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Friday, January 21, 2022
Billionaires Play Big Role in Funding of New Think Tank Institute for Progress (IFP)
Get ready to learn another think think tank acronym: IFP. It stands for Institute for Progress, a new Washington, DC-based think tank that has been launched by Caleb Watney and Alec Stapp.
Its mission is to "accelerate scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity's future." The founders say they will spend most of their initial attention on three key areas: 1) Metascience, 2) Immigration, and 3) Biosecurity.
Mr. Watney, the Co-CEO, was the director for innovation policy at the think tank Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Before that, he worked as a technology policy fellow at the R Street Institute and as a graduate research fellow at the Mercatus Center.
Mr. Stapp, the other Co-CEO, was the director of technology policy at PPI, a research fellow at the International Center for Law and Economics, a technology policy fellow at the Niskanen Center, and a graduate research fellow at the Mercatus Center.
Scholars at the think tank include senior biosecurity fellow Nikki Teran, who previously worked with the Committee on International Security and Arms Control at the National Academy of Science, the Council on Strategic Risks, and the Open Philanthropy Project. Another scholar is senior immigration fellow Jeremy Neufeld, who previously worked at the Niskanen Center.
There are currently three external board members: Tamara Winter, who formerly worked at the Charter Cities Institute and the Mercacuts Center; Dan Correa, a former Obama Administration official who was CEO of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and worked at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute as well as the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF); and Zachary Graves, a visiting fellow at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School who formerly worked at the Cato Institute and R Street Institute.
IFP, whose new website can be found here, only accepts funding from individuals and foundations. It is currently funded with the support of Open Philanthropy, Emergent Ventures, Patrick Collison, John Collison, and Sam Bankman-Fried.
Facebook co-founder Dustin Muskowitz and wife Cari Tuna are the main funders of Open Philanthropy, an entity which supports numerous think tanks. George Mason University's Mercatus Center houses Emergent Ventures, a fellowship and grant program which was launched with a $1 million grant from the Thiel Foundation. That foundation was created and funded by billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and early investor in Facebook.
Patrick Collison and his brother John Collison are Irish billionaires who co-founded online payment processor Stripe. Sam Bankman-Fried, another billionaire, is the founder and CEO of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange.
The IFP founders note that Tyler Cowen, head of the Mercatus Center, played a big role in their thinking.
IFP joins a crowded field of policy shops in Washington, which has more than 400 think tanks large and small.
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roberts climate obstruct
- 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...
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FIU https://ecollections.law.fiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1743&context=lawreview
125pp
Volume 20 Number 1 Article 7 Fall 2025 Uncharitable Think Tanks Faith Stevelman New York Law School, faith.stevelman@nyls.edu
STEVELMAN
220 FIU Law Review
Faith Stevelman
As people debate whether the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is good policy, what’s being overlooked is that it’s likely unlawful as the work product of a charitable think tank. (Think tanks nearly always are qualified as charities under the tax code.) }:}:
To reinforce think tanks’ educational mission, tax law sets rigorous content requirements for their materials. It also bans them from campaigning, sharply limits their lobbying, and prohibits their benefiting private parties. The doctrines are intended to keep think tanks charity-worthy educators, but they have not succeeded. Ironically, the failure reflects other features of tax law that incentivize using think tanks as politicized advocates. }:
:{:{Tax law offers donors anonymity and offsets the cost of donations through the charitable deduction. And because think tanks are government-approved educators, their messaging enjoys enhanced credibility, hence often greater influence.}:
No other advertising, lobbying, campaigning vehicle, or even other nonprofit form, confers this set of advantages. Part I lays out the paradigm of charitable education that is intended to govern think tanks’ affairs. To provide a contrast with the modern ones, it presents a portrait of old school think tanks—described as “universities without students.” }:
Next it explores the historic difficulty of finding legal rules to define charitable education for public-facing speakers like think tanks. The factual core of the article, Part II, describes think tanks that publish climate denial and obstruct climate-friendly laws. It is the first account of such think tanks in legal scholarship—a void that’s surprising because the phenomenon is ongoing since the 1990s.
:{:{The facts reveal the need to reform think tanks’ status in tax exempt law. They also tell a story of importance in itself—how government subsidized, formally charitable actors have thwarted understanding of climate change and stymied positive law reforms. The facts provide a foundation for future research in climate law, lobbying and campaign finance, and political theory and sociology. In another scholarly first, Part III applies each of the four core doctrines for charities to think tanks. In addition to flouting the content standards foR}:
:{:{charitable education, it finds think tanks persistently benefit private persons, engage in banned campaigning, and lobby beyond their limits. This conduct all violates the legal standards for charitable educators. Accordingly, Part IV proposes that the IRS should recognize modern think tanks as § 501(c)(4) nonprofits, not charities. As § 501(c)(4)s, they could be bold advocates without violating the law. The educational speech, private benefits, lobbying, and even most campaigning limits would fall away. No longer government-endorsed educators, they would have to earn their influence.}:
Nor would donors receive tax deductions for gifts. Section 501(c)(4)s think tanks would still provide donors anonymity, but at least politically active § 501(c)(4)s are receiving scrutiny from law reformers. The use of charitable think tanks as conduits for dark money, in contrast, has remained invisible until now. ...}:
TOC P 27 ACTUAL
II. THINK TANKS’ CLIMATE DENIAL AND LEGAL OBSTRUCTION……………………………………………………………187 A. A Survey of Some DOTTs....................................................... 188 1. The American Enterprise Institute ......................................188 2. The Heritage Foundation.....................................................189 3. The Cato Institute ................................................................ 192 4. George C. Marshall Institute/CO2 Coalition.......................195 5. The Heartland Institute........................................................ 197 6. C-FACT............................................................................... 198 7. State Policy Network, Texas Public Policy Foundation......199 8. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, Myron Ebell ............202 9. ALEC................................................................................... 204 B. Some Donors and Gifts............................................................ 206 1. DOTT Contributions and a Thought Experiment................206 2. Some Corporate Donations .................................................208 3. Some Private Foundations...................................................212 4. Giving by Wealthy Individuals ...........................................215 C. Ways and Means DOTTs Have Achieved Influence................218 1. Using Scientists to Refute Climate Science ........................218 2. Think Tanks’ Websites........................................................ 226 3. Mass Market Books............................................................. 227 4. School Textbooks................................................................ 228 5. A Faux University Online ...................................................230 6. New Approaches: The State Financial Officers Foundation............................................................................... 234
Confirmation Battles: Conservative/Laissez-Faire Judges..238 8. Luxury Retreats for Judges..................................................240 9. Amicus Briefs...................................................................... 242 10. DOTT Facts, in Conclusion...............................................245 III. THINK TANKS VIOLATING § 501(C)(3)……………………………245
PT 2
A. A Survey of Some DOTTs
- :{:{The American Enterprise Institute The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a formerly scholarly think tank now devoted mostly to advocacy and opinion commentary. In 2003, Lee Raymond, then ExxonMobil’s CEO, was elected Vice Chairman of AEI’s board of trustees;113 and ExxonMobil has reportedly donated $1.6 million, at least, to it.114 Despite its prestigious history, AEI has disseminated, and still disseminates, substantial D&O. For example, in 2007, ExxonMobil offered academic researchers $10,000 to publish criticisms of the IPCC’s climate science.115 Turning to AEI’s website, two recent posts stand out. “Why Climate Misinformation Persists,” a post dated July 25, 2024, attacks the integrity of mainstream climate scientists.116}:
(Impugning the integrity of climate scientists is a common D&O trope.117) Without accompanying evidence, AEI Senior Science and Technology Fellow, Roger Pielke, Jr., proposes that climate scientists falsify their data to support their “alarmist conclusions.” Again without factual support, Pielke asserts, “[M]any in the climate community . . . appear to believe that achieving emissions reductions is so very important that its attainment trumps scientific integrity.”118 In a different AEI post, Pielke states that climate variability (which he concedes is observable) is not proof of human-caused climate change, which he claims }:
:{:{remains unproven.119 (As mentioned earlier, more than 99% of expert, peerreview-publishing climate scientists refute this position.120)}:
Because of his leadership at AEI, Pielke frequently is invited to speak to the media and testify before Congressional committees. For example, he opined about climate change at a Republican-led Senate Budget Committee hearing in 2023. As part of the Congressional record, Pielke stated that climate change remains unproven.121 Notably, despite being a leader of AEI’s science center, Pielke does not have a Ph.D. in the sciences.122 Indeed, according to the biographies posted on the center’s webpage, not one of its six “scholars” has a Ph.D., or even an M.A., in the sciences.123 Given AEI’s stature, it presumably could recruit elite scientists to its Science and Energy Center were politics not a factor in their remit.}:
2. The Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation was established in 1973 with funding from Joseph Coors, a scion of the brewing fortune.124 As mentioned above, it is the
:{:{most influential of the activist, conservative think tanks.125 Heritage is a preferred waystation for aspiring but out-of-administration Republican politicians and staffers126—providing them a professional home where they can network and publish their opinions, while hoping to return to office. This staffing practice colors Heritage’s public messaging, influencing it to be polemical, not factually intensive research. A signal Heritage practice is producing policy compendia for Republican presidential candidates. The first was the 1980 Mandate for Leadership, authored for Ronald Reagan’s presidency.127}:
(Heritage insiders estimate that his administration implemented roughly half of the Mandate’s proposals by the end of its first year.128) These documents are, effectively, expansive lists of desired policy reforms; they’re not in-depth policy analyses or factually intensive reports, as evident from the most recent one, the Mandate for Leadership, 2025 (known as “Project 2025”).129 The fundamentally political (not educational) character of Project 2025 is also reflected in more than half of its authors/contributors having objective ties to the First Trump Administration. 130 This would not in itself mean it couldn’t be educational (for § 501(c)(3) purposes), but it shows other factors and goals were at play.131 For example, Kevin D. Roberts, currently its president, }:
NOTES
125 Heritage’s role in producing Project 2025, and the Trump Administration’s pursuit of a multitude of the climate unfriendly positions presented therein, has established Heritage as primus inter pares. Author Thomas Medvetz describes Heritage’s founding as a transformational moment marking the rise of the new “advocacy” think tanks. THOMAS MEDVETZ, THINK TANKS IN AMERICA 95 (2012). 126 See Flynn Nicholls, Ex-Trump Officials Involved in Project 2025: Full List, NEWSWEEK (July 10, 2024, at 03:33 ET), https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-ex-trump-contributors-republicanselection-1922933 [https://perma.cc/LF68-TGE9]. 127 For an insider’s commentary on the original MANDATE, see Afterword - Onward! - Edwin J. Feulner, at 02:59 (SUBSTACK) (“First published in January 1981, the original Mandate served as a conservative plan of action for the Reagan Administration, providing much of the blueprint for the Reagan Revolution. It contained more than 2,000 detailed, actionable policy recommendations to move the federal government in a conservative direction. . . . On January 21, 1981, at the first meeting of his Cabinet, President Reagan distributed copies of the MANDATE, and many of the study’s authors were recruited into the administration to implement its recommendations.”). In his essay, Feulner states that President Reagan implemented nearly half of the MANDATE’s recommendations. See generally Edwin J. Feulner, Onward, in MANDATE FOR LEADERSHIP: THE CONSERVATIVE PROMISE 2025, THE HERITAGE FOUND. (2023). 128 Feulner estimates that President Reagan implemented nearly half of the MANDATE’s recommendations. Feulner, supra note 127, at 885. According to Lee Edwards’s account, Reagan’s team implemented roughly around 60% of the 2,000 proposals by the end of his first year. See EDWARDS, supra note 124. 129 See generally MANDATE FOR LEADERSHIP: THE CONSERVATIVE PROMISE 2025, THE HERITAGE FOUND. (2023). 130 Id. 131 Many Project 2025 authors/contributors were hopeful to do more than supplying “policy oxygen” to the second Trump Administration—several have obtained leadership positions in it. Elena Shao & Ashley Wu, The Many Links Between Project 2025 and Trump’s World, N.Y. TIMES, (Oct. 22, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/22/us/politics/project-2025-trump-heritagefoundation.html [https://perma.cc/G8FS-GSBW] (approximately half of the MANDATE’s authors had END
P 191
:{:{described Heritage’s raison d’être as “institutionalizing Trumpism”132— hardly a credibly educational goal. Indeed, Project 2025’s climate change proposals exemplify denial and legal obstruction.133 The New York Times reported on a leaked training video for incoming Project 2025 staffers that showed a former Trump Administration official emphasizing the need to reverse Biden-era climate protections.134}:
Indeed, a major objective of Project 2025 is to cripple the EPA’s and other regulations on climate change.135 Its introduction pillories “the Left’s love affair with environmental extremism,”136 in language reminiscent of § 501(c)(3)’s prohibition of overzealous, emotive expression. The document refers to environmentalism as “a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.”137 Misleadingly, the Mandate claims President Biden’s energy policies caused “a sharp spike in global energy prices.”138 It admonishes that his administration’s “climate fanaticism” will need a “whole-of-government unwinding.”139}:
NOTES
OBJctive ties to the first Trump Administration); see also New Trump Administration Packed with Project 2025 Architects, AM. FED’N OF GOV’T EMPS. (Nov. 25, 2024), https://www.afge.org/article/new-trumpadministration-packed-with-project-2025-architects/ [https://perma.cc/4JWL-7RN9]. 132 Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Inside Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism’, N.Y. TIMES (Jan. 21, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/magazine/heritage-foundation-kevinroberts.html [https://perma.cc/68QN-LZPW]; see also Jonathan Mahler, How One Conservative Think Tank Is Stocking Trump’s Government, N.Y. TIMES (June 20, 2018), https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/magazine/trump-government-heritage-foundation-think-tank.html [https://perma.cc/NHB9-TBAZ] (“The Heritage Foundation is a marketing company, a branding agency—it sells its own Heritage neckties, embroidered with miniature versions of its Liberty Bell logo— and a policy shop rolled into one. But above all, Heritage is a networking group. It has spent decades fashioning itself into the hub of a constellation of conservative individuals and organizations united by their opposition to government regulations—from taxes to gun control to environmental protections—and socially progressive causes like same-sex marriage.”). 133 See generally A GUIDE TO MAJOR CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL EXCERPTS IN THE PROJECT 2025 REPORT, BERKELEY L. CTR. FOR L., ENERGY, & THE ENV’T (Aug. 2024) (helping to break down the climate implications of the massive, 900-page document by excerpting its most salient climate proposals). 134 Neil Vigdor & Simon J. Levien, What Is Project 2025, and Why Did Trump Distance Himself from It During the Campaign?, N.Y. TIMES (Nov. 6, 2024 ), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/06/us/politics/trump-project-2025.html [https://perma.cc/9VNXAUM5]. 135 See, e.g., Amy Westervelt, Everything You Need to Know About Project 2025’s Plan for the EPA, Drilled (Nov. 5, 2024), https://drilled.media/news/newsletter-Project2025 [https://perma.cc/EFY4- 3KVY]. For its larger ambitions to dismantle administrative agencies, see Selwyn D. Whitehead, The Project 2025 Mandate: Implications for the Administrative State and the U.S. Constitution, DAILY J. (July 19, 2024), https://www.dailyjournal.com/articles/379782-the-project-2025-mandate-implications-forthe-administrative-state-and-the-u-s-constitution [https://perma.cc/6LKD-5H7M]. 136 MANDATE FOR LEADERSHIP, supra note 129, at 11. 137 Id. 138 Id. at 257. 139 Id. at 6
:{:{In quintessential legal obstruction, Project 2025 calls for “eliminating federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands, curtailing federal investments in renewable energy technologies, and easing environmental permitting restrictions and procedures for new fossil fuel projects such as power plants.”140 It advocates breaking up and/or downsizing the climate “alarmist” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service (a subdivision of the former)141—proposing to replace them with private corporations.}:
It also calls for repealing the Inflation Reduction Act,142 including its green energy provisions, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)143—the cornerstone of U.S. environmental law since Richard Nixon enacted it in 1970. Though presented by a formally educational body, the proposals’ enactment would undermine the nation’s capacity to produce quality science on climate. Most fundamentally, because of the paucity of facts and analysis in it, Project 2025 fails the methodology test, thus vitiating Heritage’s charitable status.
- :{:{The Cato Institute}:
Brothers Charles and David Koch founded and/or were leaders of several prominent D&O think tanks. In 1977, Charles became a co-founder of the Cato Institute,144 the leading libertarian think tank in the U.S. In 1984, Charles and David founded Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE)145—a charitable think tank that claims one of its victories was leading the defeat of President Clinton’s energy tax plan.146 (Having given $2 million to the}:}:
:{:{libertarian party in 1980, David became its Vice-Presidential candidate in that year’s election.147 While his estate remains extremely influential, David died six years ago, in 2019.) In 2012, Cato created a “Center for the Study of Science.”148 Reflecting its libertarian ideals, rather than producing original science, Cato’s center manufactured doubt about the accuracy of climate science in order to forestall protective laws. Cato hired leading contrarian scientist Patrick Michaels to head the Center.149}:
(Michaels150 and Richard Lindzen151 were standouts among contrarian scientists because they had top training to do climate research.) In 2010, Cato published a book Michaels edited with the conspiratorial title, Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know. 152 In it, Michaels asserts that mainstream climate change science is fundamentally inaccurate, and that any climate changes, rather, will be “far from catastrophic.”153 Riffing on the term “global }:
NOTES
(“By 1993, when Bill Clinton became President, Citizens for a Sound Economy had become a prototype for the kind of corporate-backed opposition campaigns that have proliferated during the Obama era. The group waged a successful assault on Clinton’s proposed B.T.U. tax on energy, for instance, running advertisements, staging media events, and targeting opponents. And it mobilized anti-tax rallies outside the Capitol—rallies that NPR described as ‘designed to strike fear into the hearts of wavering Democrats.’”). 147 Adam Eichen, How David Koch’s 1980 Fantasy Became America’s Current Reality, THE NEW REPUBLIC (Aug. 27, 2019), https://www.newrepublic.com/article/154849/david-koch-1980-fantasy [https://perma.cc/X99N-HZMD]. 148 Cato Announces Newly Expanded Center for the Study of Science, CATO INST. (Sept. 18, 2014), https://www.cato.org/news-releases/2014/9/18/cato-announces-newly-expanded-center-study-science [https://perma.cc/MAJ9-GBG3] (“The Cato Institute announced today the expansion of its Center for the Study of Science. Founded in 2012, the Center for the Study of Science was created to provide marketbased ideas that could transition policy regarding energy consumption, environmental standards, and other science-related issues away from government planners.”). 149 Id. Michaels’s leadership of the Center was announced in the press release. 150 As stated on his biographical page on Heartland’s website, Michaels had a B.A. and M.S. in biology from the University of Chicago and received a Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. See Patrick Michaels, HEARTLAND INST., https://heartland.org/aboutus/who-we-are/patrick-michaels/ [https://perma.cc/2T9Y-UQSV]. But see Scott Waldman, Influential Climate Denier, Dies at 72, ClimateWire, E&E NEWS BY POLITICO (July 19, 2022, at 06:31 ET), https://www.eenews.net/articles/patrick-michaels-influential-climate-denier-dies-at-72/ [https://perma.cc/2YGV-35UP] (As expressed by James Hansen, a former NASA scientist and expert on climate change, “Pat was a cherry-picker, searching for bits of data in which the facts, for a limited period, seemed to contradict the community’s view on human-caused climate change . . . . Overall, he was selling bullshit, and perhaps he knew that, but he thought that climate scientists were exaggerating, so he continued even as facts piled up against him. If only he had been right.”). 151 Lindzen had a Chair in meteorology at MIT from 1983 until his retirement in 2013. Richard S. Lindzen, PROGRAM IN ATMOSPHERES, OCEANS & CLIMATE, http://paocweb.mit.edu/people/rlindzen [https://perma.cc/EL3J-U4Y3]. 152 See generally PATRICK J. MICHAELS & ROBERT BALLING JR., CLIMATE OF EXTREMES: GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW (2010). 153 Id.
