectrum, some left-leaning think tanks take money from similarly interested parties. For example, unions provided the seed money to start the Economic Policy Institute, which produces research on trade, wage and work-related issues.

CSE, founded in 1984, has become a particularly vocal and political group under the chairmanship of C. Boyden Gray, a Washington lawyer who served as President George Bush's White House counsel. Modeling itself on grass-roots groups such as the Christian Coalition and Ralph Nader's activist organizations, CSE has inserted itself into a number of fights with the Clinton administration and become an active force in state politics on issues from tort reform to labor.

The group has a foundation that can take tax-deductible contributions--used, for example, to finance its "education" effort in support of a California initiative requiring unions to get annual permission from members to use dues for political purposes. It has a nonprofit arm that can engage in even more extensive lobbying. This year, CSE is branching into explicitly electoral politics; its board recently voted to set up a political action committee with a goal of raising at least $1 million for favored candidates in 2000.

Critics--and even some business lobbyists--have previously said that CSE's "grass roots" activism has sometimes been, as National Journal wrote in 1996, "a fig leaf for corporate lobbying efforts." But the newly obtained internal CSE spreadsheet--whose information was verified independently with a number of corporations--offers the most precise illustration yet of the close fit between CSE funding and corporate interests.

It shows that Exxon Corp.'s $175,000 for "global climate" issues arrived after Beckner dismissed the notion of global warming as "junk science." Huizenga Holdings' gift of $75,000 went toward the battle for Florida tort reform legislation, which limited car rental companies' liability. The holding company manages the investments of Florida businessman Wayne Huizenga in, among other things, auto rental companies.

A CSE project on the New Jersey auto insurance market brought in funds from three insurance companies and two trade associations. The Association of American Railroads chipped in for a study of legislation that could force railroad companies to let other shippers use their tracks.

Several months after Microsoft Corp. committed $380,000 to CSE's tax-exempt foundation last May, CSE officials lobbied in Congress to limit the Justice Department's budget for antitrust enforcement. CSE officials say their opposition to Justice's antitrust suit against Microsoft long predated the company's contribution.

CSE was founded by two free-spirited midwestern oil and gas tycoons, the brothers David H. and Charles G. Koch, principal owners of Koch Industries of Wichita. Foundations they controlled helped found Cato, CSE and other less-known think tanks committed to the Kochs' libertarian beliefs.

But although the Kochs and a stable of wealthy individuals and foundations have continued to provide a base of support, corporate contributions now constitute the bulk of CSE's income, which has grown from $4 million in 1991 to $15.5 million in 1998. According to the documents, General Electric and Publix Super Markets Inc. gave $500,000 in 1998, and Emerson Electric Co., AlliedSignal Inc., and Johnson & Johnson provided $200,000 each.

"Our goal is to build an army of grass-roots activists who believe in limited government and lower taxes," Beckner said.

CSE's Florida operations exemplify its activism.

CSE took in the sugar industry contributions--$280,000 each from U.S. Sugar Corp. and Florida Crystals Corp., and $140,000 from the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida--from October to December 1998. That November, CSE Foundation issued a news release asserting that the Everglades project would cost $120 per household in Florida and could result in the loss of 2,879 jobs. The foundation also released a poll concluding that the vast majority of Floridians did not support tax hikes to finance the project.

Describing CSE as the "voice of consumers for free enterprise," CSE representatives in polo shirts with the CSE logo showed up at a series of local hearings on the plan. And in early 1999, CSE Foundation unveiled a study charging that a peer review panel appointed by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt lacked objectivity.

Meanwhile, sugar industry representatives kept a low profile, asserting publicly that, in principle, they supported the restoration plan. The Florida legislature approved a revised version of it last year, but hurdles remain, including congressional funding. The companies said they did not renew their contributions to CSE in 1999 because CSE's outspoken criticism no longer reflected their position.

CSE officials, emphasizing their group's independence, noted that, on a separate issue, CSE's opposition to sugar import quotas is sharply at odds with the domestic sugar industry. But U.S. Sugar Corp. spokesman Robert Buker noted that CSE "has not been in the front row of the debate" over import quotas since it received industry funding. "We had a good dialogue with them," he added.