:{:{warming,” Michaels described his view as “luke-warmism,”154 in order to highlight that climate changes will be benign. In the same vein, in 2011, Michaels was the editor of a collection of Cato-published, anti-regulatory essays titled, Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives. 155 The volume presents opinion essays mostly lacking factual support. Michaels had dismissed the veracity of modern climate science in an earlier publication, stating “there is no scientifically credible model for future warming.”156}:
Michaels was also less than truthful about the scope of the financial conflicts pertaining to his climate writing. Appearing before the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment in 2009, he testified that only about 3% of his net worth came from “energy sector industry sources.”157 But one year later, live on CNN television, he told the moderator roughly forty percent of his net worth came from fossil fuel-linked sources.158 (Michaels faced a potential perjury investigation.159)
But Cato overlooked both the lack of scientific support for Michael’s views and his very public misstatement about financial conflicts in hiring him to lead its science center in 2012. Several other national, multi-issue think tanks produce significant quantities of D&O. Among the most notable are the Hoover Institution, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, the Hudson Institute, the Mercatus Center, and the Federalist Society.160 Like all the think tanks discussed herein, each is a § 501(c)(3) educational organization.161 The remainder of this section discusses more specialized DOTTs.}:
:{:{George C. Marshall Institute/CO2 Coalition}:
There are twenty-five or so smaller think tanks that produce, or have produced, substantial D&O.162 A notable one is the George C. Marshall Institute, founded in 1984. Marshall was reconstituted as the “CO2 Coalition,” in 2015, and is still operating. Each of Marshall’s three founders were trained physicists—all ex-“Cold Warriors” who channeled their fears of government overreach into fending off climate change laws. In 1989 (coincidentally the year the Berlin Wall fell), Marshall published a report by them entitled, Scientific Perspectives on the Greenhouse Problem. It contested the primacy of accumulating atmospheric greenhouse gases in causing climate change,163 attributing its origin, instead, to “normal” solar variation. (Presumably, government action could do nothing about that, were it true.)
Marshall soon reissued the research in book form under the title, Global Warming: What Does the Science Tell Us?164—thereby making its assertions widely available to the public.165 Although Seitz, Jastrow, and Nierenberg were climate science outliers by 1990, the think tank’s Washington, D.C., office wrangled an invitation for Nierenberg to meet with George H.W. Bush’s senior staff. John Sununu, the president’s Chief of Staff, received this solar variation research so enthusiastically that it’s given partial credit for stopping the administration’s }:
:{:{momentum to act on climate change.166 On the campaign trail, Bush had pledged to counter the “greenhouse effect” with the “White House effect.”167 But with backing from the patriotic sounding “George C. Marshall Institute,” his administration changed course.168 And although Bush subsequently signed the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change at the 1992 Earth Summit, his U.S. representatives insisted the treaty contain only voluntary targets and timetables for greenhouse gas reductions.169 Marshall’s successor, the CO2 Coalition, is equally contrarian and “activist”170 on climate change.171}:
In line with the aphorism “the best defense is a good offense,” it advocates that more CO2 in the atmosphere will benefit living organisms.172 Its website hosts many examples of D&O. Like other DOTTs, the CO2 Coalition regularly produces and submits comment letters to government agencies.173 For example, in 2022, one of its scientist affiliates, William Happer, co-authored a letter to the SEC denying there was a scientific basis for its climate risk disclosure rule.174}:
notes
166 Leslie Roberts, Global Warming: Blaming the Sun, 246 SCI. 992, 993 (Nov. 24, 1989) (“A slim, unrefereed report that many scientists have dismissed as biased and misleading is said to be at least partly behind the White House’s recent temporizing on climate change.”). 167 The pledge was made when Bush was Vice President, and running for the presidency, at a campaign stop in Michigan. It was repeated in the press and read into the Congressional Record by Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. See 101 CONG. REC. 8467 (May 9, 1989). 168 See generally Begley, supra note 162 (“Bush was torn. The head of his Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, supported binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. . . . Avoiding mandatory cuts was a huge victory for industry.”). 169 Kathy Sessions, Products of the 1992 Earth Summit, U.S. ENV’T PROT. AGENCY (April/June 1993), https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/products-1992-earth-summit.html [https://perma.cc/Q7SF-7GRV]. 170 Jason Murdock, Climate Change Deniers Exploit Facebook Loophole to Spread Fake Science, NEWSWEEK (June 25, 2020, at 06:56 ET), https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-co2-coalition-factchecking-ads-fake-content-science-climate-change-1513311 [https://perma.cc/YQT9-C2J7] (“Members of the group—which argues carbon dioxide from fossil fuels will ultimately be beneficial for the planet— told E&E News they want to use the platform to reach a bigger audience, despite opposition from scientists trying to expose their claims. . . . The CO2 Coalition says ‘available scientific facts have persuaded Coalition members that additional CO2 will be a net benefit.’ It lobbies in favor of the ‘the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy.’”).
:{:{The Heartland Institute Heartland was founded in 1984 by libertarian financier David H. Padden, who earlier had been a founding board member at Cato.175 Its early work included helping Philip Morris spread doubt about secondhand smoke’s harmful effects, and it also had campaigned against smoking bans.176 Heartland is likely the most strident DOTT.177 Its modus operandi is the opposite of the old guard think tanks—through its website, popular and instructional books, conferences, and other means, it actively has cultivated a niche as a provocateur.}:
In December 2019, for example, Heartland engaged nineteen-year-old German social media influencer Naomi Siebt to speak at a counter-conference it convened alongside the UN’s COP25. Regaling Siebt as the “Anti-Greta,”178 Heartland’s chief media strategist, James Taylor, described paying her roughly $2,000 per month to narrate climate videos aimed at younger audiences.179 Heartland’s annual (contrarian) climate 175 }:
notes
According to an obituary published by Cato, Padden has also been a director at other conservative/libertarian think tanks including: Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Acton Institute, the Binomics Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, and the Center for Libertarian Studies. The connections illustrate the networked nature of conservative/libertarian think tanks. See David Boaz, David H. Padden, RIP., CATO INST. (Oct. 4, 2011), https://www.cato.org/blog/david-h-padden-rip [https://perma.cc/GSV8-ZBQN]. 176 ORESKES & CONWAY, supra note 163, at 233–34 (“The Heartland Institute is known among climate scientists for persistent questioning of climate science, for its promotion of ‘experts’ who have done little, if any, peer-reviewed climate research and for its sponsorship of a conference in New York City in 2008 alleging that the scientific community’s work on global warming is a fake. But Heartland’s activities are far more extensive, and reach back into the 1990s when they, too, were working with Philip Morris.”). 177 See generally Banerjee, supra note 3 (“Hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations such as ExxonMobil and wealthy individuals such as the billionaires Charles and David Koch have supported the development of a sprawling network, which includes Heartland and other think tanks, advocacy groups and political operatives. They have cast doubt on consensus science, confused public opinion and forestalled passage of laws and regulations that would address the global environmental crisis. It is one of the largest, longest and most consequential misinformation efforts mounted against mainstream science by an industry. Climate denial, thanks to the network’s influence, has become a core message of the Republican Party, now in control of the White House and Congress.”). 178 Desmond Butler & Juliet Eilperin, The Anti-Greta: A Conservative Think Tank Takes on the Global Phenomenon, WASH. POST (Feb. 23, 2020), https://www.washingtonpost.com/climateenvironment/2020/02/23/meet-anti-greta-young-youtuber-campaigning-against-climate-alarmism/ [https://perma.cc/UKU3-CJVG] (“In December, Heartland headlined Naomi at its forum at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where Taylor described her as ‘the star’ of the show. Last month, Heartland hired Naomi as the young face of its campaign to question the scientific consensus that human activity is
p 198
:{:{conferences garner extensive, international media attention180—despite no mainstream climate scientists attending. Another Heartland anecdote reveals the most blatant propaganda uncovered in this research. In Chicago, in the summer of 2012, Heartland sponsored a digital billboard featuring a giant photo of Ted Kaczynski (the “Unabomber”) above text stating, “I Still Believe in Global Warming, Do You?”181}:
The billboard clearly (if impliedly) messaged that believing in climate change is irrational and dangerous—presumably to shame people into voting against politicians who supported action, including in the upcoming elections.182 6. C-FACT Another smaller, but vocal, DOTT is named the “Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow,” or “C-FACT.” Obviously chosen carefully (“SeeFact!”), the acronym is ironic given the organization’s penchant for spreading misleading propaganda.183 Like all the DOTTs, C-FACT has enormous visibility online, especially via social media. Marc Morano, C-FACT’s communications director, previously had been a political aide to Senator James Inhofe, a notorious climate denier.184 C-FACT’s website hosts }:
notes ....
monthly wage’ from the institute. According to official figures, the average net monthly income in Germany is just under €1,900 (£1,590, $2,066).”). 180 For a discussion of Heartland’s contrarian conferences, see, for example, Andrew C. Revkin, Skeptics Dispute Climate Worries and Each Other, N.Y. TIMES (Mar. 8, 2009), https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/science/earth/09climate.html [https://perma.cc/KFC3-8JZA] (“The three-day International Conference on Climate Change organized by the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit group seeking deregulation and unfettered markets—brings together political figures, conservative campaigners, scientists, an Apollo astronaut and the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus. . . . But two years after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with near certainty that most of the recent warming was a result of human influences, global warming’s skeptics are showing signs of internal rifts and weaking support.”). 181 Carol Felsenthal, Chicago’s Heartland Institute, the Group Behind the Unabomber Billboard, CHI. MAG. (June 14, 2012, at 11:40 ET), https://www.chicagomag.com/chicago-magazine/felsenthalfiles/june-2012/chicagos-heartland-institute-and-its-unabomber-billboards/ [https://perma.cc/V7RNSH8X]. 182 Group Provokes Re...
:{:{Morano’s “ClimateDepot,” which serves as a clearinghouse for D&O materials (including Morano’s own) that can easily be reposted to social media. Even a quick glance at C-FACT’s website reveals a falsehood. A post from 2024 states that the academic journal NatureCommunications crowned ClimateDepot the “most effective source of climate communication on Earth!”185}:
But in fact the referenced article critiques the disproportionate coverage afforded to climate deniers in the media, given the scientific consensus.186 Hence, rather than praising his effectiveness as a climate journalist, the NatureCommunications article critiques the excessive coverage Morano and other deniers receive.187 In sum, Morano’s assertion of proven journalistic preeminence, stated on C-FACT’s website, is a misrepresentation—hence a violation of the methodology test. 7. State Policy Network, Texas Public Policy Foundation Over sixty state-level think tanks form a network actively opposing climate regulations, among others.188 They benefit from mutual collaboration, as well as support from the “State Policy Network” (SPN), }:
notes
...a POST (Feb. 26, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/02/26/jim-inhofessnowball-has-disproven-climate-change-once-and-for-all/ [https://perma.cc/SD8V-DCAN]. 185 About Marc Morano, CLIMATE DEPOT: A C-FACT PROJECT, https://www.climatedepot.com/about/ [https://perma.cc/63YJ-MHKS] (“Welcome To Climate Depot, the most effective source of climate communication on Earth! That’s the conclusion published in a “peerreviewed” scientific journal on August 13, 2019, so we suppose it must be true.”). 186 For the linked journal article, see Alexander Michael Peterson, Emmanuel M. Vincent & Anthony LeRoy Westerling, Discrepancy in Scientific Authority and Media Visibility of Climate Change Scientists and Contrarians, 10 NAT. COMMC’NS, 2019, at 1, 2 (confirming variation among outlets based on political orientation and other factors). 187 Morano and his backers fought back against the suggestion they were obtaining excessive coverage, claiming the journal had advocated for their being blacklisted, which was untrue. See Craig Rucker, Journal “Nature Communications” Climate Blacklist, CFACT (Aug. 16, 2019), https://www.cfact.org/2019/08/16/journal-nature-communications-climate-blacklist/ [https://perma.cc/5246-HKD9]. For more research on the disproportionate media coverage enjoyed by climate change deniers, given the current scientific certainty, see Rachel Wetts, In Climate News, Statements from Large Businesses and Opponents of Climate Action Receive Heightened Visibility, 117 PNAS 19054, 19054 (2020)
p 200 = 39
:{:{national think tank.189 Focused on influencing state-level public opinion, laws, and regulations, these think tanks commonly get little or no national media coverage—yet they have an enormous impact in thwarting climatefriendly government action.190 Jane Mayer reported that in 2011 alone, SPN spent $79 million to promote conservative state laws and policies. In response to questioning from Mayer, SPN’s President, Tracie Sharp, stated, “Every think tank [in SPN’s network] . . . rallies around a common belief: the power of free markets and free people to create a healthy, prosperous society.”191}:
With SPN’s support, the state-based DOTTs present opposition to environmental protections as resistance to tyrannical government overreach.192 The most influential state DOTT is the Texas Public Policy Foundation, founded in 1987.193 In line with oil’s importance to Texas’s economy, 194 it is a vigorous proponent of unfettered fossil fuel use. TPPF operates an “educational” unit devoted to producing climate denial and another that
189 See About State Policy Network, STATE POL’Y NETWORK, https://www.spn.org/state-policynetwork-about/ [https://perma.cc/YL4Y-RDJR] (“State Policy Network is the only organization in the country dedicated to building and mobilizing a Durable Freedom Infrastructure in the states.
This means we support leaders and organizations building the necessary capacities—like research, litigation, advocacy, investigative journalism, voter insights, and leadership training—to secure wins that outlast election cycles and help change the culture and policy landscape of the state in favor of freedom. SPN supports a powerful movement of 64 independent state think tank affiliates and over 100 national partners across the 50 states.”) 190 Jane Mayer, Is Ikea the New Model for the Conservative Movement? THE NEW YORKER (Nov. 15, 2013), https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/is-ikea-the-new-model-for-the-conservativemovement [https://perma.cc/UW2Y-B65N] (statement from SPN’s president about the group’s commitment to defeating climate change regulations, inter alia). 191 Id. 192
At the time of writing, this phenomenon has overtaken federal government policy and executive action. Russel Vought, previously a leader at the Heritage Foundation and now Director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a leader in this initiative. See, e.g., Coral Davenport, Inside Trump’s Plan to Halt Hundreds of Regulations, N.Y. TIMES (Apr. 15, 2025), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/us/politics/trump-doge-regulations.html [https://perma.cc/4SEC4MWZ]. 193 For commentary on TPPF’s climate/energy focus and prominence, see, for example, Christopher Hooks, Why is Texas’ Leading GOP Think Tank Suddenly All-in on an Anti-Wind Crusade?, TEX. OBSERVER (Aug. 23, 2018), https://www.texasobserver.org/why-is-texas-leading-gop-think-tanksuddenly-all-in-on-an-anti-wind-crusade/ [https://perma.cc/W2ZS-SV8W]. See also Mark Hand, Think Tank in the “King of the Red States” Assumes Power in Trump’s Washington, THINK PROGRESS (Jul. 31, }:
:{:{spearheads obstructing climate laws and regulations.195 Both were operated under the banner of the “Fueling Freedom Project.” The mission of the Project, as expressed on TPPF’s webpage, was to: Explain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuels—how civilization has been transformed and the human condition improved through the development of this energy resource;}:
Build a multi-state coalition to push back against the EPA’s unconstitutional efforts to take over the electric power sector by regulating CO2 via the Clean Power Plan; End the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant. We support state and national efforts to oppose the Clean Power Plan, pass legislation/resolutions, file lawsuits against EPA, and promote the passage of measures to protect states from EPA overreach.196 For roughly a decade, Fueling Freedom was led by Kathleen Hartnett White, who had joined TPPF in 2008. White co-authored a book under TPPF’s imprimatur titled, Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy. The book presents the so-called “moral case” for continued reliance on fossil fuels.
(This “moral case” is a meme in conservative/libertarian circles—it informs PragerU’s videos, described infra.) The book proudly displays its science contrarianism, its introduction commencing with the declaration, “most of what you think you know about energy—and what our kids are being taught about energy—is flat-out wrong.”197 Undeterred by a lack of science training,198 from her position at TPPF White boldly condemned the ...}:
notes
195 The litigation-oriented unit is named “the Center for the American Future.” A summary of its recent litigation is advertised on TPPF’s website. Eric Oldfather, TPPF’s 2023 Year in Litigation, TEX. PUB. POL’Y FOUND. (Dec. 31, 2023), https://www.texaspolicy.com/tppfs-2023-year-in-litigation/ [https://perma.cc/FB6D-RN7L]. Charitable litigating-think-tanks are commonly referred to as “public interest law foundations”—irrespective of their ideological orientation. Within tax law, they are governed by a separate doctrine from educational think tanks. See Rev. Proc. 92-59, 1992-2 C.B. 411; Rev. Rul. 76- 5, 1976-1 C.B. 146 (“The key factor distinguishing the work of public interest law firms from that of private firms is that the cases handled by the public interest law firms would not be economically feasible for the private firms.”)
202 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
:{:{...IPCC’s climate reports as inaccurate.199 She publicly argued that adding more CO2 to the atmosphere would be benign or even beneficial.200 White’s departure from TPPF, in 2016, coincided with President Trump’s nominating her to lead his Council on Environmental Quality.201 The nomination underscores the operation of DOTTs and DOTT leaders as political advocates. 8. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, Myron Ebell The Competitive Enterprise Institute, an elite Washington, D.C.-based think tank, has for decades campaigned against climate regulations.202}:
Its influence on U.S. climate policy is exemplified by the career of Myron Ebell, one of its leaders. Having joined CEI in 1999, Ebell rose to direct its Center for Energy and the Environment.203 He retired from CEI only in 2024, after twenty-five years in its leadership ranks. Like Pielke and White, Ebell adamantly and unqualifiedly rejected anthropogenic climate change; and Ebell too lacked science training.204 }:
notes
fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
She was accepted into Princeton’s Ph.D. program in East Asian Studies winning the Jonathan Edwards award for academic excellence.”). 199 KATHLEEN HARTNETT WHITE, TEX. PUB. POL’Y FOUND., FOSSIL FUELS: THE MORAL CASE 30 (June 2014) (“IPCC science claims of 95 percent certainty that human activity is causing climate calamity are more like the dogmatic claims of ideologues and clerics than scientific conclusions. . . . This claim of 95 percent confidence however is pulled from thin air without any statistical analysis.”). 200 White’s views about global warming and greenhouse gases are described in Marianne Lavelle, Trump Pick for Top Environment Post Carbon Dioxide Is ‘The Gas of Life’, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS (Oct. 13, 2017), https://www.insideclimatenews.org/news/13102017/trump-kathleen-hartnett-white-ceqnominee-climate-change-fossil-fuels-supporter-texas/ [https://perma.cc/668G-32S2] (“‘An invisible, harmless trace gas in the Earth’s atmosphere, CO2 is a plant food.’”). See also Elliott Negin, Trump Nominee Kathleen Hartnett White Ignores Climate Change in Her Own Backyard, UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS (Nov. 9, 2017, at 09:30 ET), https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/kathleen-hartnett-whiteclimate-change/ [https://perma.cc/AX9P-TRF5]. 201 Her nomination was ultimately withdrawn. White House Withdraws Nomination of Kathleen Hartnett White to the Council on Environmental Quality, PACE UNIV. (Feb. 5, 2018), https://www.lawlibrary.blogs.pace.edu/2018/02/05/white-house-withdraws-nomination-of-kathleenhartnett-white-to-the-council-on-environmental-quality/ [https://perma.cc/S7WZ-E2ZS]; see also Brady Dennis & Chris Mooney, Trump Taps Climate Skeptic for Top White House Environmental Post, WASH. POST (Oct. 13, 2017), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energyenvironment/wp/2017/10/13/trump-taps-climate-skeptic-for-top-white-house-environmental-post/ [https://perma.cc/XDT9-388L]. 202 As stated on its webpage, “[t]he
2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 203
:{:{In a 2007 interview with Vanity Fair, Ebell told the reporter that computer models predicting climate change “don’t even pass the laugh test.”205 He launched invectives against climate science in frequent television appearances.206 While at CEI, Ebell chaired a trade consortium called the “Cooler Heads Coalition”—even now lauded on CEI’s website for “question[ing] global warming alarmism.”207 CEI’s website also celebrates its leading the “decade-long fight to defeat cap-and-trade legislation.”}:
It also takes credit for leading the successful effort to “convince President Trump to withdraw from the Paris climate treaty.”208 At CEI, Ebell exemplified the role of modern think tank leaders as political firebrand. For instance, in 2002, having obtained an EPA report acknowledging anthropogenic climate change, Ebell emailed George W. Bush’s Council on Environmental Quality, and convinced it to repudiate the report and replace the EPA’s leader.209 When, in 2005, Senators McCain and Lieberman united to support cap-and-trade legislation, Ebell declared it “a shameless con game,” and helped kill its passage.210
In 2012, when AEI convened a bipartisan conference of experts to evaluate a proposed carbon tax, “Ebell received a leaked copy of its agenda and sprang into action rallying climate denialists to attack AEI”211—a stunning example of one elite think tank attacking another for being too moderate on climate. In 2016, when Ebell was still at CEI, Trump appointed him to lead his presidential transition team for the EPA.212 As described by a colleague at Cato (also a vocal climate change denier), Ebell’s strength lay in “marshaling allies, building a skeptic movement and enforcing that political orthodoxy as}:
204 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
:{:{best he could in the Republican Party.”213 This made CEI and Ebell famously influential, but they are not skills or actions associated with true educational leaders. 9. ALEC The American Legislative Exchange Council is principally devoted to authoring model conservative and libertarian-oriented bills and presenting them to state legislators for enactment. Extraordinarily influential, it has aptly been dubbed a “conservative bill mill.”214}:
Opposing climate-protections is one of ALEC’s priorities.215 For example, in the coal-producing state of Kentucky, ALEC responded to a 2015 EPA utility reform proposal by persuading the state’s legislature to prohibit coal’s replacement.216 Nor is ALEC secretive about its modus operandi, notwithstanding that § 501(c)(3)’s 213 The colleague was Jerry Taylor, who also had been a climate change denier. Vinik, supra note 209. 214 Svante Myrick, The Conservative Juggernaut That’s Quietly Writing the Majority Out of U.S. Laws, THE HILL (Oct. 9, 2023, at 10:30 ET),
https://www.thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4244299-theconservative-juggernaut-thats-writing-the-majority-out-of-us-laws/ [https://perma.cc/6KGC-P862] (“[F]or decades millions of Americans have been living under laws that ALEC had a direct hand in. And those laws are overwhelmingly friendly to corporations and disastrous for regular people.”); see also Jeffrey Harris, ALEC: 50 Years of Attacking Environmental Protection and Democracy, GREENPEACE (Oct. 3, 2023), https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/alec-50-years-of-attacking-environmental-protectionand-democracy/ [https://perma.cc/H9KN-HH2P] (“An estimated 98% of ALEC’s funding comes from corporations and well-known conservative foundations established by the Koch, Bradley, Mercer, Searle, and Coors families, among others.”). See generally Nancy Scola, Exposing ALEC: How ConservativeBacked State Laws Are All Connected, THE ATLANTIC (Apr. 14, 201...}:
Uncharitable Think Tanks 205
:{:{language strictly limits charities’ legislative lobbying.217 Indeed, ALEC maintains an online archive of model bills it has authored and circulated.218 Some bills have even (accidentally) been introduced to state legislatures with ALEC’s authorship showing.219}:
Notwithstanding the embarrassment to the negligent legislators, this demonstrates ALEC’s goal—directly to mold state law making. Along with model bills, ALEC provides state law makers with “issue alerts,” “talking points,” and “press release templates”220 intended to help them communicate with their constituencies—to clarify, they are not fact-intensive or analytically rigorous educational briefs in line with the methodology test.
ALEC also publishes an annual statement of policy “solutions” it supports, available on its website. Like Heritage’s Mandates, these are essentially summaries of favored policies and goals—neither factually well supported nor thickly reasoned.221 A current ALEC initiative relevant to climate change action is especially striking. It is spearheading state-based campaigns to criminalize certain live fossil fuel infrastructure protests.222
At least twenty-two states have enacted a version of ALEC’s anti-protest bill, including Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Kansas, West Virginia, and Indiana.223 Some of these laws provide for incarceration for up to ten years or million-dollar fines upon conviction, 217
For a list of model “anti-environmental” laws composed by ALEC, see Alec’s Polluter Agenda, CTR. FOR MEDIA & DEMOCRACY (2017), https://www.alecexposed.org/images/c/c9/ALEC_on_the_Environment_Final_PDF.pdf [https://perma.cc/2HLK-PW8U]. 218 ALEC’s website includes a page describing its position on climate change under the heading, “Global Climate Change is Inevitable.” ALEC Energy Principles, AM. LEGIS. EXCHANGE COUNCIL, https://www.alec.org/model-policy/alec-energy-principles/ [https://perma.cc/JX8L-FFUL]. 219 For an example, see Brendan Fisher, ALEC Politicians Caught Plagiarizing ALEC Bill, Drafting Error and All, CTR. FOR MEDIA & DEMOCRACY’S PRWATCH (Jul. 7, 2014, at 20:10 ET), https://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/07/12526/alec-politicians-caught-plagiarizing-alec-bill-draftingerror-and-all [https://perma.cc/R274-CA9K]. 220 ALEC IN FLORIDA, COMMON CAUSE 4 (2012). 221 The most recent example is 2025 Essential Policy Solutions, American Legislative Exchange Council. See generally 2025 ESSENTIAL POL’Y SOLS., AM. LEGIS. EXCH. COUNCIL (2025). 222 For analysis of the phenomenon arguing it’s likely unconstitutional, see Benjamin Cramer, Envirodemic: Unconstitutional Restrictions on Environmental Protests From the Attacks of 2001 to the Struggles of 2020, 14 L.J. SOC. JUST. 79, 82–89 (2021). See also Alleen Brown, Oklahoma Governor Signs Anti-Protest Law Imposing Huge Fines on “Conspirator” Organizations, THE INTERCEPT (May 6, 2017), https://www.theintercept.com/2017/05/06/oklahoma-governor-signs-anti-protest-law-imposinghuge-fines-on-conspirator-organizations/ [https://perma.cc/X3JY-PZCR]. 223 See Cramer, supra note 222; Nina Lakhani, Revealed: Rightwing US ...}:
206 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163 or both. In March 2025, a version of the legislation originally proposed by it was introduced in the U.S. Senate.224 B.
:{:{Some Donors and Gifts 1. DOTT Contributions and a Thought Experiment}:
:{:{ Confidentiality prevents researchers from gaining a complete, accurate account of D&O think tanks’ donors and gifts. Time periods are arbitrarily truncated, and tallies of gifts to charities are often lumped together with gifts to § 501(c)(4)s. Journalists usually treat voluntary disclosures as being complete—not realizing they usually are cherry-picked to flatter donors’ reputations.}:
The best research on donors and gifts to DOTTs is Brulle et al.’s Obstructing Action: Foundation Funding and US Climate Change CounterMovement Organizations, published in 2021.225 Brulle and his co-authors tallied annual gifts to nonprofits noted for producing D&O.226 They then correlated the gift totals with the amount of climate denial the entities produced (as a proportion of their total messaging). Looking retrospectively from 2018, the endpoint of their data, the authors concluded that $40 million was the average support annually obtained and directed to climate denial by this cohort. 227
Their key findings can be summarized as follows: 228 • Donors are remarkably concentrated, a small group of private foundations constituting the core funders. The top 1% of donors accounted for 67% of grants; the top 10% of donors accounted for 94% of grants. • Similar concentration obtained at the recipient side: seven DOTTs (5%) received 50% of all grants.
The top three recipients in the second study—AEI, Heritage, and the Hoover 224 See Safe and Secure Transportation of American Energy Act, S. 1017, 119th Congress (2025– 2026). 225 Robert J. Brulle et al., Obstructing Action: Foundation Funding and US Climate Change Counter-Movement Organizations, CLIMATE CHANGE, May 15, 2021, at 1–7 (“to determine the amount and sources of income for the CCCM organizations, IRS data were extracted from both the National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Foundation Center for the period 2003 to 2010. . . .The final sample for analysis consisted of 140 foundations making 5,299 grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations.”).
Unfortunately, the study combines the tallies for § 501(c)(3) and § 501(c)(4) bodies. 226 The cohort of entities studied mostly were think tanks, but some § 501(c)(4)s appear to have been included. 227 Id. The study shows a peak amount of $52 million in 2012. }:}:
...
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 billion230—a sum that refutes the mistaken notion that charitable giving is small dollars, and influential only at the margin. Now for the thought experiment.
Because corporate transactions are often counted in billions, it’s possible that $40 million annually for think tanks’ climate denial and legal obstruction doesn’t sound like a large sum. This would be a mistake. The thought experiment involves computing how many top-of-their field law professors could be employed annually with $40 million. Brian Lieter, a law professor writing regularly on legal education, proposes $200,000 per year as a rough salary estimate for elite professors at top-ranked U.S. law schools.231 Based on that estimate, $40 million would employ two hundred law professors to write climate denial and legal obstruction material full time—sixty hours per week being a rough estimate ...}:
208 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
:{:{of professors’ schedule. In addition, a corps of two hundred D&O-writing law professors would be sufficiently large to place one of them on the faculty of every AALS-affiliated law school in the U.S. 232—constituting a stunningly influential presence.233 Hopefully, this thought experiment makes plain that $40 million could fund a great deal of persuasive denial and legal obstruction by think tanks.}:
2. Some Corporate Donations
:{:{ By law, corporations are obligated to disclose giving to think tanks, and other charities, only in the rarest circumstances. ExxonMobil’s and the Southern Company’s gifts to DOTTs are discussed below, as examples, but even for them the data is sparse and muddy—coming mostly from leaks, investigative journalists, and anecdotal corporate reports. In the case of the Southern, a specialized law, long repealed, was helpful.}:
Giant corporations like ExxonMobil and the Southern routinely invest huge sums in advertising, and also public and government relations. The Introduction mentioned ExxonMobil’s early use of trade associations, including the American Petroleum Association.234 Giving to think tanks supplements these traditional expenditures, while conferring the unique trio of advantages described earlier—donor anonymity, tax subsidized cost, and superior credibility. }:}:
ExxonMobil is estimated to have donated over $33 million to think tanks between 1998 to 2014. 235 The figure is likely misleadingly, however—far too
notes
232 There are 174 member schools and nineteen fee-paying schools in the American Association of Law school ranks. See Member Schools, ASS’N AM. L. SCHS., https://www.aals.org/memberschools/#::text=Founded%20in%201900%2C%20there%20are,Association%20of%20American%20L aw%20Schools [https://perma.cc/Y74C-TU8C]. 233 It’s notable, also, that many of the authors writing for D&O think tanks are part-timers— ”fellows” holding positions analogous to adjunct faculty, with their primary employment being elsewhere. This would “stretch” the amount of D&O content $40 million would pay for. Furthermore, because think tank content is routinely and mostly costlessly reposted to social media, this would also expand the amount of climate denial and legal obstruction in circulation, without adding cost. ...
2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 209
:{:{low—because it’s principally based on the company’s voluntary, effectively unregulated Giving Reports.236}:
The height of ExxonMobil’s DOTT giving likely occurred between 1993 and 2005, when Lee Raymond was CEO.237 Raymond remained an outspoken, unabashed climate denier238—but corporate management knew better. Discovery in recent litigation has revealed the company’s scientists informed management, at least by 1977, that continued combustion of fossil fuels would harm the climate.239
After 2006, the new CEO, Rex Tillerson, led the firm’s climate media strategy. The public saw Tillerson support U.S. participation in the Paris Accord. But behind the scenes, ExxonMobil continued to fund think tanks’ climate denial and legal obstruction, making $6.5 million in contributions between 2008 and 2015.240 In 2023, even the business-friendly Wall Street Journal criticized it for using think tanks “to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and}:
notes
[https://perma.cc/XJ95-JBRS] (“In total, the ExxonSecrets database has found over $33M going to over 60 different organizations since 1998, the year after the Kyoto Protocol was launched. The data is drawn from Exxon’s published “Giving” reports and IRS Form 990s for ExxonMobil Foundation.”); see also BANERJEE ET AL., supra note 2. 236 On the absence of mandatory corporate charitable giving disclosure and motives for corporate philanthropy, see generally Faith Stevelman Kahn, Pandora’s Box: Managerial Discretion and the Problem of Corporate Philanthropy, 44 UCLA L. REV. 579 (1997) (examining the absence of publicly available data on corporate giving and providing legal arguments for law reform mandating public reporting). On the limited exception that had existed, prior to 2005, on account of the Public Utility Holding Company Act, see infra notes 247–249 and accompanying text. 237 For an overview of Exxon’s and other oil companies’ connection with API, and API’s powerful influence on Capitol Hill, see generally Chris McGreal, How a Powerful US Lobby Group Helps Big Oil to Block Climate Action, THE GUARDIAN (Jul. 19, 2021, at 06:00 ET), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/19/big-oil-climate-crisis-lobby-group-api [https://perma.cc/XR24-BMHQ]. 238 STEVE COLL, PRIVATE EMPIRE: EXXONMOBIL AND AMERICAN POWER 81, 83 (2012...
:{:{210 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163 climate change.”241 It has also recently come to light that ExxonMobil funded famous climate contrarian, Dr. Willie Wei-Hock Soon, as discussed infra. 242 Utility companies reliant on fossil fuels have an obvious interest in funding think tank D&O.}:
The Southern Company is one of the largest coalfired utilities in the U.S., based on customer size. The firm and its subsidiaries gave more than $30 million to DOTTs and DOTT-affiliated § 501(c)(4)s between 1993 and 2004.243 As late as 2017, Southern’s CEO Tom Fanning told CNBC there was “no reliable evidence” for carbon dioxide being the principal cause of climate change.244 Although Southern’s advertising boasts of its increased use of cleaner, alternative energy,245 the company remains a top three U.S. greenhouse gas producer.246}:
notes
241 The subtitle of the news report is “Internal Documents Show What the Oil Giant Said Publicly Was Very Different from How it Approached the Issue Privately in the Tillerson Era.” Christopher M. Matthews & Collin Eaton, Inside Exxon’s Strategy to Downplay Climate Change, WALL. ST. J. (Sep. 14, 2023, at 05:30 ET), https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/exxon-climate-change-documentse2e9e6af [https://perma.cc/LRG2-PWDT]. Nevertheless, historically the Journal was far more reluctant, in comparison to other major news outlets, to tie climate change to negative impacts in its news reports. See Lauren Feldman P. Sol Hart & Tijana Milosevic, Polarizing News? Representations of Threat and Efficacy in Leading US Newspapers’ Coverage of Climate Change, 26 PUB. UNDERSTANDING SCI. 481, 493 (May 2017). 242 See infra, Part II.C.1; see also Suzanne Goldenberg, Work of Prominent Climate Change Denier Was Funded by Energy Industry, THE GUARDIAN (Feb. 21, 2015, at 16:32 ET), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/21/climate-change-denier-willie-soon-fundedenergy-industry [https://perma.cc/5S5X-JAJ8]. 243 For a comprehensive account of the Southern’s multi-prong assault on climate change awareness and the growing momentum for climate legal protections, see DAVID ANDERSON, ENERGY & POL’Y INSTITUTE, SOUTHERN COMPANY KNEW 22 (2022) (“For this report, the Energy and Policy Institute conducted a new review of annual U5S and U-13-60 reports that Southern Company was required to file with the SEC from 1993 through 2004. The annual reports included itemized lists of Southern Company’s political expenditures, donations, and money paid for outside services.”). In total, there were $62 million in expenditures; the Energy and Policy Institute collected and posted them to an online spread sheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSbMJ9kClHudrFyp954lccYmkJElVIh9VlVeOzmfm0ZmqJHaaYKrEBms5AejB3aC9AQi9dcA1zGNfH/pubhtml. The Southern also paid $32 million to for-profit lobbyists and PR firms for D&O in these years. Id. at 33 (describing how the VP of PR at a Southern affiliate also served as the president of the ICE campaign; that Southern Company pledged $125,000 to the ICE campaign, and how its polling recommended its campaign target “older, less-educated” males with radio ads, including ones from the Rush Limbaugh Show). 244 Matthew J. Belvedere, Like the New EPA Chief, Southern Company’s CEO Doesn’t See CO2 As Main Reason for Climate Change, CNBC (Mar. 28, 2017, at 12:29 ET), https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/28/like-the-new-epa-chief-southern-companys-ceo-doesnt-see-co2-asmain-reason-for-climate-change.html [https://perma.cc/9444-7RSY] . 245 For Big Oil and Gas, Greenwashing Is the New Climate Denial, EARTHJUSTICE (Oct. 13...
:{:{2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 211}:
Prior to 2005, Southern’s donations to charities, including DOTTs, were a matter of public record. Such disclosures were mandated by the Public Utility Holding Company Act.247 The SEC’s widely applicable S-K corporate disclosures do not require such corporate reporting.248 Hence, when PUHCA was repealed in 2005, Southern’s contributions disclosures ceased.249 Its filings showed contributions to American Council for Capital Formation, ALEC, the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Federalist Society, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, and the Independent Women’s Foundation250—all D&O think tanks.
We know also that the Southern, too, was also a principal funder of Dr. Soon’s contrarian climate research.251 The history of Southern’s early knowledge and denial of climate change is analogous to ExxonMobil’s. For example, in 1991, Southern funded a national PR campaign by the Information Council on the Environment featuring the rhetorical question, “Who told you the earth was warming . . . Chicken Little?” above an image of a cartoon chicken.252 Roughly two-thirds of the above cited $30 million went to the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), a § 501(c)(4).253
EEI was part of funding the (earlier mentioned) campaign to “reposition global warming as theory.”254 More recently, it lobbied against 247 Public Utility Holding Company Act, 15 U.S.C. § 79 to 79(z)-6 (2000). 248 17 C.F.R. § 229 (1982). 249 It was repealed by The Energy Policy Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-58, 119 Stat. 594 (2005), codified in 16 U.S.C. §824p(a) (2005). 250 PUHCA mandated utilities report gifts via annual forms U5S and U-13-60. 251 Anderson, Kasper, & Pomerantz, infra note 252, at 56–58; see, e.g., Kert Davies, Willie Soon Harvard Smithsonian Documents Reveal Southern Company Scandal, CLIMATE INVESTIGATIONS CTR. (Feb. 21, 2015), https://www.climateinvestigations.org/willie-soon-harvard-smithsonian-documentsreveal-southern-company-scandal/ [https://perma.cc/27E5-7SJB] (creating links to the underlying documentation yielded by the FOIA request); see infra notes 330–332 and accompanying text.}:
also supr and ores...