The Everglades has been just one of CSE's Florida projects. Jon L. Shebel, president and chief executive of Associated Industries of Florida, representing 10,000 businesses, credits CSE with helping enact the broad tort reform last year that was business's top priority in the state.

"They've made a difference in Florida," said Shebel. "We had a major war going on with the trial lawyers. At times [CSE] would take the TV, and we would take the radio. They have access to big dollars that we don't have access to. . . . It's added a new dimension."

According to CSE documents, at least $460,000, mainly in corporate donations, was earmarked for the project in 1998. The funds included the Huizenga contributions, $25,000 each from Hertz Corp. and DaimlerChrysler AG, and $10,000 from Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group.

"It was a meeting of the minds," said Huizenga Holdings spokesman George Rizriet. "We trust that they're going to do what they agree to do, which is to support the issue."

When necessary, CSE displayed a willingness to use hardball tactics in pursuit of tort reform. Martin County, Fla., attorney Joseph Negron, a Republican, felt CSE's bite last fall when the group ran a stream of TV ads in favor of his GOP primary opponent in a special election for state assembly. The ads branded Negron a "trial attorney," and although they did not specifically urge a vote against him, the implication was clear that voters should back Negron's opponent, who had pledged to protect the recently passed tort reform.

"Our political department orchestrated the whole thing," said Associated Industries' Shebel. "We called CSE and said here's the plan, can you do something? They did TV. We did radio, direct mail and all the analytical work."

"It's a lethal way to go after somebody," said Negron. "They can fly under the radar screen because they don't have to give you notice. There are no limits, no restrictions and no disclosure. It's put the fear of God in a number of Republican candidates."

Defeating Kyoto: The Conservative Movement's Impact on U.S. Climate

Change Policy

Aaron M. McCright; Riley E. Dunlap

Social Problems, Vol. 50, No. 3. (Aug., 2003), pp. 348-373.

Stable URL:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-7791%28200308%2950%3A3<348%3ADKT

CMI>2.0.CO%3B2-T

Social Problems is currently published by University of California

Press.

In this article, we argue that a major reason the United States failed

to ratify the Kyoto Protocol to ameliorate

global warming is the opposition of the American conservative movement,

a key segment of the antienvironmental

countermovement. We examine how the conservative movement mobilized

between 1990 and

1997 to construct the "non-problematicity" of global warming. After we

describe how conservative think tanks

mobilized to challenge theglobal warming claims of mainstream climate

science, we examine how these countermovement

organizations aligned themselves with prominent American climate change

skeptics known for their

staunch criticism of mainstream climate research and their affiliations

with the fossil fuels industry. We then

examine how the efforts of these conservative think tanks were enhanced

by the shift in thepolitical opportunity

structure created by the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress. This

study demonstrates how a powerful countermovement

effectively challenged the environmental communityk definition of global

warming as a social problem

and blocked the passage of any significant climate change policy.  Some

commentators point to the growth of a diverse array of

anti-environmental forces

in general (e.g., Austin 2002; Helvarg 1994), while others specifically

identify the intense lobbying

by the American fossil fuels industry (e.g., Gelbspan 1997; Levy and

Egan 1998; Newell

2000) and the heightened mobilization of different segments of the

American conservative

movement (e.g., Luke 2000; McCright and Dunlap 2000).

...

However, on July 25, 1997, the United States Senate unanimously (95-0)

passed Senate

Resolution 98 (also referred to as the Hagel-Byrd Resolution) which

notified the Clinton

Administration that the Senate would not ratify any treaty that would:

(a) impose mandatory

greenhouse gas emissions reductions for the United States without also

imposing such reductions

for developing nations, or (b) result in serious harm to our economy.

Thus, at the end of

the Clinton Administration, the Kyoto Protocol lay dormant with little

likelihood of being ratified

by the Senate. Then, in March 2001, President George W. Bush renounced

any plans to

establish carbon dioxide emissions reductions for U.S. power plants and

subsequently announced

that the U.S. has no intention of abiding by the Kyoto Protocol-an act

which provoked international

dismay and hostility.

This is a significant puzzle. Despite the growing consensus within the

scientific communityregarding global warming, the success of the environmental community in

getting globalwarming on the national agenda, and the receptive nature of public

opinion, it neverthelessappears that claims about the existence of global warming became more

contested in the

United States policy arena in the late 1990s-with the result that

effective policy-making ground

to a halt.