212 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
:{:{the Biden Administration’s plan to speed the transition to greener energy.255 Notably, EEI has an affiliated think tank—the Edison Foundation for Electric Innovation. (Their connection is noted for the first time here, as reflected in searchable records, at least.) Although the think tank maintains a website, it presents no details about its educational programs.}:
And it describes the board of trustees as comprised of electric company CEOs—which doesn’t foster confidence in its educational bona fides.256 3. Some Private Foundations As grantmakers, private foundations are an exception to the rule of confidentiality. Tax law requires private foundations to itemize their grants in searchable Form 990-PFs.257 But foundations increasingly are avoiding such transparency through the use of charitable funds managers, called “donor advised funds” (DAFs). 258 If they employ a DAF, foundations need only disclose the DAF as the recipient, not the ultimate charitable beneficiary.
Nor does the DAF need to report where the gifts go, because the DAF itself is not a private foundation. In sum, where DAFs manage private foundations’ giving, there is no longer a public record of the ultimate charitable recipients of their grants.259 In just this way, the foundation namesakes of the Kochs, Scaifes, Mellons, DeVoses, Bradleys, Popes, Coors, now Elon Musk,}:
notes
260 and major 255 Nichola Groom & Valerie Volcovici, Top US Utility Group Opposes Emissions Plan for Existing Gas Plants, REUTERS (Aug. 1, 2023, at 11:35 ET), https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/top-us-utility-group-opposes-emissions-planexisting-gas-plants-source-2023-08-01/ [https://perma.cc/JYH5-3U62]. See generally Kirkland, supra note 252. 256 About the Institute for Electric Innovation, EDISON FOUND., https://www.edisonfoundation.net/ [https://perma.cc/W6RP-JDT5]. 257 Private foundations are required to file Form 990-PF, Return of Private Foundation, annually with the IRS. This document is subject to public inspection and includes a complete list of grants made during the year, including the recipient’s name and address, the grant amount, and the grant purpose. 258 The Pension Protection Act formally recognized DAFs as charitable giving vehicles, putting an end to questions of the legitimacy of DAFs. Section 4966(d)(2)(A) of the I.R.C. defines a DAF for tax purposes. Further regulations for DAFs are likely. See generally Alexander L. Reid et al., Proposed Regulations Define Donor Advised Funds, 41 J. TAX’N INV. 47 (2024). For in-depth analysis of the cutting-edge of modern philanthropy practices, see generally DANA BRAKMAN REISER & STEVEN A....
2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 213
:{:{corporations’ foundations are able to make anonymous gifts to § 501(c)(3)s.261 And the size of DAF-intermediated giving is enormous. The 2023 Form 990 for Donor’s Trust—the most significant DAF for our purposes—shows (outgoing) donations of $358 million for that year.}:
And although we cannot see the recipients, because Donors’ Trust markets itself as an ally of conservative/libertarian causes, we should presume that DOTTs are well represented among them.262 Indeed, tax law favors foundations’ giving to think tanks, because they are § 501(c)(3)s, over giving to more politically deregulated nonprofits, like § 501(c)(4)s.
This is because foundations face excise taxes if their grants underwrite beneficiaries’ political activities.263 Because the presumption has been that think tanks, as charities, undertake little or no political activities, “expenditure responsibility” doesn’t apply when foundations give to them.264 Hence, giving to politicized think tanks enables foundations to accomplish goals they otherwise could not, at least without greater expense and administrative burden.265
There is some public information about private foundations’ giving— principally because foundations’ use of DAFs has become widespread only recently.266 For example, the Searle Freedom Trust’s Form 990 for 2018 (available online) includes an itemized list of its grantees, including DOTTs. The Trust made contributions of $6.55 million to DOTTs for that year. The }:
214 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
:{:{long list of think tank grantees appears in the footnote accompanying this text.267 For 2019, the Bradley Foundation made DOTT donations of more than $2 million. Recipients included Cato, CEI, the CO2 Coalition, Heritage, TPPN, and ALEC.268 The Sarah Scaife Foundation has also made large gifts to DOTTs. Its Form 990 for 2021 shows just under $8 million going to them.}:
The DOTTs that received Scaife Foundation grants are virtually identical to the ones that received Searle Foundation grants, described above.269 Jane Mayer, in Dark Money, and Brulle et al., quoted supra, highlight the Koch, Scaife, Pope, DeVos, Bradley, Searle, Davis, John Templeton, Dunn, and Smith Richardson foundations’ large gifts to politicized think tanks.270
But the Koch family foundations, under the direction of Charles and David Koch principally, have outstripped the others in terms of the size and influence of their DOTT giving. Greenpeace’s investigative unit found that between 1997 and 2018, Koch-affiliated foundations gave more than $145.5 million to 90 nonprofits, including DOTTs.271 Indeed, Charles and David Kochs’ network of foundations, think tanks, §501(c)(4)s, and university programs remains unparalleled. 272 Its growth, 267
Gifts are listed in thousands: Buckeye Institute ($350), Cato ($400), CO2 Coalition ($75), CEI ($65), Federalist Society ($400), Fraser Institute ($125), Heritage Foundation ($300), Hoover Institution ($50), Hudson ($150), Manhattan Institute ($700), Mercatus Center ($550), Pacific Research Institute ($175), PragerU Foundation ($150), Property and Environmental Research Center ($331), Reason Foundation ($905), State Policy Network ($1,180), Texas Public Policy Foundation ($225).
See Form 990 Searle Freedom Trust (2018), https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6956376-Searle-FreedomTrust-2018-990/ [https://perma.cc/D8GE-EZ27]. 268 Waldman, supra note 261
(“Fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, the foundations have supported groups that worked with the Trump White House to roll back vehicle emissions standards and to ease restrictions on power plant pollution and water protections, public tax filings show. They have quietly funded presidential advisers who worked to conduct a hostile White House review of climate science and to restrict EPA’s use of scientific research when crafting public health protections.”).
The money would not exclusively funded D&O, but environmental law and regulations are a favorite target of the Foundation. See also Lee Bergquist, Bradley Foundation Helps Fund Groups Opposing Climate Regulation, J. SENTINEL (May 17, 2017), https://projects.jsonline.com/news/2017/5/17/bradleyfoundation-helps-fund-groups-opposing-climate-regulation.html [https://perma.cc/YT94-J7K8]. 269 Gifts are listed in thousands: Acton ($275), AEI ($ 1,450), ALEC ($100), Atlas [Economic Research] Foundation/Fund ($120), Buckeye ($185), Cato ($180), CO2 Coalition ($200), C-FACT ($160), CEI ($450), Federalist Society ($350), Fraser ($60), FreedomWorks Foundation ($275), Heartland ($200), Heritage ($1300), Hudson Institution ($580), Institute for Energy Research ($80), Manhattan Institute ($570), Mercatus ($350), National Center for Public Policy Research ($80), Pacific Research Institute ($250), Reason Foundation ($300). See Sarah Scaife Foundation, Form 990 (2021), }:
p 54 215
:{:{scale, and effectiveness became so striking that it earned the nickname “the Kochtopus” in the media. Richard Fink—a former economics professor who rose to become a senior Koch adviser—had presented an essay to the brothers prefiguring this kind of novel, transformational entity.273 Published in 1996, and inspired by Hayek’s writings on institutions and social progress,274 the essay became known as The Structure of Social Change. 275}:
Charles and David nurtured this network of wealthy foundations and politicized nonprofits as a lifelong preoccupation.276 4. Giving by Wealthy Individuals While there are glimmers of information, this Article uncovered no definitive public records of natural persons’ gifts to DOTTs. For example, based on public statements, it’s impossible to distinguish between wealthy individuals’ pledges and gifts to be paid from their affiliated family foundations.
The same is true for CEOs. It’s often impossible to distinguish when the public pledges they make are individual commitments versus gifts to be paid by their companies (at the CEO’s behest, perhaps). Still, there are reasons to believe wealthy Americans have increased their giving to ideologically oriented think tanks in recent decades. The larger and increasingly concentrated share of wealth held by the richest Americans 2019 alone, the Charles Koch Foundation donated more than $112 million to 225 distinct campuses and campus-rooted think tanks.
See INCREASED FUNDING, INCREASED INFLUENCE, KOCH UNIVERSITY FUNDING UPDATE, 2005–2019, UNKOCH MY CAMPUS (May 2021); see also Koch Foundation Buys Academic Slots, NAT’L COAL. AGAINST CENSORSHIP (Nov. 13, 2014), https://www.ncac.org/fepparticles/koch-foundation-buys-academic-slots [https://perma.cc/U4YD-ZGZH]. 273 For additional commentary on Fink’s treatise and the Kochtopus, see Ben Jervey, Documents Show Koch Network’s ‘Structure of Social Change’ in Action, DESMOG (Aug. 19, 2019), https://www.desmog.com/2019/08/19/kochs-americans-prosperity-structure-social-change/ [https://perma.cc/J4R5-K5UX]. 274 For a scholarly discussion of the nexus between large scale philanthropy and social movements, including discussion of the Kochs, Richard Fink and Fink’s intellectual indebtedness to Hayek, see Timothy Wyman-McCarthy, In Search of the Political: How Social Movements Enter Liberal Social Change Projects 124–26 (Sept. 2023) (Ph.D. Dissertation, U.C. Berkeley) . 275 Fink’s essay was published in Philanthropy Magazine, Winter 1996, under the title, “From Ideas to Action: The Role of Universities, Think Tanks, and Activist Groups.”}:
...gap
:{:{earlier). And David (again) was not only a co-founder of Citizens for a Sound Economy, but also a former vice presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party. Beyond their ideological commitments, the brothers’ stakes in Koch Industries gave them enormous financial incentives to give to DOTTs.}:
Based on data from 2022, Koch Industries ranked twenty-third among U.S. corporate producers of direct greenhouse gas emissions.283 Charles and the heirs to David’s estate, collectively, own more than 80% of the company’s stock—a stake estimated to be worth over $110 billion. 284 Furthermore, Charles made an express public declaration of his intention to continue his philanthropic giving posthumously.285
He has pledged $5.3 billion of Koch Industries stock to two ideologically-partisan § 501(c)(4)s he established for this purpose.286 The same is true of billionaire Barre Seid—he made a gift of stock worth $1.65 billion to a new § 501(c)(4), Marble Freedom Trust, that he created.287 Leonard Leo, made famous by his leadership of the Federalist Society, was appointed to be Marble Trust’s sole trustee.288 In sum, although the information is incomplete, there are strong indications that wealthy individuals are making, and have for many years made enormous gifts to ideologically partisan nonprofits, including DOTTs.}:
218 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
:{:{C. Ways and Means DOTTs Have Achieved Influence 1.}:
Using Scientists to Refute Climate Science A dozen or so scientists have formed the tip of the spear of think tanks’ climate denial.289 Patrick Michaels290 and Richard Lindzen291 were mentioned above. But apart from Lindzen, peer review publications by this cohort are sparse. And few of them had positions as full-time academic scientists, at least in relevant fields. These factors made them more beholden to D&O think tanks for speaking events, publicity, and/or funding. They also formed an insular group—often meeting and presenting alongside one another at DOTT events.292 One of the most prominent scientists in this group was Dr. “Willie” Wei-Hock Soon;
Soon’s career is discussed in depth here because it is in many respects exemplary. Dr. Soon received a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from USC in 1991.293 Shortly thereafter he moved to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).294 The Harvard name gave Soon leverage in obtaining
NOTES
289 See generally ORESKES & CONWAY, supra note 163 (describing the careers of Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, Frederick Seitz, S. Fred Singer, Sherwood Idso, William Happer, and Freeman Dyson, the most prominent members of this cohort other than Dr. Soon); DAVID LIPSKY, THE PARROT AND THE IGLOO (2024) (discussing the careers of S. Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz). Seitz became a climate denier after an illustrious career that included serving as president of Rockefeller University). For an updated account of prominent climate denier scientists, and where they received support, see Maxine Joselow, He Won a Nobel Prize. Then He Started Denying Climate Change., WASH. POST (Nov. 16, 2023), https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/11/16/john-clauser-nobel-climate-denial/ [https://perma.cc/EZV3-45QT] (discussing John F. Clauser as well as Will Happer, Richard Lindzen, and Willie Soon). 290 For a description of Patrick Michaels’s career, see supra note 150. 291 While at MIT, Lindzen maintained affiliations with Cato, Heartland, and the CO2 Coalition (previously the Marshall Institute). Lindzen’s views on climate change provoked criticism from his peers. After he authored a public letter to then-President Trump, urging U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Accord, twenty-two of his MIT colleagues authored an open letter to the university’s president, expressing their disagreement with his views. Zahra Hirji, Climate Contrarian Gets Fact-Checked by MIT Colleagues in Open Letter to Trump, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS (Mar. 6, 2017), https://www.insideclimatenews.org/news/06032017/climate-change-denial-scientists-richard-lindzenmit-donald-trump/ [https://perma.cc/X8EP-Q8K5] (“The MIT staff addressed specific inaccuracies in Lindzen’s letter, including his assertion that ‘carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.’”). 292 For a review of the evolving, but consistently overwhelming, consensus about human causation and accelerating warming in Earth’s temperatures, see generally John Cook et al., Consensus on Consensus: A Synthesis of Consensus Estimates Human-Caused Global Warming, ENV’T RSCH. LETTERS, Apr. 2016, at 1; Cook et al., supra note 21, at 1....}:
LOTS ON WILLIE I DL 4/14/26
2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 219
DOTT sponsorships.295 And promoting Soon as a “Harvard scientist” who
rejected that human behavior principally was causing climate change
benefited the DOTTs’ credibility, too.296 However, some obfuscation was
involved in this, because CfA is not formally part of Harvard University.297
CfA’s lack of university affiliation also highlights that Soon’s career wasn’t
governed by formal academic practices and standards like tenure and peer
review, for example.
Dr. Soon became embroiled in two controversies. The first was a hugely
public peer review controversy. It was described in detail in the Chronicle
for Higher Education298 and in an essay written by an editor who left the
journal at issue.299 To elaborate, in 2003, the journal Climate Research
published a paper on climate change co-authored by Dr. Soon and a
colleague, Dr. Sally Balunias.300 Technically the paper was a literature
review. Nevertheless, its conclusion was that, “[a]cross the world, many
records reveal that the [twentieth] century is probably not the warmest nor a
uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium.” It also observed
NOTES
295 Goldenberg, supra note 240 (“In the relatively small universe of climate denial Soon, with his
Harvard-Smithsonian credentials, was a sought-after commodity. He was cited admiringly by Senator
James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who famously called global warming a hoax. He was called to
testify when Republicans in the Kansas state legislature tried to block measures promoting wind and solar
power. The Heartland Institute, a hub of climate denial, gave Soon a courage award.”).
296 For an example where the Harvard name was mentioned at the event, see David Hasemyer, A
Weak Link to Harvard-Smithsonian Gave Star Power to Climate Contrarian Willie Soon, INSIDE CLIMATE
NEWS (Mar. 4, 2015), https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04032015/weak-link-harvard-smithsonian-
gave-star-power-climate-contrarian-willie-soon/ [https://perma.cc/MWY7-GYQP] (“‘The audience ate
up what Soon had to say,’ said Mulkey, who described the group as pro-industry. ‘It’s like, here’s this
Harvard scientist telling us all the other scientists are lying to us.’”). Paul Basken,...
04 – [Vol. 20:163
that, “[o]verall, the [twentieth] century does not contain the warmest anomaly
of the past millennium in most of the proxy records, which have been
sampled world-wide.”301 In 2003, given expert climate scientists’ confidence
in anthropogenic climate change, this was a radical conclusion.
The research paper, accordingly, immediately garnered vocal
publicity—negative and positive. Several scientists cited in it vocally
objected their data had been misrepresented.302 Others declared the paper’s
methodology was fundamentally flawed. Thirteen climate scientists
published a detailed public rebuttal.303 Yet in July 2003, on the positive side,
Senator James Inhofe waved a copy aloft on the Senate floor—declaring,
“The 1,000-year climate study that the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics has compiled is a powerful new work of science.”304 He had its
conclusions—casting doubt on anthropogenic climate change—entered into
:{:{the Congressional record.305}:
But this was not the last word. Climate}:
Research’s incoming Editor-in-Chief resigned in acknowledgment of the
research’s flaws and the flawed peer review process. Then three more
members of Climate Research’s ten-member editorial board resigned.306
Finally, the managing director of the journal’s parent company issued a mea
culpa for publishing the article.307 Hence, even for Soon, because producing
peer review climate (denial) science was nearly impossible, ongoing support
from the DOTTs became crucial...
2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 221
The second controversy involved money—undisclosed financial
conflicts behind Dr. Soon’s research funding.308 Some background is
necessary to understand the financial conflicts story. CfA did not pay Dr.
Soon directly. As was true of a minority of CfA’s other scientists, his
continued employment depended on obtaining external grants.309 Unlike the
common pattern in which CfA scientists obtained grants from NASA and the
National Science Foundation, however, Soon’s funding almost exclusively
came from wealthy private patrons.310 Later discovered grant contracts show
donations made by ExxonMobil,311 the Southern Company,312 the Charles G.
Koch Charitable Foundation,313 the Texaco and Mobil Foundations, the
notes
308 It was later disclosed that CfA did not have a conflicts of interest policy at the time. David
Hasemeyer, Smithsonian Gives Nod to More ‘Dark Money’ Funding for Willie Soon, INSIDE CLIMATE
NEWS (Apr. 5, 2016), https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05042016/willie-soon-climate-change-
contrarian-harvard-smithsonian-donors-trust-dark-money/ [https://perma.cc/CR92-U7HY] (“The
Smithsonian Institution’s new transparency policy hasn’t kept prominent climate contrarian Wei-Hock
‘Willie’ Soon from reeling in $65,000 in ‘dark money’ to fund a secret research project.”).
309 Id. (illuminating funding channels); see also Kert Davies, Willie Soon Scandal: Topics for
Smithsonian Inspector General, CLIMATE INVESTIGATIONS CTR. (Feb. 25, 2015),
https://climateinvestigations.org/willie-soon-scandal-topics-for-smithsonian-institution/
[https://perma.cc/YE6V-R9N3]; Hasemyer, supra at note 308 (“Though employed by the prestigious
institution, Soon had to attract outside funding for his research and entire salary to keep his job.”).
310 Formally, CfA was the recipient, but the grants were earmarked for Soon’s researc...
222 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
Electric Power Research Institute,314 Donors Trust,315 and the American
Petroleum Institute.316 At least one of the contracts expressly provided that
the donor was to remain confidential.317 Leaving aside two grants from the
Mount Wilson Observatory, after about 2002, virtually all Dr. Soon’s funding
came from fossil fuel-linked sources.318 This information about Soon’s
funding was uncovered only by extraordinary effort and luck. Kert Davies, a
respected climate investigative reporter, made a successful Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request319 based on CfA’s link to the Smithsonian
Institute, a government affiliated body. After Soon’s funding contracts at CfA
became public, the New York Times reported that the donors named above...
notes
314 Vidal, supra note 311 (“Documents provided to Greenpeace by the Smithsonian under the US
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show that the Charles G. Koch Foundation, a leading provider of
funds for climate sceptic groups, gave Soon two grants totaling $175,000 (then roughly £102,000) in
2005/6 and again in 2010. In addition, the American Petroleum Institute (API), which represents the US
petroleum and natural gas industries, gave him multiple grants between 2001 and 2007 totaling $274,000,
oil company Exxon Mobil provided $335,000 between 2005 and 2010, and Soon received other grants
from coal and oil industry sources including the Mobil Foundation, the Texaco Foundation and the Electric
Power Research Institute.”).
315 Hasemeyer, supra note 308 (“Since 2011, the 50-year-old Soon has received nearly $389,000
from Donors Trust, and his only current grants are from Donors Trust. Presently, he is working on a project
as part of a $209,864 Donors Trust Grant he won in 2013. He also has applied for another Donors Trust
grant of $53,527, according to Harvard-Smithsonian records.”).
316 Goldenberg, supra note 242 (“Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-
Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company,
the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, the
documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings show.”)...
2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 223
channeled over $1.2 million to him between 2001 and 2011.320 The sum was
later raised to $1.5 million. 321
It’s crucial to realize that DOTT-backed contrarian scientists were not
contesting fine points of mainstream climate research; rather, they
fundamentally dismissed it. Dr. Soon’s statements quoted below are
representative. He claimed his work demonstrated that CO2 emissions were
not the primary cause of climate change.322 (It did not.) He asserted that more
atmospheric CO2 would benefit living organisms.323 Without evidence, he
accused the IPCC scientist Michael Mann of falsifying his data.324 At a
Heartland panel, in September 2019, Dr. Soon said, “There is no such thing
as a climate catastrophe, these people are talking nonsense. It’s unbelievable
that we have to answer all this craziness.”325 In August 2018, at a presentation
entitled “The Global Warming, Climate Change Hoax,” he told an audience
of young people that CO2 is “merely a bit player” in climate change.
Elsewhere he asserted that “[n]o experimental data exists supporting the view
that the Earth’s climate is anomalous or changing in a dangerous manner.”326
Also in 2018, he co-signed a public letter addressed to the Board of the
Museum of Natural History stating, “It is quite likely that future generations
will benefit from the enrichment of Earth’s atmosphere with more carbon
dioxide.”327 Along with Lindzen, Soon signed a 2017 public letter urging...
notes
320 Gillis & Schwartz, supra note 313 (“He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from
the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his
scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least
eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his
work.”).
321 Kert Davies, Willie Soon Scandal: Corporate Funding Year by Year, CLIMATE
INVESTIGATIONS CTR. (Feb. 27, 2015), https://climateinvestigations.org/willie-soon-scandal-corporate-
funding-year-by-year/ [https://perma.cc/RK9B-FKEC].
322 Willie Soon, It’s the Sun, Stupid!, ICEAGENOW (Mar. 5, 2009), https://archive.is/Zwg6q.
[https://perma.cc/5RL...
224 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Accord.328 Soon was also a
founding member of Climate Exit, a group urging that the “world must
abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade.”329
The DOTTs had a principal role in supporting Dr. Soon’s public career.
Soon held the position of senior scientist at the Marshall Institute.330
Heartland’s website lists Dr. Soon, still, as a policy advisor.331 Soon regularly
spoke at Heartland’s annual contrarian conferences, including in 2019, 2018,
2017, 2015, 2014, 2012, 2009, and 2008.332 In a co-authored op-ed in the
Wall Street Journal, Soon referred to himself as the chief science researcher
at the Center for Science and Public Policy.333 The latter think tank’s
webpage still lists Dr. Soon as its chief science advisor.334 In 2016, Dr. Soon
spoke at an energy conference sponsored by Heritage and TPPF, which they
billed as the “premier energy and climate policy event in America.”335 In
2020, Soon appeared in C-FACT’s documentary, Climate Hustle 2: Rise of
the Climate Monarchy.336 In 2018, in California climate litigation, Dr. Soon
served as the climate science expert in an amicus brief filed by Heartland to
give the court a “climate tutorial.”337 Dr. Soon contributed to the Institute for
notes
328 See Petition, Lindzen Attachment (Feb. 23, 2017), https://www.desmog.com/wp-
content/uploads/files/Climate%20denier%20Paris%20withdrawal%20petition.pdf
[https://perma.cc/3TEB-VH8V] (claiming it had 300 eminent scientist signatories, but upon inspection,
that assertion was largely bogus).
329 After Brexit, Clexit, CLEXIT.NET (Aug. 1, 2016),
https://web.archive.org/web/20160804173707/http://clexit.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/clexit.pdf
[https://perma.cc/33BZ-MWUM] (“If the Paris climate accord is ratified, or enforced locally by compliant
governments, it will strangle the leading economies of the world with pointless carbon taxes and costly
climate and energy policies, all with no sound basis in evidence or science.”); see also CLEXIT.NET, LIST
OF CLEXIT MEMBERS, http://clexit.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/clexit-members.pdf.
330 Willie Soon, INDEP. INST., https://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=4035
[https://perma.cc/T3AB-5M5P].
331 Willie Soon, HEARTLAND INST., https://heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/willie-soon/
[https://perma.cc/CS4M-KVZ...
2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 225
Public Affair’s book, Climate Change: The Facts 2017.338 Despite its claim
to being authoritative, the book included only contrarians’ writings.339 In
2016, Dr. Soon participated in Freedom Force International’s 3rd Congress,
titled Global-Warming: An Inconvenient Lie.340 Also in 2016, he was the
opening presenter at a three-day conference sponsored by Doctors for
Disaster Preparedness, an affiliate of the Oregon Institute for Science and
Medicine.341 In 2015, Dr. Soon was a featured speaker at a Heartland, C-
FACT, and CEI “counter-conference” to the UN’s COP21.342 A video of the
proceedings was reposted to Heartland’s website under the heading “Stop the
Climate Treaty.”343 In 2014, Heartland critiqued the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment
climate report—Soon excoriated the findings as inaccurate.344 In 2013, a
subsidiary of C-FACT sponsored Dr. Soon’s participation in a college
campus speaking tour across the Midwest.345 Publicity for the tour
inaccurately referred to him as a “Harvard” astrophysicist.
In sum, the DOTTs leveraged the most effective way to attack the
accuracy of climate science. In order to undercut the public will for climate
protective law reforms, they used contrarian scientists to muddy public
understanding. After the late 2010s, when the science demonstrating
anthropogenic climate change had become virtually irrefutable, the
contrarians became less useful to the DOTTs. Instead of denial, many DOTTs
switched to climate legal obstruction.
notes
338 Willie Soon & Sallie Baliunas, A Brief Review of the Sun-Climate Connection, With New
Insight Concerning Water Vapor, in CLIMATE CHANGE: THE FACTS 2017 163 (Jennifer Marohasy, ed.,...
226 FIU Law Review [Vol. 20:163
- Think Tanks’ Websites
During the period of this research, climate denial and legal obstruction
material was posted on the website of every DOTT discussed herein. Indeed,
think tanks’ websites are currently the most effective medium for spreading
D&O. In addition to publishing original content, they provide a springboard
for recirculating D&O online, especially via social media. A sampling of
DOTT websites was presented supra. Among them were Pielke’s posts at
AEI; Marc Morano’s ClimateDepot posts at C-FACT; the Fueling Freedom
materials at TPPF; and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (available
online).
Three additional examples are presented here to reinforce that the
process is ongoing.
• Heartland’s President James Taylor is featured in a July 2024
video, posted on its website, entitled What Climate Alarmists
Are Hiding from You.346 Its preface states, “To keep the public
panicked about climate change, alarmists in the media and
government need to hide from you the actual facts and data
about the earth’s climate.” While he condemns the veracity of
modern climate science, Taylor himself has no advanced
science training.347
• C-FACT’s website hosts a series called, “Climate Fact Check,”
presented in a dual-column format. An entry from June 2024,
presented a Washington Post article summarizing science
research on increasing extreme wildfires.348 In the opposite
column, C-FACT’s post claimed that the Post’s article is false
and presents a different science article—as if it demonstrated
the truth.349 But scrutinizing the two science articles, it becomes...
2025] Uncharitable Think Tanks 227
clear they address complementary but different subjects, and are
not conflicting. Hence, C-FACT’s post wrongly accused the
Post’s article of being inaccurate and was itself false.
• Based at Stanford University, the Hoover Institution is an elite,
multi-issue, conservative think tank that publishes substantial
D&O. Beginning in 2024, and through at least June 2025,
Hoover’s website featured an essay by NYU law professor,
Richard Epstein, entitled A Climate Change Emergency?.350
The essay’s subtitle states, “There simply is no evidence of an
impending climate emergency.” Epstein’s post opens with a
note of reasonable skepticism (“We should therefore proceed
with caution . . .”), but his conclusion (“there is no evidence of
a climate emergency”) is unabashed denial. While he is a giant
in the law and economics movement, Epstein has no advanced
science training.351
- Mass Market Books
Mass market books are excellent channels for spreading D&O.
Inexpensive and ubiquitous, such books typically undergo no fact-checking.
(This is true for websites, too, of course.352) Sociologists Riley Dunlap and
Peter Jacques have documented think tanks’ role in funding and/or publishing
the bulk of D&O books.353 Their first study, covering the 1990s to 2005,
found that of 141 climate denial popular books surveyed, 92% were
published by a DOTT or had an author or editor affiliated with one.354 The
second study, covering 2000 to 2010, showed a slight reduction in think tan...
school textbooks...
---
February 5, 2025 tpm
*This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
In his first few days back in office, President Donald Trump engaged in a whirlwind of executive actions, from exiting the World Health Organization, to deploying military personnel and National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Many of these actions are unprecedented. Some appear to be illegal and unconstitutional, according to legal experts and judges. But none of them should come as a surprise — nearly all of them were outlined in 2022 in a plan called Project 2025.
A Heritage Foundation representative attends a Moms for Liberty National Summit in Washington on Aug. 30, 2024. Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images
Project 2025 is top of Trump’s to-do list
Project 2025 is a multifaceted strategy to advance conservative policies in the federal government. Part of this effort revolves around the “Mandate for Leadership,” a 922-page document published in April 2023 that outlines a slew of proposed governmental policy changes.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and advocacy group, organized the collaborative effort. A long list of other right-leaning research organizations and interest groups, like Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA, also participated in Project 2025.
In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Project 2025 participants wrote on the plan’s website that “to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left,” they would “need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.”
In my research on think tanks, I’ve investigated how these research organizations can influence public policymaking. The most potent strategy is to ally with a political party and support its objectives through research and advocacy. This is exactly what the Heritage Foundation has done via Project 2025.
Even though Trump said during his 2024 campaign that he was not affiliated with the project, evidence of Project 2025’s agenda can be seen throughout the beginning of his second term — as well as in his first administration.
For example, on Jan. 20, 2025, Trump echoed the plan’s statement that “men and women are biological realities” when he signed an executive order that, in part, recognizes “two sexes, male and female” that are “not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” This order led to the removal of transgender references from government websites.
Other orders are similarly aligned with Project 2025. Take Trump’s executive order that, in part, eliminated the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, or OFCCP, a government office previously charged with ensuring companies working with the government did not discriminate against any employees. Project 2025 recommended, quite simply, to “eliminate OFCCP.”
Some news reports have found that there are already many other examples of Trump policy decisions and executive orders that appear to mirror Project 2025 recommendations.
One CNN analysis from Jan. 31 found that more than two-thirds of the 53 executive orders Trump issued during his first week in office “evoked proposals outlined in [the] ‘Mandate for Leadership.‘”
Heritage Foundation’s decades of activism
Project 2025’s influence on Trump reflects the Heritage Foundation’s growing importance to the Republican Party.
In my forthcoming book about the polarization and politicization of policy research organizations, I show the many ways that think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have become embedded within partisan networks and intimately connected to politicians. Increasingly, Heritage and other partisan-aligned think tanks, including progressive groups like the Center for American Progress, use their research to consistently support partisan agendas that align with their policy goals.
The relationship between the Heritage Foundation and the GOP represents the most extreme version of this dynamic. The think tank has supported Republican presidents as far back as Ronald Reagan, using another policy document — also called the “Mandate for Leadership” — to secure significant policy gains through his administration. But the symbiosis between the Heritage Foundation and the GOP has been particularly notable since Trump gained more influence in the party.
At the start of Trump’s first term, as one Heritage Foundation researcher told me in 2017, the think tank recognized that the “administration didn’t have much policy depth, so when they won the election they were sort of like, ‘Now what do we do?’ And that’s where Heritage comes in. … We work on these issues year-round, so we’ll stand by your side.”
The Heritage Foundation also vetted potential staffers for federal government positions. This led to more than 66 Heritage employees or former employees working for the Trump administration by the middle of 2018.
But Heritage has not entirely dictated Trump’s agenda. While the group did say that Trump “embraced 64 percent of our 321 recommendations” by the end of 2017, the think tank has also revamped its agenda to align with Trump on the issues he cared most about, like trade and culture wars.
As the think tank’s president, Kevin Roberts, said in 2024, Heritage views its job as “institutionalizing Trumpism.”...
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Think Tanks: Successful b/c established themselves as a "counter- intelligentsia" as credible as academia and science, in fact sometimes treated by media as “independent experts,” thus more credible.
Functions 1) Writing policy, white papers, studies (often by economists, purportedly/ pseudo- empirical: cost-benefit, risk assessment)
2) Training (at least in terms of communication strategy) and providing experts for hearings and media (e.g., F. Singer)
3) Sponsoring conferences (e.g., Heartland: networking, prestige, an end-run around scientific peer review and a counter to legitimate scientific and international conferences)
4) Publishing books, digital media, and newspaper editorials
5) Providing a “pension plan” for ex-politicians
6) Orientations/ position papers for new legislators/judges
7) Bringing lawsuits, alone or in concert
8) Laundering money and information.
---
all big CTT ~ Comments to SEC on ESG rule: comments from acc chem, AEI, AFP, API, cato, cei heartland etc CTT, CoC, co2 coalition, conoco phillips, enbridge, inst for free speech, heritage, nam, NMA, noia, lifepowered TPPF, WEA western energy? US oil and gas
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2/16 no nice grfx
https://www.mediamatters.org/koch-brothers/new-book-exposes-koch-brothers-guide-infiltrating-media
...A key element of the Koch brothers' strategy is influencing the media. Through media, they have advanced their political and ideological goals and attacked those who stand in their way. The Koch brothers and their network have paid conservative media figures to promote their message, bankrolled front groups that run aggressive anti-environmental media campaigns, and even created their own right-wing “news” outlets. Meanwhile, they've garnered some favorable mainstream media coverage by tightly controlling reporter access to their summits and other events, while attacking and otherwise intimidating journalists who dare to shine a light on their activities.
Here is how the Koch brothers and their network have infiltrated the media:
Buying A Conservative Media Echo Chamber
Creating Their Own Media Outlets
Funding Front Groups That Run Deceptive Media Campaigns
Tightly Controlling Reporter Access To Their Events And Activities
Intimidating Journalists Who Seek To Uncover Their True Agenda
“Instead of earning the media, they were paying for it.”
This is how former Republican Rep. Dick Armey of Texas described the activities of the Koch front group he once chaired. Indeed, Mayer lays out several ways that Koch-backed front groups have spent money to create a “national echo chamber” in the conservative media. Most notably, she highlights two Koch-backed organizations that directly paid conservative pundits to promote the Koch agenda on air.
The first group is FreedomWorks, which originated from the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy. Mayer reported that FreedomWorks “quietly cemented a deal” in 2011 with Glenn Beck, who was a Fox News host at the time. Beck read “embedded content” written by FreedomWorks staff in exchange for an annual payment “that eventually topped $1 million.” Mayer further explained: “They told him what to say on the air, and he blended the promotional material seamlessly into his monologue, making it sound as if it were his own opinion.” Because of this deal, Politicoreported, FreedomWorks saw “50,000 new email sign-ups.”
Americans for Prosperity (AFP) -- the other Koch front group that formed out of Citizens for a Sound Economy and has received significant funding from Koch foundations -- forged a contract with conservative radio host Mark Levin to promote AFP's attacks on climate scientist Michael Mann, thereby “copying the deal that FreedomWorks had struck with Glenn Beck.” Levin attacked Mann and other climate scientists, Mayer wrote, accusing “enviro-statists” of “inventing global warming in order to justify a tyrannical government takeover.”
In addition to the deals between Koch front groups and conservative pundits that are identified in Mayer's book, the Heritage Foundation, which has received millions from Koch foundations, has spent millions to sponsor the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, according to Politico.
Additionally, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the central group in the Kochs' financial network, paid Republican strategist Frank Luntz's firm $1.5 million for messaging work in 2014. Luntz then used his media platform as an analyst at CBS News to praise the Kochs and defend their spending without disclosing his own financial ties to them.
And in 2011, Koch Industries hired Republican political operative Michael Goldfarb to improve the company's image while Goldfarb was working as opinion editor for the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard. Shortly thereafter, TheWeeklyStandard published a long piece defending the Kochs, which was described by investigative reporter Lee Fang in a Think Progress piece as “8,000 words of hagiography.” Goldfarb is still listed as one of The WeeklyStandard's contributing editors, and the conservative magazine has published several articles in recent weeks criticizing Jane Mayer and her book.
The Koch brothers and their network have had a hand in creating several “news” outlets that echo the Kochs' conservative, anti-government message: The Daily Caller, The Washington Free Beacon, and the Franklin Center.
The Daily Caller was founded by financial investor Foster Friess, a major Koch donor who has attended many of the Kochs' annual summits and donated at least $1 million to conservative causes that the Kochs support. Friess provided $3 million in seed funding to The Daily Caller, a conservative website which, according to Mayer, has “functioned more as an outlet for opposition research paid for by the donor class.” Charles Koch's foundation would later back the website, and the Daily Caller News Foundation is currently listed as a “partner organization” of the Charles Koch Institute. Tucker Carlson, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Caller, also has other ties to the Kochs: He joined the Cato Institute in 2009, which the Koch brothers co-founded, and he is currently listed as a senior fellow there. The Cato Institute has received millions of dollars from the Koch family, and David Koch currently sits on Cato's board of directors. Mayer notes that The Daily Caller was “the chosen receptacle” for the Kochs' retaliatory attacks on her after The New Yorker published an exposé she wrote on the Kochs in 2010.
After the Kochs started receiving some bad publicity, Koch Industries hired Michael Goldfarb to improve the company's image. Later, in 2012, Goldfarb founded The Washington Free Beacon, and he remains its chairman. The website has published articles defending the Kochs, attacking their opponents, advancing the Kochs' criticisms of President Obamaand Sen. Harry Reid, and promoting their agenda. Plus whatever this is.
The Franklin Center, which runs Watchdog.org, is the “investigative news” service for the State Policy Network, a network of conservative think tanks that are largely funded by Koch-backed dark money groups DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. The Franklin Center itself received 95 percent of its revenue from Donors Trust in 2011, and it was receiving millions from Donors Capital Fund as of 2013. Mayer writes that the Franklin Center frequently “attacked government programs, particularly those initiated by Obama,” adding that it “claimed to be a neutral public watchdog, but much of its coverage reflected the conservative bent of those behind it.” As Mayer pointed out, a couple of journalists have “t[aken] issue with the Franklin Center's labeling of its content as 'news.'” Yet the Franklin Center continues to reach far and wide, with 40 state news websites and writers in 34 states as of 2013, and its reporting appearing in state and local newspapers at times.