...

Second, building upon our earlier work (McCright and Dunlap 2000), we

conceptualize

the public global warming debate as a social movement phenomenon in

order to provide theoretical

guidance for our case study. In the process, we employ three major

concepts from

social movement theorizing-framing, mobilizing structures, and political

opportunity structure(McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald 1996a; Tarrow 1998)-as

well as recent ideas on uldeologically

Structured Action" (e.g., Zald 2000a, 2000b) to solve the puzzle of the

delegitimation of global

warming as a major problem within the policy arena. Third, we extend the

arguments made

in our previous work in two crucial ways. In a previous article

(McCright and Dunlap 2000),

we describe the content of the specific global warming counter-claims

and the general antienvironmental

counter-frame promoted by leading conservative think tanks in the

American

conservative movement. In this article, we examine (1) how these

conservative think tanks

promoted these counter-claims, and (2) the extent of the impact that

these countermovement

organizations achieved in the global warming policy arena. That is, we

identify the strategic

activities performed by conservative think tanks as mobilizing

structures and demonstrate how

a shift in the political opportunity structure-the 1994 Republican

takeover of Congress enhanced

their impact in Congressional hearings and in the national print media.

...

The Social Construction of Non-Problematicity

In an industrial capitalist society where the political economy is

characterized by a "treadmill

of production," Allan Schnaiberg (1994) maintains that corporate actors

employ consciousnesslowering

activities that challenge environmentalists' claims that environmental

problems are

serious, are the result of the production system, and can be alleviated

without unreasonable

costs. In line with those theorists who study non-decision-making and

the creation of nonissues

associated with the second dimension of power (e.g., Bachrach and Baratz

1970),

Freudenburg (2000) argues that analyzing efforts to define ecological

degradation or technological

risks as non-problematic provides insight into the use of indirect forms

of power by

dominant interests. Indeed, Freudenburg (2000) and associates (e.g.,

Freudenburg and Gramling

1994; Freudenburg and Pastor 1992) lead the way in identifying and

analyzing how certain

environmental conditions become defined as non-problematic through

consciousness lowering activities5

The most robust finding gleaned from this burgeoning body of literature

is that powerful

interests engage in strategic tactics ranging from outright manipulation

of information (Crenson

1971; Molotch 1970) to more subtle "diversionary reframing" (Freudenburg

and Gramling

1994; Icrogman 1996) to define certain negative environmental conditions

as non-problematic.

Harvey Molotch (1 970) documents how oil companies and the Nixon

administration manipulated

information to diffuse local opposition to offshore drilling and

delegitimize protest groups

in 1969 Santa Barbara, California. Matthew Crenson (1971) reveals how

U.S. Steel in Gary,

Indiana, at first effectively prevented the issue of air pollution from

even being introduced into

the policy arena, later successfully impeded the public's attempts to

raise the issue, and ultimately

weakened the final draft of pollution control legislation that was

eventually enacted.

In their study of offshore oil drilling politics in California and

Louisiana, William Freudenburg

and Robert Gramling (1994) argue that representatives of the oil

industry and the U.S.

minerals Management Service, the primary federal agency for regulating

offshore oil activities,

employed diversionary reframing tactics to change the nature of the

public debate on offshore oil

drilling. By heavily promoting the benefits of drilling and diverting

attention away from the criticisms

mounted by challenging groups, these dominant interests were able to

question the legitimacy

of challengers and their claims. In her analysis of the framing dispute

over wetlands

regulation in Louisiana, Naomi Icrogman (1996:371) argues that the

regulated community had

"greater interpretive dominance" than regulatory and environmental

interests because it was

more skillful at diversionary reframing. Not only do scholars identify

how powerful groups utilize

diversionary reframing in inter-organizational conflicts, but they also

identify similar dynamics

in intra-organizational conflicts. For instance, in her examination of

genetic testing and workplace

safety, Elaine Draper (1991) argues that management's ability to control

genetic testing and

its accordant expectations explains the prevalence of genetic monitoring

in the workplace

and the fact that the burden of proof is regularly on workers to

identify attendant risks.

the fact that the burden of proof is regularly on workers to identify

attendant risks.

Some scholars examine the range of factors that facilitate the

construction of nonproblematicity

by corporate interests, including the rationalities inherent in a public

arena

(Wynne 1982) and the crescive nature of some environmental conditions

(Beamish 2002). In

his examination of the public debate regarding the proposal by British

Nuclear Fields, Ltd. to

construct a thermal oxide reprocessing plant in Windscale, Great

Britain, Brian Wynne (1982)

argues that the decision to support the building proposal was made

effectually before the

inquiry even commenced, since the rationalities and scientific meanings

in the inquiry process

highly favored the interests of nuclear industrialists. In his study of

the failure of Unocal to

recognize an oil spill in Central California for nearly forty years, not

only does Thomas

Beamish (2002) indict the hierarchical structure and organizational

culture of Unocal and the

self-monitoring and self-reporting mandates in environmental

legislation, but he also argues

that passivity and inaction further stemmed from the fact that this oil

spill was a crescive problem:

a creeping event that developed so slowly as to elude most people's

perceptions.

Most of these case studies document how powerful interests succeed not

only in keeping

environmental problems and technological risks off the political agenda,

but also in preventing

such conditions from becoming widely defined as problems in the first

place. The current study

differs from existing analyses of the use of the second dimension of

power in the social construction

of non-problematicity. By the early 1990s, the environmental community

established global

warming as a legitimate social problem on the national policy agenda (as

evidenced by public

opinion and the Clinton Administration's endorsement of the Kyoto

Protocol), and this would

not have occurred if anti-environmental forces effectively exercised the

second dimension of

power as traditionally conceived. The "anti-environmental

countermovement" (Austin 2002;

McCright and Dunlap 2000) subsequently mobilized to challenge the

legitimacy of global warming,

as detailed below. Thus, we examine a somewhat different aspect of

non-problematicity than

emphasized by Freudenburg and his colleagues-namely, how a

countermovement attempts to

delegitimate a putative problem once it has already gained a place on

the agenda.

...

In this context, it is not surprising that the conservative movement

turned its attention to

global warming. Despite assertions that environmentalism represents a

new ideology that is

orthogonal to traditional liberalism-conservatism (e.g., Paehlke 1989),

studies consistently

find conservatism to be negatively related to pro-environmental

attitudes and actions among

the general public and especially among political elites, such as

members of Congress (Dunlap,

Xiao, and McCright 2001). A key reason is that pursuit of environmental

protection often

involves government action that is seen as threatening economic

libertarianism, a core element

of conservatism. Yet, most environmental protection up to the

present--such as regulations

designed to control air or water pollution--was accomplished without

posing a major

threat to industrial capitalism, despite protests from the corporate

sector.

In contrast, the emergence of global warming and the possibility of

large-scale social

change resulting from efforts to ameliorate it are seen as far more

threatening to American

industry,prosperity, lifestyles, and the entire "American way of life"

than are traditional pollution

control measures (e.g., Bailey 1993). Growing concern over global

warming clearly

poses a threat to the conservative movement's ideology and material

interests. Specifically, the

characterization of global warming as a major problem and the consequent

possibility of an

internationally binding treaty to curb carbon dioxide emissions are seen

as direct threats to

sustained economic growth, the free market, national sovereignty, and

the continued abolition

of governmental regulations-key goals promoted by the conservative

movement. Given

the success of the conservative movement in other policy areas in recent

years (Blumenthal

1986; Diamond 1995; Stefancic and Delgado 1996), it seems reasonable to

assume that the

conservative movement would vigorously oppose internationally binding

climate policies by

challenging the environmental community's claims about the seriousness

of global warming

and consequent need for ameliorative action.

Indeed, we (McCright and Dunlap 2000) argue that conservatives often

strongly defend a

traditional frame about humans and nature that some call the Dominant

Social Paradigm, or

"DSP" (Dunlap and Van Liere 1984), and others call Manifest Destiny

(Brulle 2000). Both the

DSP and Manifest Destiny constitute a worldview in which modern

societies are seen as able

to control nature, making it difficult to accept that global warming

poses an unprecedented

danger to our nation. By systematically analyzing the thematic content

of 224 documents on

global warming produced and/or circulated by 14 influential conservative

think tanks between

1990 and 1997, we (2000) identify three major counter-claims through

which the conservative

movement challenged the framing of global warming by the environmental

community. First,

the conservative movement claimed that the evidentiary basis of global

warming is weak, if

not wrong. Second, conservatives argued that the net effect of global

warming would be beneficial

should it occur. Third, conservatives argued that the policies proposed

to ameliorate the

alleged problem of global warming would do more harm than good. These

three counterclaims

comprised the conservative movement's response to the environmental

community's

call for ameliorative action on global warming.