Key to the Kochs' success has been the “growing fleet of nonprofit groups” that “mobilized public opinion” behind their agenda, writes Mayer, particularly against action on climate change. The Koch brothers “had built and financed a private political machine,” backing "[e]ducational institutions and think tanks all over the country" that “promoted [their] worldview.” Mayer cited Harvard scholar Theda Skocpol, who noted: “Climate denial got disseminated deliberately and rapidly from think tank tomes to the daily media fare of about thirty to forty percent of the U.S. populace.”
Mayer focused on two organizations in particular: Americans for Prosperity (AFP) and the Cato Institute. In addition to “spearhead[ing] a national drive to block action on climate change,” AFP “took a lead role in organizing the Tea Party rebellion.” But the Kochs insisted that they were not involved in the tea party movement, and as Mayer noted, “such denials helped shape the early narrative” in the media “of the Tea Party movement as an amateur uprising by ordinary citizens.”
The Cato Institute, which was co-founded by the Koch brothers, took a lead role in attacking the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Cato published “a steady stream” of misleading reports, which were frequently criticized by experts yet “echoed throughout the network of Koch-funded groups.” Cato also “energetic[ally]” promoted the faux Climategate scandal -- falsely claiming that climate scientists deceitfully manipulated data -- in the mainstream media, where Cato officials were often “respectfully quoted as nonpartisan experts.” One Cato scholar gave more than 20 interviews pushing the contrived scandal, spreading the story “from obviously slanted venues to the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post, adding mainstream credence.”
AFP and Cato have continued to promote their anti-environment agenda in the media without disclosing their oil industry ties. And those groups are just the tip of the iceberg; Media Mattershas identified dozens of groups backed by fossil fuel interests that are working to attack the Environmental Protection Agency's climate change plan. One tactic commonly employed by these groups is to run op-ed campaigns promoting false and misleading attacks on environmental policies in state and local newspapers, as Media Matters and others have detailed.
The Kochs' political activities have largely been “shrouded in secrecy,” writes Mayer, and such secrecy is a key to their success. When they do make media appearances, it is to “portray themselves as disinterested do-gooders and misunderstood social liberals.”
The Kochs' biannual donor summits, where they have “succeeded in persuading hundreds of the other richest conservatives in the country to give them control over their millions of dollars in contributions,” have historically been closed-door affairs. Only in recent years have the Kochs invited a handful of mainstream media reporters to attend the summits, but just in “snippets,” and under tightly controlled conditions. Reporters had to agree to refrain from identifying conference attendees without their consent or approaching donors for interviews, and they were allowed in to only a select number of sessions, according to a copy of the conditions for the August 2015 summit obtained by ThinkProgress. That summit thereafter received positive coverage in publications including Politico, USA Today, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
But these conditions also drew some criticism from media ethicists. Jane Kirtley, professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, told ThinkProgress that the terms were “outrageous,” and suggested that news organizations should “refuse to attend under these circumstances.” Robert Drechsel, a professor and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found it “remarkable” that news organizations “would agree to in effect become complicit in facilitating such secrecy and anonymity.” Huffington Post media reporter Michael Calderone questioned whether the rules “still allow for reporting in the public's interest” or are “so rigid that the resulting coverage will primarily benefit the Kochs.” Calderone noted in a separate article that the rules “could restrict journalists from reporting what's right in front of their eyes,” and that “it's possible journalists end up reporting largely what the event sponsors want ... but less on the power brokers attending who play key behind-the-scenes roles in the 2016 election.”
Mother Jones' Daniel Schulman told Calderone that the rules allow the Kochs to “closely control their images.” And indeed, at the most recent conference, Undercurrent's Lauren Windsor overheard that a USA Today reporter was “prepped” by the Koch's communication staff hours before an article was published that Windsor said “dutifully relayed Koch talking points” about the new Koch group that is purportedly aiming to address poverty and education. Bloomberg News was recently prompted by a Koch spokesperson to remove a line from an article in which the reporter stated that Charles Koch “warned that climate change's worst effects would fall on people in poorer parts of the world.” The article was changed to say that according to a Koch spokesman, Koch was “referring to the impact of bad climate policies or programs, not the negative effects of climate change itself.”
Ever since her first long-form article on the Koch brothers in The New Yorkerin 2010, Mayer has faced intimidation tactics and efforts to discredit her by the Koch network.
Koch operatives formed a “boiler room operation,” seeking to discredit the New Yorker story by “undermining” Mayer. They hired a private investigation firm looking for “dirt” on Mayer, who was told by a well-informed source: “If they couldn't find it, they'd create it.” After their search for dirt turned up nothing, Mayer learned that The Daily Caller intended to publish a “hit piece” accusing her of plagiarism. But Mayer reached out to the reporters she was supposedly plagiarizing, and they “offered to make public statements” supporting her, so The Daily Caller dropped the story.
Mayer is not the only journalist to experience intimidation from the Kochs (though hers may be the most extreme example). At the American Legislative Exchange Council's annual meeting, Greenpeace researcher Connor Gibson was confronted by Koch Industries government affairs director Mike Morgan. Gibson captured a partial video of the interaction, but Morgan then took Gibson's phone away from him, until Morgan was forced to return it by police. Rolling Stone reporter Tim Dickinson called Koch Industries “the most hostile and paranoid organization I've ever engaged with.” Mayer also wrote that Koch security threatened to arrest Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel after catching him in a cafe at one of their summits, "[u]nless he left the premises immediately."
Koch Industries also utilizes its website KochFacts.com to combat negative reports. Mayer notes that KochFacts.com “wage[s] ad hominem attacks, questioning the professionalism and integrity of reporters whose work the company found unflattering, ranging from The New York Times to Politico.” The website has blasted David Sassoon of the Pulitzer Prize-winning InsideClimate News as a “professional eco-activist” and “agenda-driven activist.” It also frequently posts personal email exchanges with journalists, “sometimes to the reporter's shock,” according to The Washington Post. This includes email exchanges with reporters and editors at The New York Times, MSNBC, Politico, and more.
Hopefully, Jane Mayer herself is a testament to the fact that reporters will not back down from exposing the true extent of the Kochs' influence and how it is shaping our country for the worse. There is surely more to the story not yet uncovered.
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11/13
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/koch-brothers-think-tank-report-099791
network of think tanks across the country is quietly pushing the agenda of right-wing groups with funding from Koch brothers-affiliated organizations, a new report alleges.
The study, by the liberal Center for Media and Democracy, is aimed at the State Policy Network, which describes itself as “dedicated solely to improving the practical effectiveness of independent, nonprofit, market-oriented, state-focused think tanks,” which are operating in all 50 states. The tax-exempt group seeks to “enable these organizations to better educate local citizens, policy makers and opinion leaders about market-oriented alternatives to state and local policy challenges.”
But that’s not the full story, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, which bills itself as a nonprofit watchdog group. CMD alleges that rather than a loose coalition of locally focused think tanks, SPN’s organizations are using “dark money” — a term for money donated for elections without disclosing its source — from conservative and corporate donors like the Koch brothers to push a cookie-cutter conservative agenda at the state level.
“These aren’t just little think tanks that are doing nonpartisan research based on what’s happening in the state and really reflective of the culture of those states,” said Lisa Graves, executive director of the CMD, which has received funds from an organization linked to liberal billionaire donor George Soros. “These are a lot of groups that put together pretty cooked books on the issues they are peddling and have been criticized in state after state for how shoddy their research has been.”
According to the report’s analysis of IRS filings, the State Policy Network and its think tanks’ combined revenue in 2011 topped $83 million, in large part with funding from conservative money groups like the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, which receive large donations from groups tied to the Koch brothers and other prominent conservatives. The State Policy Network’s associate members also include a who’s who of conservative organizations, including ALEC, David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Foundation, FreedomWorks, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation.
“It really is another part of the Kochtopus,” Graves said, using a nickname given to the network of the conservative Koch brothers.
State Policy Network refuted CMD’s report, saying each of its think tanks are “fiercely independent” and select their own topics of research.
“Every think tank, however, rallies around a common belief: the power of free markets and free people to create a healthy, prosperous society. They eschew a top-down D.C.-centric approach to running peoples’ lives,” State Policy Network President Tracie Sharp told POLITICO. “And we practice what we believe: There is no governing organization dictating what free market think tanks research or how they educate the public about good public policy.”
Sharp said like most nonprofits, State Policy Network keeps its donors private and voluntary.
“While these are completely baseless allegations, their source is not surprising,” Sharpe added. “Organizations like the Center for Media and Democracy are strangely troubled by the fact that we believe in a more transparent, accountable government, policies that place a priority on free enterprise and consumer choice, and tax policies that are fair, simple and that spur the kind of competitiveness that puts Americans back to work.”
CMD has been a longtime critic of ALEC, spearheading a project called ALEC Exposed that leaked 800 internal model bills and resolutions drafted by the group. ALEC came under fire last spring for backing voter ID measures and “stand your ground laws,” causing many of its corporate sponsors to jump ship.
While the State Policy Network openly works closely with ALEC on crafting model legislation, CMD said the problem is that the think tanks are not transparent about their efforts at the local level.
One example they cite is a report written by now-Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) when he worked for SPN-affiliated Texas Public Policy Foundation that argued Obamacare violated states’ rights in the 10th Amendment.
“That report is one of the many sort of reports that are penned by various individual so-called think tanks that then spread like wildfire through the rest of the affiliates,” said CMD report author Rebekah Wilce. “And in the individual states where they are published basically verbatim, you can’t see where they came from, or the author’s name is not published on them.”
In many cases, the CMD report also alleges that the think tanks are engaging in political activities that push the boundaries of their tax-exempt status without disclosing it, including lobbying activities and in a few cases outright political donations.
A former Democratic leader of the Arizona House of Representatives, John Loredo said he saw firsthand the influence the so-called “dark money” groups wielded.
“People always have the same question, ‘What are [lawmakers] thinking? Why haven’t they addressed this? Why haven’t they addressed that?’ And the answer is because their time has already been bought and sold by special interests,” Loredo told POLITICO. “It just reinforces the negative point of view that people of all political stripes have of politics and politicians, that it’s all rigged, it’s all dirty. And you know what? They’re right.”
Koch Industries declined to comment on the report.
Pioneer Institute, a Massachusetts think tank in SPN that was called out in the report, took issue with CMD’s allegations, saying not only has it opposed ALEC for transparency concerns, but it makes all of its donors public.
“Pioneer makes its list of annual donors available for all to see on its website and in its annual report,” Pioneer said in a statement. “Pioneer is proud to receive support annually in the range of $2 million from hundreds of individuals and foundations. It is worth noting that Mr. Koch is a trustee of Boston’s PBS affiliate, WGBH, and a contributor to the award-winning science program, ‘NOVA’ ($18 million), cancer research and medical centers (over $1 billion), the Smithsonian, MOMA, the American Ballet Theater, MIT, and many other educational, arts and cultural institutions.”
It maintained that it is an independent research entity.
“Pioneer Institute enjoys and is not afraid of debate. That makes us among the most vibrant think tanks in the United States,” it said.
- FILED UNDER:
- CONSERVATIVES,
- KOCH BROTHERS,
- MONEY,
- THINK TANKS
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an 10 22
In June, John R. Allen resigned from his position as president of the Brookings Institution following allegations that he had secretly lobbied on behalf of the government of Qatar. Journalist Michael Schaffer, in an article published by Politico on October 14, reports that there has been a considerable “uproar” following that controversy — including “a new wave of congressional scrutiny and proposed legislation” that has been “driven largely but not exclusively by conservatives” and “could ultimately complicate life at” think tanks.
But Schaffer stresses that right-wing think tanks could be among the ones that such legislation would affect. Schaffer cites Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa on the right and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on the left as two senators who have proposed bills that could affect how think tanks function. Warren’s bill, according to Schaffer, “would require think tanks to disclose donors — not just foreign ones — that pay for lobbying materials, among other things.”
“For all the joy that conservative pols have taken at Brookings’ latest turn in the barrel, conversations with people around the industry reveal an irony: Any potential new wave of government-mandated disclosure rules, especially those that go beyond foreign money, would actually represent a bigger cultural change at right-wing organizations, some of which historically have tended to see donations as a form of free speech,” Schaffer reports. “Establishmentarian center-left outfits like Brookings already share significant pieces of that information — thanks in part, it should be noted, to previous funding imbroglios, and their reliance on corporate dollars. The Heritage Foundation, by contrast, says less than two percent of its income comes from corporate sources.”
Heritage is one of the most famous right-wing think tanks in the United States. Another is the Cato Institute, which has much more of a libertarian outlook than the socially conservative Heritage. Meanwhile, the Claremont Institute is a right-wing think tank that has taken a very MAGA turn in recent years.
“It’s also notable that none of the proposals that have been publicized since the tumult at Brookings would have done much about Allen, whose allegedly fishy work for Qatar was done before he took over Brookings and would theoretically be covered by the Foreign Agent Registration Act,” Schaffer writes. “He’s denied improper behavior and hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing. What the scrutiny of Allen did do, though, was re-focus attention on the organization’s broader history with the emirate.”
Schaffer points out that different think tanks have different policies when it comes to who they will or won’t accept money from.
“Under the status quo,” Schaffer observes, “there are few rules about who a think tank may accept money from and who it has to tell. And there are probably as many internal policies as there are think tanks: The Heritage Foundation doesn’t take any money from governments of any sort, foreign or domestic. Brookings does take money from governments, but only democratic ones. The Center for American Progress also takes foreign money, but not for any specific project. It also discloses donors, unless those donors choose to remain anonymous, something deep-pocketed types occasionally do to avoid being hit up by others.”
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june 2022
https://www.vox.com/23058987/sec-climate-finance-disclosure
as drought spreads and sea levels rise, the economic impacts of climate change will run in the trillions of dollars. The insurance firm Swiss Re projects climate disasters would cost the world as much as $23 trillion by 2050, bigger than the impact from the pandemic and the Great Recession of 2009 combined.
It’s reasonable business planning to account for all this foreseeable risk — just like planning for cyberattacks or business disruptions from a pandemic. Last year, for instance, the US had to spend $145 billion dealing with floods, fires, and other climate-related disasters.
Yet somehow, climate change has fallen through the cracks of US financial regulation. Publicly traded companies are required to disclose information about “material” risks that affect their company regardless of their cause, from sanctions to supply chain chaos. But there are no uniform standards for disclosing how much fossil fuel pollution they generate or the impact that climate change could have on their future growth. Instead, companies have been left free to inflate their environmental progress, all with little scrutiny from the public.
This kind of information is, in theory, essential to a functioning free market, so investors can make decisions based on complete information. But fossil fuel interests, conservative ideologues, and corporate trade groups are striving to keep shareholders in the dark on climate risks.
The Biden administration is trying to make companies more publicly accountable for the risk of the climate crisis. A linchpin of Biden’s plan is a draft rule theSecurities and Exchange Commission (SEC)proposed in March. Over 500 pages, the SEC rule proposes that publicly traded companies disclose how climate change affects their business outlook and identify a board member or board committee to focus on climate-related risks.
Once the rule is finalized, companies will have to disclose how their operations are affected by extreme weather events and the impact of climate change on the short- and medium-term business outlook. They’ll also have to report the emissions both from their company’s operations and from how their products are used. This is particularly bad news for fossil fuel companies with business models predicated on selling pollution. Until this rule, they haven’t had to fully account for the environmental impact from things like selling gas that’s burned by consumers’ cars.
This is a rule, in other words, that helps the free market act like the free market, giving investors exactly the information they need to make the decisions,” Emory University business law expert George Georgiev said.
As the draft rule’s comment period came to a close, it’s clear any regulation on climate change faces serious headwinds. The loudest protests have come from right-wing groups and corporate-aligned nonprofits that have flooded the public comments with previews of the argument they’ll take to courts.
Plenty of businesses in the financial sector stand to benefit from this rule, like the investing giant BlackRock, which has pledged to align its assets with climate goals. But some could be hurt. The companies that benefit from greenwashing their climate commitments are doing everything they can to protect the chaotic status quo.
Financial transparency on climate change is hardly a radical idea
The SEC has required and standardized public company disclosures since 1933. In recent decades, the SEC has issued nonbinding guidance on how publicly traded companies should consider Covid-19 disruptions, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and even a feared “Y2K” meltdown at the turn of the 21st century, so the companies would meet their fiduciary duty.
But the SEC has been painfully slow on climate change. Right now, businesses disclose the risks and costs of their business on the climate on a voluntary, patchy basis with no clear standardization.
A 2020 Government Accountability Office surveyed 32 midsize and large publicly traded companies and found little consistency. Airlines, for example, used years anywhere between 1990 and 2017 as the baseline for calculating their climate footprint. Water companies have used completely different measurements for reporting water extraction. Some companies would just report carbon emissions, while others would report total greenhouse gas emissions (including sources like methane).
The proposed SEC rule cites other evidence of companies not paying attention to this risk, like an internal survey of climate-related keywords in companies’ 10-Ks between June 2019 and December 2020. They found only 31 percent mentioned climate change at all.
This information is not just to benefit climate change efforts; it is also useful to investors. It makes clearer, for instance, that a retail company’s warehouses might be threatened by increased flooding, that an airline company might have to ground more flights because of rising heat waves, or that a bank’s backing of major fossil fuel expansion has the strong chance of backfiring in a world that transitions to renewables. Without any regulation and standardization, companies will just continue to try to outshine one another on their environmental and social commitments without hard data to back it. This mismatch will become an existential risk to financial instability if, for example, extreme weather pummels a business that did not prepare accordingly.
Environmental activists have pushed for more from companies by proposing shareholder resolutions at annual meetings that ask for more transparency, but have met with mixed success in shareholder votes that don’t bind the company to taking action.
In this regulatory vacuum, voluntary global affiliations have cropped up, including the Net Zero Assets Managers Initiative, representing some $43 trillion in assets, and Climate Action 100+, representing more than $60 trillion. Another of these groups is run out of the Financial Stability Board as a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), a voluntary system that has grown to more than 3,000 companies. The task force’s recommendations tell companies to consider the short-, medium-, and long-term climate impacts, emissions that result from investment decisions, and their operations’ pollution, and account for the changing climate’s consequences for the business. The hundreds of companies that voluntarily comply with these standards aren’t necessarily green or good for the environment, but it’s an extra gold star for their sustainability transparency.
Eight countries, including the UK, have passed laws that will mirror the TFCD’s recommendations, but the US would remain an outlier without the SEC rule. “Investors put their money where they think there’s a good opportunity and good information,” said Steven Rothstein, managing director of the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets. “If we don’t have good information, we run the risk of falling behind internationally.”
The SEC’s rule is basically the US playing catch-up, based on standards the mainstream corporate community aligned with TFCD have already backed.
Initially, companies will have to spend extra to comply with the rule — up to $530,000 a year for larger companies by the SEC’s estimate, but it will vary depending on how much companies are doing already on climate disclosure. Typically, the costs of rules shrink over time. Otherwise, the rule itself is quite modest. The SEC is “not saying you should or shouldn’t invest in climate products,” Rothstein said. “They’re just saying, tell investors what you’re doing and do it in a consistent way.”