...

Mobilizing Activities of Conservative Think Tanks

Mobilizing structures are "those agreed upon ways of engaging in

collective action which

include particular 'tactical repertoires,' particular 'social movement

organizational' forms, and

'modular social movement repertoires'" (McCarthy 1996:141). Much of the

research in this

area centers on the crucial roles that social movement organizations

(SMOs) perform in social

movements. Mike Allen (1992) argues that conservative think tanks are

professional SMOs

that wield considerable influence within the conservative movement as a

result of the

increased flow of financial resources from private foundations typically

managed by corporate

families (see also Diamond 1995; Himmelstein 1990). Opponents of global

warming policies

within the conservative movement mobilized largely through existing

conservative think

tanks that maintain sizable staffs of fellows and experts to perform a

wide range of claimsmaking

activities (see Austin 2002; Luke 2000). We describe the diverse

activities that influential

conservative think tanks performed when mobilizing to challenge the

legitimacy of global

warming. Of particular interest is the extent to which these

conservative think tanks enlisted

the assistance of prominent American climate change skeptics as

credentialed experts or occupational

activists (Mazur 198 1).

....

The conservative movement's growing interest in scientific/technological

issues was facilitated

by the establishment of a "scientific-technological elite" within the

conservative policyplanning

network years earlier, when the movement was developing and lobbying for

the

"Star Wars" project (Blumenthal 1986:3 10). These scientific advocates

in the conservative

movement, such asFrederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow, and Bruce Ames at the

Marshall Institute,

played a visible role in the movement's opposition to the treatment of

ozone depletion as a

social problem. In the past decade, several conservative think tanks

enlisted the services of scientists

sympathetic to their interests on such issues as pesticide exposure and

environmental

carcinogens. Some of these more well-known scientists, who are often

critical of the "mainstream,"

peer-reviewed scientific community, include Michael Fumento, Steven

Milloy, and

Michael Sanera. It thus appears that the utilization of sympathetic

scientists is becoming a distinct

mobilization strategy for conservative think tanks, one that complements

the roles

played by occupational activists in defending industry positions-e.g.,

nuclear scientists who

promote nuclear power-in scientific controversies (Mazur 1981).

The conservative think tanks in this study enlisted the aid of the five

leading American

climate change skeptics identified earlier in several ways. Perhaps the

most telling evidence is

that, except for Robert Balling, each of the skeptics served as a fellow

for at least one conservative

think tank. Sallie Baliunas was a Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific

Philosophy and Public

Policy at the Hoover Institution and the Chair of the Science Advisory

Board at the Marshall

Institute.

Richard Lindzen served on the Science Advisory Board of the Marshall

Institute, and

Patrick Michaels was a Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies at the

Cato Institute. Along

with being an advisory editor for the Cato Institute's quarterly

magazine Regulation, Fred Singer

was also a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Distinguished

Visiting Fellow at the

Hoover Institution, and later a Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific

Philosophy and Public Policy

at the Hoover Institution.

In addition to serving formally as think tank fellows, these climate

change skeptics also

wrote 20 of the 224 documents discussed earlier: 17 works written

specifically for use by the

think tanks, and three works reprinted by the think tanks. Baliunas

authored seven original

works for three conservative think tanks: four policy studies and one

speech for the Marshall

Institute, a policy paper for the Heartland Institute, and a speech for

NCPA. Balling wrote five

original works for three think tanks: a book and a chapter in an edited

book for the Pacific

Research Institute (PRI), a policy study and a chapter in an edited book

for CEI, and a speech

for NCPA. Lindzen contributed both an original article in Cato's

Regulation and a revision of

that article in an edited book for PRI. Michaels wrote five documents

for two conservative

think tanks: a policy study for the Marshall Institute and a book, two

speeches, and a Washington

Post op-ed essay for the Cato Institute. Finally, Singer authored an

op-ed essay in the Wall

Street Journal that was reprinted by NCPA. Interestingly, none of the

think tanks circulated

reprints of the peer-reviewed climate science articles or even

unpublished research papers

authored by any of the skeptics. They relied instead on reprinting

contributions of these scientists

to popular media or to their in-house publications.

Another way that members of conservative think tanks aligned themselves

with the

skeptics was by citing these scientists as experts in other global

warming documents produced

by countermovement organizations. Apart from those 20 documents written

by climate

change skeptics, we find that 62 (30.4 percent) of the remaining 204

documents cited at least

one of the skeptics as an expert scientific source. Baliunas was the

least cited skeptic, with

only 17 citations in 13 documents. Although he was not a fellow at any

of the think tanks,

Balling was the most widely cited skeptic, with 92 citations in 21

documents. The fact that

nearly 70 percent of these documents do not utilize the scientific

authority of the skeptics is

not surprising, given the paucity of citations in most conservative

think tank documents.

Besides contributing, either as authors or sources of expertise, to the

body of written documents

debunking global warming, several skeptics also appeared at public

events sponsored by

conservative think tanks in 1997. For example, Balling spoke at the June

13th press conference

for members of the House of Representatives sponsored by NCPA.

~Michaels d irected a Cato Policy

Forum with William O'I

also appeared at

the July 15th CEI press conference at the National Press Club. Finally,

Baliunas spoke at the

September 29th press conference sponsored by NCPA for members of the

Senate. Thus, the conservative

think tanks relied not only upon the scientific opinion of these

skeptics, as evidenced

in the citation patterns, but also sought the direct personal

involvement of these scientists.

Groups involved in scientific controversies often employ sympathetic

professional scientists

to give their positions the scientific legitimacy only credentialed

experts can provide

(Mazur 1981). As Dorothy Nelkin (1984) argues, the end result is that

expertise itself becomes

a mere resource to be exploited for political and economic gain. These

conservative think

tanks gained apparent legitimacy by utilizing the services of

sympathetic scientists in promoting

their "scientifically based" counter-claims on global warming. Indeed,

we doubt whether

these conservative think tanks could have promoted counter-claims

cloaked in scientific literacy

without enlisting the expertise of trained scientists. By publicly

promoting the ideas of the

climate change skeptics outside of traditional scientific channels

(e.g., peer-reviewed conference

papers and journal articles), conservative think tanks engaged in what

Andrew Austin

(2002:83) describes as an "end-run around established scientific norms."

In view of this, and given the sizable change in the political

opportunity structure created by the 1994 Republican

takeover of Congress, it is important to examine whether the skeptics

have experienced an

increase in visibility in recent years.

Impact of Change in Political Opportunity Structure

...

Examining which scientists get cited as expert sources in these articles

between 1990 and

1997 reveals two interesting patterns. Figure 3 displays the general

patterns that emerge from

this analysis. First, the number of articles citing at least one of the

elite climate scientists

decreased sharply between 1990 and 1994. Elite climate scientists were

cited in 33 articles in

1990, but that number dropped to five in 1994. After 1994, the citation

of elite climate scientists

increased gradually to the point where they were cited as information

sources in 20 articles

in 1997. Second, the number of articles that cited at least one of the

climate change

skeptics also decreased between 1990 and 1994. Skeptics were cited in

ten articles in 1990 but

only one in 1994. After 1994, the citation of skeptics increased at a

slightly greater rate (5.7

additional articles a year) than that of the elite climate scientists (5

additional articles a year). In

fact, skeptics were actually cited as sources in more articles than the

elite climate scientists in

1995, and in 1996 and 1997 the number of citations for both groups was

approximately equal.

The results for the first few years of this study are consistent with

the findings of earlier

media analyses. These analyses document the initial appearance of

skeptics in news stories on

global warming in the early 1990s (McComas and Shanahan 1999) and the

overall decline in

the number of news stories on global warming after the 1992 Rio

Conference, when the issue

was no longer commanding significant attention (Williams and Frey 1997).

Unfortunately,

since these earlier studies fail to gather data past the early 1990s,

they are unable to detect the

full effects of the conservative movement and its sympathetic scientists

in the media. That is,

with the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress and the rightward shift in

the political culture

in general, the skeptics achieved approximate parity with some of the

most renowned experts

in the field. We doubt that scholars in the early 1990s would have

predicted this. As such, it is

a telling story of how powerful groups are able to take advantage of the

media's "balancing

norm"17-or the equation of "objectivity" with presenting "both sides of

the storyr'-to protect

their interests.