Environmentalists and some Democratic lawmakers argue the SEC could be doing even more. The SEC does not change how companies disclose climate-related activities like PR campaigns and political influence, the kind of activities that tend to be outsourced to nonprofits that shield their activities from the public. In March, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called it a “failure of nerve that shies away from a perfectly legal, necessary response to the climate danger we face” because political efforts remain “the single most material disclosures a company could make to achieve climate safety.”
Right-wing groups claim financial transparency is an attack on free speech
Unsurprisingly, the SEC is facing immense pressure to withdraw this rule because of the same shadowy political spending that companies don’t have to disclose in the first place. Groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Prosperity, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have flooded the SEC with comments that argue company free speech would be violated.
Trade groups and right-wing think tanks have argued that requiring companies to report these emissions is akin to violating their First Amendment rights of free speech, pointing to a court case that ruled a regulation requiring the disclosure of conflict-zone minerals would amount to “compelled speech” and violated the companies’ rights.
The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry lobby, has argued the rule “could raise serious First Amendment issues under recent applying strict scrutiny to content-based laws compelling speech.”
The argument has found purchase with conservative lawmakers, like West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey,who picked up the argument in his 2021 letter to Treasury last year. In Congress, 19 Republican senators argued in their submitted comments that the rule is “not within the SEC’s mission to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.” Another 40 Republican representatives wrote that the rule will act to “undermine and shame public companies,” while Republican attorneys general describes the rule as a “total reordering of [the SEC’s] present disclosure regime.”
The attack on regulation under the guise of First Amendment rights has become more familiar in recent years. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has been steadily giving corporations more and more leeway, more and more rights,” said Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a corporate law expert who has published several books on corporate speech.
The court also opened the door to more of these lawsuits, striking down a California law that required nonprofits to disclose their donors, siding with the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s argument against disclosing their donors and providing IRS 990 forms to the state. Other legal challenges to campaign finance laws and unions have used the First Amendment.
Legal experts supportive of the SEC rule consider the argument a long shot in courts. “I think that argument is really far-fetched,” Emory’s Georgiev said.
But it’s still worrisome. If it succeeds, whether in courts or as a scare tactic to get the SEC to backtrack, it sets a dangerous precedent for the financial system at large. “If this climate rule is violating the First Amendment, it’s been all nine decades [the SEC has been] violating the First Amendment,” Georgiev said. “They will definitely try it out in courts. At the end of the day, a lot of far-fetched arguments succeed in courts.”
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https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20892344-comments-to-sec-on-esg-rule#document/p33/a2075289
comments from acc chem, AEI, AFP, API, cato, cei heartland etc CTT, CoC, co2 coalition, conoco phillips, enbridge, inst for free speech, heritage, nam, NMA, noia, lifepoerwed TPPF, WEA western energy? US oil and gas
Comments to SEC on ESG rule
supports principles based framework p. 1
Any reporting framework adopted by the rr Commission should be conductive to flexible and diverse climate change disclosures that reflect the different factors driving a company's business. p. 2
railroad industry has already taken steps to voluntarily comply with... SASB and TCFD... Adopting an existing, widely used program would lessen transition time. p. 2
not impose strict liability. furnish separately instead of file p. 2
Supports "furnishing" approach p. 5
We believe a business-specific "materiality standard that acknowledges differences across and within industries... p. 5
ACCinvolved in development of SASB standards, ACC member companies are using for voluntary disclosure p. 5
private market standard-setters often develop climate change disclosures with an implicit bias based on their perception of an industry's reputation p. 5
The liability standard imposed on information filed with the SEC is an inappropriate standard for such forward-looking and aspirational disclosures p. 6
ESG reporting "futile" p. 8
If public companies are driven to use the same (or similar) sets of assumptions about central parameters, a very real danger would arise of more-or-less homogenous predictions inconsistent with historical, ongoing, and prospective climate phenomena." p. 9
...and there is no evidence in support of the ubiquitous assertions of a climate "crisis," whether ongoing or looming, and no evidence in support of the even more extreme "existential threat" argument. p. 10
Again, public companies conducting climate "risk" analysis will have powerful incentives to choose among assumptions on future emissions and atmospheric concentrations, climate sensitivity, and other crucial parameters so as to insulate themselves from political attack, adverse regulatory actions, and litigation p. 14
Again, public companies conducting climate "risk" analysis will have powerful incentives to choose among assumptions on future emissions and atmospheric concentrations, climate sensitivity, and other crucial parameters so as to insulate themselves from political attack, adverse regulatory actions, and litigation p. 14
Those political pressures will lead public companies and government agencies not to consider the benefits of increasing atmospheric concentrations of GHG p. 14
...it is not easy to separate natural from anthropogenic effects on temperatures and other climate phenomena. p. 15
Accordingly, the data are unclear as to whether there is occurring an acceleration in sea level rise p. 16
The reality is that a "climate risk" disclosure requirement would be deeply speculative. p. 18
What about massive volcanic eruptions? Asteroid impacts? Powerful earthquakes? p. 19
Constitutional objection to ESG reporting p. 22
SEC Climate Disclosure Mandates Risk Compelling Speech at Odds with the First Amendment p. 23
...expressing views they may not hold or would prefer to express in different ways. p. 23
...could imply that the speaker had adopted a position on the topic of climate change... p. 24
Commissioner Hester Peirce identified some of the risk of compelled speech in this context during June 2019 remarks before the American Enterprise Institute, including public shaming and shunning based on nebulous, incomplete, arbitrary, inconsistent, and political information which would be incorporated as part of an SEC climate or ESG disclosure regime. p. 25
explain in a forthcoming article p. 25
...the evidence of ESG-certified investments -- whether by governments or third parties -- achieving financial or environmental objectives is likely overblown. p. 26
As Commissioner Peirce has articulated, the use of global, one-size-fits-all ESG and climate disclosure regimes may undermine the bottom-up, non-government innovations that respond to those investor and consumer interests p. 27
...represents a sweeping expansion of government power and mission creep for many parts of the federal government. p. 27
APIseeks to serve as a resource and an active participant p. 29
API developing framework based on EEI/AGA template p. 30
disclosure requirements beyond materiality "could raise serious First Amendment issues" p. 33
Central Hudson Doctrine p. 34
"industry issuers may be best positioned to define the standard for require climate disclosures" p. 34
API encourages SEC to view industry resources as key starting points for evaluating need to develop new reporting requirements p. 37
constitutional limitations on SEC's ability to require companies p. 38
look forward to working with SEC "through the rulemaking process" p. 40
ESG reporting "important" and AXPC is committed to "progress" p. 42
AXPCmetric framework and template p. 43
materiality is key p. 43
'neutrality'; any disclosures should not "discriminate against any economic sector or sectors" p. 44
urging adherence to procedural requirements/allowing additional input from industry p. 45
AXPC urges SEC not to include scope 3 emissions in reporting requirements p. 47
does not believe SEC should require auditing/believes companies should be able to rely on third party auditors p. 50
would urge Commission to not require certification of climate disclosures p. 51
"strong supports a 'comply or explain' framework" p. 51
unclear mandatory disclosure can provide a net benefit p. 53
the SEC is not tasked with environmental regulation p. 53
...also raises questions about the SEC's ability to evaluate prescriptive disclosure frameworks and fairly enforce compliance with them. p. 53
90% of the companies in the S&P 500 were publishing a sustainability report. p. 54
the SEC would be stepping in to pick "winners" and "losers" p. 55
Evolving understandings of climate change p. 56
Corporate environmental sustainability disclosures--and ESG disclosures more generally--have come to fruition as a result of exogenous demand for such information, and an industry has grown up around the provision of such information. p. 57
The SEC should not extend any climate change-related disclosures requirements to private companies. p. 59
"name and shame" -type of strategy p. 59
...the losses they may incur as climate policies devalue and strand their assets and courts compel them to pay compensation to climate change victims. p. 61
In practice, however, it is often hard to distinguish what component of current risks is due to climate change rather than just plain old climate. p. 62
Advocates for climate risk disclosure: p. 64
If the state of the world is improving, including in regard to cilmate-related risks, why now compel publicly-traded companies to quantify climate-related risks as though their financial lives depend on it? p. 72
Third, CO2 emissions have positive as well as negative externalities. p. 74
adaptation requires wealth, and mitigation targets that strand 42.1 percent fossil fuel industry assets by 2030 would destroy trillions of dollars of wealth. p. 77
The NetZero agenda is the political equivalent of war on the fossil fuel industry. p. 77
Death spiral p. 78
Disclosure advocates warn of a carbon bubble but the Paris treaty and NetZero agendas may be setting the stage for a green bubble. p. 85
Solyndra! p. 85
ESG exceeds powers of SECp. 93
...mission creep for the agency... p. 93
Accounting firms, consultants, and law firms with compliance practices can be expected to welcome more disclosure requirements for self-interested professional reasons. p. 97
the Scientification of Non-Knowledge p. 100
...some climate and ESG-themed disclosure mandates could become compelled speech thatconflicts with First Amendment protections. p. 100
At least some proposed climate disclosure provisions, by which companies must confess to having metaphorical blood on their hands with regard to future catastrophic effects of climate change, would face similar First Amendment concerns." p. 101
Should a U.S. firm end a contract with a textile factory in Bangladesh over the average age of its workers or will that simply cause those teenage employees and their families to fall even further into poverty when their factory closes? Isn't poverty alleviation itself a major ESG goal? p. 104
The agency should continue to defer to the materiality threshold to help continue to prevent securities from becoming politicized p. 107
companies are already required to disclose material ESG information under current law p. 108
advocating a flexible, principles-based approach with tailoring for different industries and companies p. 110
it is critical to avoid finding "fraud by hindsight" p. 110
Third-party standard setters may not be insulated enough from stakeholder and other policy agendas... important questions to answer about organizational governance, due process, and funding sources. p. 111
SEC should take a closer look at transparency and conflicts of interest [in third party ESG assessments] p. 112
SEC should allow a commensurate market-based approach to third-party assurance for climate-related reporting p. 113
Disclosure... should not be a tool for advancing political interests or achieving policy goals p. 113
Chevron has a "long history" of reporting on ESG p. 115
supports disclosure for "consistency and comparability of climate-related information" with existing frameworks and a phased approach p. 115
support for reporting times to line up with other agencies p. 116
Chevron working with API to develop 'voluntary template' p. 116
"Chevron's climate change reporting experience" p. 117
urging a "phased" approach p. 118
advocating for a principle-based approach rooted in 'materiality' p. 118
SEC should focus on "decision-useful information" p. 118
SEC should build on existing sustainability-related disclosure requirements p. 118
support for global sustainability standard; encouraging SEC to use TCFD framework/voluntary standards/private sector industry standards p. 119
Chevron offers assistance as the SEC "moves forward with Climate disclosure" p. 119
"There is no climate crisis" p. 120
"We have long recognized the need for action to address climate change" and "understand investor interest" in ESG p. 122
recommend SEC adopt existing reporting frameworks (TCDF, SASB) p. 122
standards-setting organizations and industry can successfully/should work together p. 123
phased approach / based in materiality / "harmonize" disclosure requirements with other sustainability reporting requirements p. 123
urging a "hybrid-approach" to disclosure: company specific while "minimizing categorical discrimination among industries" p. 123
data should be presented in way that is useful for investors p. 124
"materiality" for climate disclosures: "reasonable investor would consider it important in deciding how to vote" p. 124
should apply liability protections / ESG disclosures should be "furnished" not "filed" p. 125
Our members are leading the transition to the lower-carbon energy economy p. 127
brags about "recognizing the importance of climate change disclosure" p. 127
"we support the Commission's focus" p. 128
ESG requirement should be collab between registrants and investors, flexible, sector-specific p. 128
best to work with investors to disclose relevant information p. 129
"climate change data and disclosure are inherently uncertain" - companies should not be liable p. 130
"forward-looking societal climate impacts or other externalities" are not useful to investors/decision-making p. 131
"forward-looking societal climate impacts or other externalities" are not useful to investors/decision-making p. 131
should not be a one-size fits all approach p. 132
"caution against delegating the development of public-company disclosure requirements to NGOs or private companies" p. 134
"we recommend the Commission prioritize standards applicable to registrants subject to its rules" p. 139
advocating for ownEEI-AGA ESG/Sustainability Reporting Template p. 140
do not believe additional certifications or reviews are necessary p. 140
need to be careful that disclosures do not lead to additional litigation p. 141
"existing requirement to disclose material risk factors" re climate is sufficient p. 142
"our perspective is drawn from our long and sustained history of voluntary disclosure" related to ESG p. 148
ESG must remain rooted in SEC's mission "to protect investors; maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation" p. 149
SEC must remember "purpose of reporting": investors and materiality at forefront p. 149
need to allow degree of flexibility/customization p. 149
"harmonized and uniform global framework for climate change disclosure... seems unrealistic" p. 149
advocating for adoption of existing frameworks p. 149
disclosures "should be subject to a safe harbor or limitation on liability" p. 150
"phased approach" needed p. 150
"no statutory authority" for ESG disclosure p. 151
"compelling ESG information from companies... is the type of humanitarian and social benefit regulation that has been struck down as unconstitutional under the First Amendment" p. 151
SEC climate regulation "cannot overcome even Central Hudson intermediate scrutiny" p. 152
ESG regulation will have negative consequences p. 154
Climate Science "Highly Uncertain" p. 160
calls for policing of fund management firms for ESG fraud p. 162
arguing ESG is essentially a tax on workers p. 177
arguing ESG is essentially a tax on workers p. 177
"allow for flexible disclosure" but in support of "principle based framework" p. 184
Any rule is premature p. 201
supports "new regulatory framework" p. 213
supports "a systemic approach to addressing the climate challenge" p. 216
TPPF comment through "Life:Powered" p. 217
"Risks to Human Welfare from Climate Are Decreasing, Not Increasing" p. 218
Additional disclosure requirements will result in First Amendment violations p. 220
Example of conflict minerals disclosure.p. 220
WEA and USOGA Comment p. 222
"uncertainties" on "extent of anthropogenic contributions and the amount of warming " p. 223
WEA uses paper that critiques decades long campaign to promote misinformation on climate by oil and gas p. 226
Preference for SASB on governance issues p. 229
WEA questions SEC's sincerity p. 231
Original Document (PDF) »
Contributed by Jesse Coleman (Documented)
see Document
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CRIKEY ITS CRC:
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/heritage-foundation/
...
Influence
In January 2020, for the third consecutive year, Heritage was ranked as the top think tank in the “Significant Impact on Public Policy” category of the 2019 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program. In its annual ranking, the Penn report considers more than 8,200 think tanks in the world and surveys the opinion of nearly 4,000 journalists, donors, and policy experts. [39]
Heritage’s policy range covers dozens of subject areas, and most every major issue that affects federal and state elected officials. In 2019 Heritage policy experts testified 33 times before Congressional committees, and produced more than 200 advisory documents, including 12 special policy reports. [40]
Heritage has had major influence over both policy making and policy successes during several Republican presidential administrations, in particular those of Reagan and Trump. [41] It also has been critical of Republican presidents when they have rejected Heritage’s policy goals[42] and accomplished major policy objectives during a Democratic presidential administration. [43] [44]
REAGAN ADMINISTRATION
During the 1980 presidential election, Heritage produced Mandate for Leadership, a 20 volume, 3,000-page guide of policy advice for whomever won the presidency. After winning the election, President Ronald Reagan delivered a 1,100-page abridged edition of the document to attendees of his first cabinet meeting. A follow-up set of recommendations was published for Reagan’s second term in office. [45] [46]
According The Atlantic, the Reagan Administration implemented at least 60 percent of the proposals. The late right-leaning essayist and National Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr., quipped that Heritage’s influence was the reason “Mr. Reagan’s tenure was 60 percent successful.” Analyzing 22 policy ideas put forward by Reagan in his second inaugural address in 1985, a New York Times report noted that “the wording of the president’s speech and the foundation’s document were different” but “many of the proposals were strikingly similar.” [47] [48]
Examples of Heritage ideas the Reagan administration turned into federal policy included a 23 percent reduction in federal taxes across all income groups, the creation of “enterprise zones” (tax and regulatory relief offered to entrepreneurs willing to invest in blighted urban areas), and the Strategic Defense Initiative (research on a defensive shield to protect the nation from a nuclear missile attack). [49] [50]
GEORGE H.W. BUSH ADMINISTRATION
....
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Sheldon Whitehouse Enemies List
During July 2016, Heritage was one of 32 free-market policy organizations that were denounced on the floor of the U.S. Senate by 19 Democratic senators. Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the campaign was aimed at passage of a Congressional resolution that would have called on the non-profit groups to cooperate with “active or future investigations” of their climate-policy positions that might be launched against them by federal or state law enforcement officials. Whitehouse accused Heritage and the other organizations of work that was creating a “filthy thing in our democracy.” [192] [193]
Whitehouse’s proposed resolution was adding onto the work he had begun in a May 2015 opinion piece in the Washington Post, wherein he advocated for a federal lawsuit against the energy industry using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Originally designed for and used in criminal cases to prosecute the mafia, RICO has a civil-lawsuit component that has since been applied to corporate targets such as cigarette manufacturers. Whitehouse admitted in the opinion piece that he did not “have enough information” to know whether “racketeering activity” had occurred with the energy industry but speculated the civil discovery in a RICO lawsuit might uncover the evidence he was seeking. In March 2016, then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced she had referred Whitehouse’s RICO concern to the FBI. [194] [195]
During the early summer of2016, the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands sent a subpoena to the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI),demanding private internal research records, communications, and donor information. Two weeks later, Whitehouse and the 18 Democratic senators launched their program demanding that Heritage and other free-market organizations fully cooperate with investigations of this type. [196]
The CEI president responded, saying Whitehouse had become the “new Sen. Joe McCarthy,” and that it “is unhealthy for democracy and abusive when members of Congress create an enemies list based on policy positions.” [197] And a joint letter sent to all of the Democratic Senators from Heritage and 22 free-market think tanks stated: “Your threat is clear: There is a heavy and inconvenient cost to disagreeing with you. Calls for debate will be met with political retribution. That’s called tyranny. And, we reject it.” [198]
References [long]
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SELECTED
Richardson, Valerie. “Democrats’ campaign against climate change skeptics compared to McCarthyism.” Washington Times. July 12, 2016. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/12/web-of-denial-turns-senate-floor-into-democrats-pu/ ^
“SENATORS CALL OUT WEB OF DENIAL BLOCKING ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. U.S. Senate. July 15, 2016. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senators-call-out-web-of-denial-blocking-action-on-climate-change ^
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senators-call-out-web-of-denial-blocking-action-on-climate-change
7.15.16
SENATORS CALL OUT WEB OF DENIAL BLOCKING ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE
Nineteen Senators expose fossil fuel-funded groups involved in a campaign to deny climate facts and stymie climate legislation
Washington, D.C. – Throughout the week on the Senate floor, Senate Democrats called out various trade associations, foundations, and organizations for perpetrating a sprawling web of misdirection and disinformation to block action on climate change. The Senators’ remarks detailed the concerted campaign waged by the Koch brothers, major fossil fuel companies, identity-scrubbing groups like Donors Trust and Donors Capital, and their allies to manipulate the public’s perception of the climate crisis and curtail legislative action to address it.
Participating senators included Harry Reid (D-NV), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Richard Durbin (D-IL), Jack Reed (D-RI), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tom Udall (D-NM), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Al Franken (D-MN), Chris Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Edward Markey (D-MA), and Gary Peters (D-MI).