According to Todd Gitlin (1980), the media's balancing norm facilitates

the perpetuation

of dominant ideologies and the status quo. News stories on controversial

topics follow a "pro

and con" model where extreme views are contrasted and the reporter

concludes by claiming

the issue is unresolved-allowing the dramatic narrative to continue but

also instilling confusion

and passivity in the general public (Epstein 1973). Furthermore, Gitlin

(1980) argues that

powerful interests in technological controversies utilize the media's

balancing norm to gain

support for positions that would not otherwise gain credence in the

scientific communitywhere

empirical verification, and not "fairness," "balance," or "equal time,"

is the standard.

Several scholars (e.g., Freudenburg and Butte1 1999; Schneider 1993)

express concern

about how the media's balancing norm in science reporting produces what

has been called the

"dueling scientists scenario," especially regarding global warming.

Parallel to the pro and con

model, reporters solicit statements from scientists holding the most

extreme views regarding a

scientific issue, regardless of the fact that the bulk of scientists

hold positions between the

extremes and may tend toward a consensus position. This false dichotomy

breeds confusion

within the general public regarding what is widely accepted knowledge

and what is a highly

speculative claim, and the difference between scientific and value

judgments (Schneider

1993: 183). The resulting public confusion eventually translates into

political inaction and policy

gridlock-disproportionately favoring powerful interests attempting to

construct the nonproblematicity

of environmental conditions.

The increased media visibility for those skeptics with strong ties to

conservative think

tanks is consistent with the assertion that the 1994 Republican takeover

of Congress, along

with the concomitant rightward shift in the national political culture,

created increased opportunities for the conservative movement to oppose global warming policies

via mainstream

media. There is little doubt that the entrepreneurial leaders of these

conservative think tanks

were cognizant of the media's balancing norm and aggressively

manipulated the media's need

to present "both sides of the story." Their efforts resulted in the

dramatic rise in the skeptics'

visibility during a time when an anti-regulatory message ("no action is

needed") resonated

closely with our national political culture.

Discussion

We began with a significant puzzle. As scientific consensus...

Fourth, as others document, the fossil fuels industry, and its allies in

the manufacturing

sector and labor unions, mounted a dual campaign of public relations

activities and Congressional

lobbying against global warming amelioration during the 1990s (e.g.,

Carpenter 2001;

Gelbspan 1997; Levy and Egan 1998; Newell 2000; Ozone Action 1996a,

1996b). In fact, the

Global Climate Coalition, an organization of trade associations and

corporations created in

1989 to promote business participation in the global warming policy

debates, was quite active

in the public global warming debate prior to the December 1997 Kyoto

Conference. Indeed,

the claims-making activities of the conservative movement and the fossil

fuels industry, while

not regularly coordinated, often reinforced one another.

Fifth, the 1990s witnessed, at most, only moderate levels of

mobilization by the environmental

community to maintain global warming on the national political agenda.

Perhaps

because of the realization of the potential costs associated with

amelioration, global warming

was seldom the highest priority of leading environmental SMOs.

...

Specifically aided by the institutional power of ranking Republican

politicians, the conservative

movement successfully altered the nature of the global warming debate

within Congressaway

from the question of "What do we need to do to address global warming?"

and towards the

more benign question of "Is global warming really a problem?" This

highlights the utility of Zald's

(2000a, 2000b) ISA concept since conservative movement leaders and

ranking Republican politicians

engaged in coordinated action toward a common goal-blocking ratification

of the Kyoto

Protocol. This is even more significant since there is every reason to

believe that the heightened

mobilization of leading conservative think tanks in the early 1990s

contributed to the 1994

Republican takeover of Congress. On the other hand, the conservative

movement did not significantly

affect the general public's belief in the reality of global warming or

support for the Kyoto

Protocol (as evidenced by PIPA 1998). This raises obvious questions

about the significance of public

opinion, and thus we join other scholars in calling for more research on

the role of public

opinion vis-a-vis social movements (e.g., Giugni 1998) and policy-making

(e.g., Burstein 1998).