Despite polling that shows over 80 percent of Americans favor action to reduce carbon pollution, Congress has failed to pass comprehensive climate legislation. The 19 Senators delivered over five and half hours of remarks describing the activities, backers, and affiliates of 32 denier groups. Each Senator called out one or more organizations, including the Advancement of Sound Science Center; the Acton Institute; Americans for Prosperity; American Legislative Exchange Council; the American Petroleum Institute; the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy; the Cato Institute; the Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the Competitive Enterprise Institute; the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation; the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity; the George C. Marshall Institute; the Global Climate Coalition; the Heartland Institute; the Heritage Foundation; the Hoover Institution; the Hudson Institute; the James Madison Institute; the John Locke Foundation; the Lexington Institute; the Locke Institute; the Manhattan Institute; the Mercatus Center; the Nevada Policy Research Institute; the Pacific Research Institute; the Reason Foundation; the Science and Public Policy Institute; the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy; the Virginia Institute for Public Policy; and the Western Fuels Association.
Senator Whitehouse, who organized the web of denial floor speeches, said during his remarks that he and his colleagues sought to “shine a little light on the web of climate denial and spotlight the bad actors in the web, who are polluting our American discourse with phony climate denial. This web of denial, formed over decades, has been built and provisioned by the deep-pocketed Koch brothers, by ExxonMobil, by Peabody coal, and by other fossil fuel interests. It is a grim shadow over our democracy in that it includes an electioneering effort that spends hundreds of millions of dollars in a single election cycle and threatens any Republican who steps up to address the global threat of climate change. . . . [I]t is long past time we shed some light on the perpetrators of this web of denial and expose their filthy grip on our political process. It is a disgrace, and our grandchildren will look back at this as a dirty time in America’s political history because of their work.”
“It is clear that no country can avoid the impacts of climate change, and no country can meet this challenge alone,” said Senator Reid. “As a nation that has contributed more than a quarter of all global carbon pollution, it is our responsibility to lead, not to deny. As a nation already feeling the effects and costs of climate change, it is also in our national interest to do so. As we have seen time and again, other countries would join us if America leads the way – not by denial, but by dedication to pragmatic solutions that can be achieved.”
“It’s getting harder and harder to stop these outside groups from spreading their smear campaigns. These groups have an interest in making sure Congress never gets anything done to prevent climate change. And they are using our broken campaign finance system as a tool to keep it that way,” Senator Udall said in his remarks. “We need to fix the system. Poll after poll shows that our constituents – across the political spectrum – want reforms, tackling climate change, eliminating dark money from our politics, and standing up to groups that distort public perceptions. It’s time we listened. Our democracy and our environment are at stake.”
During his remarks, Senator Markey said, “Even as the science of climate change has become almost incontrovertible, climate policies have gotten trapped in a web of denial. Exxon, the Koch brothers, Peabody coal and their fossil fuel cronies whose profits might suffer under rules to reduce carbon pollution have had a vested interest in stopping climate action and have engaged in a decades-long campaign of deceit. But no matter what lies and misinformation the climate deniers try to peddle, the facts, the moral authority and the economic opportunities are with us. We can and will create a clean energy revolution that increases jobs as it cuts pollution.”
“We can and must pass legislative solutions to address global climate change,” said Senator Peters. “Transitioning away from fossil fuels and investing in renewable energy will create sustainable, good-paying jobs here in the United States. Taking bold action on climate change will strengthen our public health, our economy, and our national security. We must wake up and realize that those attempting to mislead and confuse must not be successful.”
Watch Senator Whitehouse’s remarks
,
, and
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Watch Senator Reid’s remarks
.
Watch Senator Boxer’s remarks
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As part of their effort to draw attention to the web of denial, Senators Whitehouse, Markey, Schatz, Boxer, Merkley, Warren, Franken, and Bernard Sanders (I-VT) also introduced a resolution describing and condemning the efforts of corporations and groups to mislead the public about the harmful effects of tobacco, lead, and climate change. The resolution urges fossil fuel corporations and their allies to cooperate with investigations into their climate-related activities. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) introduced the resolution in the House, which is cosponsored by Congressman Jim Langevin (D-RI) and 13 colleagues.
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Whitehouse, Sheldon. “The fossil-fuel industry’s campaign to mislead the American people.” The Washington Post. May 29, 2015. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fossil-fuel-industrys-campaign-to-mislead-the-american-people/2015/05/29/04a2c448-0574-11e5-8bda-c7b4e9a8f7ac_story.html?utm_term=.b8180d2844f2 ^
Arter, Melanie. “AG Lynch: DOJ Has Discussed Whether to Pursue Civil Action Against Climate Change Deniers.” CNS News. March 9, 2016. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/ag-lynch-doj-has-discussed-whether-pursue-legal-action-against-climate ^
Richardson, Valerie. “Democrats’ campaign against climate change skeptics compared to McCarthyism.” Washington Times. July 12, 2016. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/12/web-of-denial-turns-senate-floor-into-democrats-pu/ ^
Richardson, Valerie. “Democrats’ campaign against climate change skeptics compared to McCarthyism.” Washington Times. July 12, 2016. Accessed February 25, 2021. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/12/web-of-denial-turns-senate-floor-into-democrats-pu/ ^
Letter: Americans for Tax Reform, et al., to U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, et al. July 12, 2016. Accessed January 25, 2019. https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2016-07-12-Coalition-Letter-Senate-Web-of-Denial-Resolution.pdf ^
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https://www.eenews.net/articles/exxon-sting-ensnares-think-tanks-with-climate-credentials/
Exxon sting ensnares think tanks with climate credentials
By Corbin Hiar | 07/29/2021
In May 2018, the House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the geopolitical implications of oil and gas production in the United States. The four witnesses who testified all had one thing in common: Their institutions each had received money that year from Exxon Mobil Corp.
The event could hardly have gone better for Exxon, the largest U.S. oil and gas company.
The witnesses, including highly credentialed experts from the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, extolled the economic and political benefits of the U.S. drilling boom. The Brookings scholar mentioned climate change in passing; the CSIS expert didn’t bring it up at all.
Now some experts and congressional investigators are wondering why.
The May 2018 hearing before the Republican-led Foreign Affairs Committee — and other recent scholarships from CSIS and Brookings — has come under new scrutiny following the release last month of a secretly recorded video in which Exxon lobbyist Keith McCoy touted the company’s connections to the centrist research groups.
“Brookings and CSIS are the two big think tanks that we work with and that we’re actively involved in,” McCoy said in May to an environmental activist posing as corporate headhunter.
Exxon has donated $600,000 to Brookings since 2018 and nearly $2.1 million to CSIS over the same period, according to contributions disclosed by the $240 billion company, some of which were first reported by The New Republic.
The think tanks have acknowledged their support from Exxon but say it has no influence over their climate and energy research. Furthermore, they have no control over how the oil company, or anyone else, uses their research once it’s published.
Yet some experts think their relationship should be more closely examined. Exxon is one of several oil and gas companies that belong to an exclusive club at Brookings that promises top donors access to the think tank’s leadership and scholars, and CSIS solicits similar entrée to its “corporate partners,” documents show.
That’s one reason to look deeper, said Steve Coll, the author of “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power” and dean of Columbia Journalism School.
“It creates an appearance of a conflict of interest that warrants investigation into the facts of how the money and the research related to one another,” Coll said. “It’s important because it goes to credibility of research that is being brought to public hearings to influence public understanding and policy.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, the chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Environment, is planning to look into Exxon’s ties to think tanks during a broader probe into fossil fuel industry misinformation efforts.
“That’s exactly part of the investigation that our committee is launching,” the California Democrat told E&E News shortly before he invited Exxon’s lobbyist in for a transcribed interview with Oversight staffers (Climatewire, July 26).
“It would be wrong to impugn a think tank like Brookings just on the basis of one sting operation,” Khanna added. “That said, it raises troubling allegations, and we have to get to the bottom of it. And I think that what McCoy would say under oath probably has much more credibility than what McCoy was saying on the phone conversation.”
Exxon’s senior director for federal affairs told the Greenpeace official that the company relies on think tanks to help steer climate policy discussions in Washington.
“You control the debate if you have the paper. So if they produce the paper, you can control the debate,” McCoy said in an interview for what he believed was a job with a Middle East oil and gas investment fund (Climatewire, July 2).
“You can start to say ‘This is how we think this legislation should look. And that bill that you have over there, here’s our paper of why that won’t work,'” he said, according to an unpublished transcript of the interview obtained by E&E News. “It’s extremely effective in terms of pushing away bad legislation.”
Exxon deployed that tactic to help defeat the only major climate legislation that’s ever passed the House, according to Coll’s award-winning book. Proposed by then-Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the midst of the Great Recession, the bill would’ve capped greenhouse gas emissions and created a trading system for emission credits.
Exxon lobbyists told “fence-sitting congresspeople and senators” that the cap-and-trade legislation would “destroy jobs and growth,” Coll reported.
The paper they wielded was “a Brookings Institution study that showed the proposal might take about 2.5 percent out of American gross domestic product during the next forty years — the equivalent of one year’s economic growth,” the book said. “That was not a daunting price if climate change was accepted as a grave national danger, but among congresspeople whose constituents in 2009 suffered from personal bankruptcies, mortgage defaults, and even homelessness, it was not an easy trade-off to accept.”
While the Brookings study found the Waxman-Markey bill would have virtually no effect on employment outside the fossil fuel industry, “ExxonMobil emphasized those forecasted job losses to members of the Senate from the oil and coal states that would be hardest hit,” Coll wrote.
The landmark climate legislation ultimately died in the Senate after Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority and no Republicans were willing to support it (Climatewire, Nov. 27, 2019).
“It’s not enough for a company to hire a lobbyist in D.C. to attempt to influence public policy,” said Brooke Williams, a Boston University journalism professor who co-authored a 2016 New York Times series that highlighted corporate influence at Brookings, CSIS and other Washington research institutions. “A company needs a think tank.”
‘Seeds of reality’
In the years since the defeat of the cap-and-trade bill, Brookings and CSIS scholars have delivered testimony and research that could redound to Exxon’s benefit.
At the 2018 hearing on the geopolitical implications of U.S. oil and gas production, for instance, Samantha Gross, the director of Brookings’ energy security and climate initiative, focused most of her comments on the advantages of expanded natural gas use.
“Natural gas exports provide clear environmental benefits,” Gross, who Democrats had invited to testify, said in her prepared testimony. “Natural gas has the lowest carbon emissions of any fossil fuel and creates much less local air pollution than coal. When used to generate power, natural gas also complements renewable power sources like wind and solar.”
Later in the hearing, former Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas), the chairman of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee that hosted the event, asked all four witnesses about whether they supported the “free trade” of U.S. energy.
Sarah Ladislaw, who at the time was the director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at CSIS, said “yes” and then made the case for expanding natural gas infrastructure in the northeastern United States, which many environmentalists fear would lock the region into decades of reliance on the planet-warming fuel.
Gross added: “It’s really also a no-brainer. It’s a no-brainer from a trade and economic perspective. It’s also a no-brainer from an environmental perspective.”
The other witnesses at the hearing were from the Gas Technology Institute and Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. In 2018, GTI launched an industry-led collaborative to study methane leaks, which is partially funded by Exxon. The oil company also gave $40,000 to the Baker Institutethat year, its annual report of charitable contributions shows.
The CSIS and Brookings scholars’ comments at that Foreign Affairs panel three years ago mirror remarks that Exxon CEO Darren Woods made to investors on an earnings call in April. He argued exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, which some studies have shown can in the short term have a carbon footprint roughly equivalent to coal, will be key to the company and global energy system in the coming decades.
“I think gas is going to continue to be a really important part as societies and economies grow, and as we move into a lower-carbon future,” Woods said. “The LNG opportunities remain an important part of the portfolio, and we continue to work very closely with the governments around progressing discussions on how we continue to build on the portfolio that we have and expand those opportunities.”
The comments that Gross and Ladislaw made at the oil and gas geopolitics hearing “aren’t flat-out wrong,” said Geoffrey Supran, a Harvard University research associate studying the history of global warming politics. “They contain seeds of reality. But they have the overall effect of constructing what we call a ‘fossil fuel savior’ framing of the climate crisis.”
In that narrative, Exxon and other fossil fuel companies are cast as “trustworthy reliable innovators who we need to look to for solutions,” he said. “And nice and slowly — nothing too drastic.”
That’s significant because the views of experts from Brookings and CSIS matter to policymakers. Scholars from those prestigious think tanks have testified or produced work that’s been cited in dozens of congressional hearings over the last three years.
Lawmakers have leaned on Brookings’ research on the growth potential for clean energy jobs in the country and heard a CSIS expert warn about the threat sea-level rise poses to U.S. ports and national security.
But other Brookings experts have criticized the Obama administration’s move to force federal agencies to use an internal carbon price in their decisionmaking. And during the 2018 Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing, Ladislaw touted U.S. coal reserves and said if domestic supplies of natural gas stay “in the ground,” then “it doesn’t do anybody any good.”
Ladislaw is now a managing director at RMI, a clean energy-focused think tank formerly known as the Rocky Mountain Institute. She denied that her testimony was influenced by Exxon’s financial support for CSIS.
“As the body of my work shows, I have dedicated much of my career to the issue of climate change,” she said in a statement from RMI. “Even in this instance, my written testimony, which was submitted for the record to the committee, spoke to the competitive advantage for the U.S. of renewables and advanced technologies, and how the U.S. should not promote oil and gas over carbon-free energy sources.”
Think tank experts have “a disproportionate impact” on climate policy, according to a Senate aide, who asked not to be identified to speak candidly. “Even the freshest Hill staffer knows to look at what Exxon is telling them with a little bit of a jaundiced eye. But in contrast, a more seasoned Hill staffer, and member, has a different view when something is from Brookings.”
The aide said organizations are viewed on a spectrum, with Congress’ Government Accountability Office on one end and Exxon on the other.
“So if GAO is a 10/10 and Exxon is a 1/10, then organizations like Brookings are a 6 or a 7 out of 10, when it comes to having a good reputation,” the Senate staffer said.
‘Donor privileges’ at Brookings
At Brookings,Gross has examined a variety of climate and energy issues.
In January 2020, Gross wrote a paper on local opposition to renewable energy. “There is no perfect way to produce electricity on an industrial scale,” she wrote. “Policymakers must recognize these challenges and face them head-on as the nation transitions to a lower-carbon energy system.”
And that June, Gross penned an essay on why fossil fuels are “so hard to quit.” The piece mainly focused on the technical and political challenges associated with the energy transition.
“Those pushing to end fossil fuel production now are missing the point that fossil fuels will still be needed for some time in certain sectors,” she wrote. “I fear that magical thinking and purity tests are taking hold in parts of the left end of the American political spectrum, while parts of the political right are guilty of outright denialism around the climate problem. In the face of such stark polarization, the focus on practical solutions can get lost — and practicality and ingenuity are the renewable resources humanity needs to meet the climate challenge.”
Meanwhile, Exxon’s lobbyists have been trying to sell lawmakers on the need to keep fossil fuels in the U.S. energy mix.
“You can’t completely change the electric grid from coal and gas into wind, and here’s why,” McCoy said, describing his recent conversations on the Hill. “You can’t run the United States off of wind solar and batteries, you just can’t.”
McCoy added: “We think natural gas would play a key role in anything — and not just as a bridge fuel. We think it’s a low-emission energy source.”
Gross denied that Exxon had steered her energy and climate analyses.
“No organization, corporation, or donor influences the integrity of my research or my commitment to finding practical solutions to the climate crisis,” she said in an email. “My work is my own and I stand behind it.”
Brookings also pushed back strongly on the notion that Exxon had any direct involvement in shaping the work of Gross or its other scholars.
“Brookings categorically denies that its research and policy recommendations are tied to the interests of any individual or corporation,” spokeswoman Andrea Risotto wrote in an email. “The institution and its personnel are governed by robust guidelines on research independence that do not permit any outside parties to undermine or compromise the independence of our research or its recommendations.”
Regarding Exxon in particular, the company “has provided general support to Brookings’s Foreign Policy program, which has as its mission scholarship exploring major challenges to international peace and security, and to the institution as a whole through its participation in our Corporate Council,” she said. “Exxon has made no direct contributions to support specific scholars or specific research projects, and its funding is not directed toward any Brookings activity or research related to energy or climate change.”
Exxon’s yearly six-figure contributions also make up a relatively small share of the think tank’s annual funding.
In 2019, Brookings reported nearly $79.4 million in revenue. That total included gifts exceeding $100,000 from Tom Steyer, who was running for president at the time on a platform that included aggressive action on climate change, and two Rockefeller charities, which have supported climate liability litigation targeting Exxon (Climatewire, May 4).
Yet the company’s financial support for Brookings opened doors at the agenda-setting think tank.
Exxon is one of four oil and gas companies that have donated at least $100,000 to Brookings in each of the last three years, the think tank’s annual reports show. The others are Royal Dutch Shell PLC, France’s TotalEnergies SE and Equinor ASA of Norway.
That level of giving has secured Exxon a place on Brookings’ Corporate Council. The think tank’s website doesn’t explain what the council is, and Risotto didn’t respond to questions about the membership, structure and purposes of the group.
But a 2016 menu of “Corporate Council Donor Privileges” promised companies that give Brookings $100,000 or more would receive “a customized program of benefits designed in collaboration with the Senior Director of Corporate & Foundation Relations.”
Brookings deleted the document from its website after E&E News asked about it.
Other perks include “a private meeting” with the think tank’s president, “opportunities to request briefings with Brookings scholars” and invitations to a series of exclusive Brookings receptions, an archived version of the menu says.
Risotto said the document “was removed because it has not reflected the institution’s current practices for some years.”
CSIS promotes gas, and Exxon
[ pixAbdallah Jum'ah, then CEO of Saudi Aramco has a laugh with Rex Tillerson, then president of Exxon Mobil, left, during a conference on the United States and Saudi Arabia relationship and their interests in energy security, on April 27, 2004, in Washington]
At CSIS, Exxon’s millions have gone mainly to general support, building the think tank’s endowment, and regional initiatives focused on Africa and the Americas, according to the oil major’s last three charitable contribution reports.
CSIS scholars have followed with a series of high-octane commentaries.
In September 2018, Judd Devermont, the director of the CSIS Africa Program, co-authored an article in Foreign Affairs calling on U.S. policymakers to support the construction of new natural gas power plants as part of a broader push for additional energy infrastructure in Nigeria.
“Nigeria will require a sensible mix of energy drawing on all of its potential for large-scale solar, wind farms, hydroelectric dams, and natural gas,” wrote Devermont and Todd Moss, who was at the time a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.
“It is tempting to envision the future as a solar panel on every roof,” they said. “But the promise of small-scale energy solutions for Nigerian households does not replace the need for a modern grid system that can deliver reliable, affordable power at scale, supporting businesses, industry, and job creation.”
That year, the Center for Global Development received $800,000 from Exxon’s foundation to work on “women’s economic empowerment,” according to the think tank’s website.
Devermont didn’t respond to a request for comment. But Moss, the article’s lead author, said in an email that the piece aimed “to raise awareness among the US foreign policy community about the impact of energy poverty on Nigeria and how the US might reasonably respond. I never spoke with anyone at the foundation or the company about that article.”
Moss, who now leads the Energy for Growth Hub research group, added: “If you are looking for examples of Exxon’s influence at think tanks, this isn’t it.”
Last August, Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at CSIS, wrote a commentary about the difficulties Guyana’s new government would face if it sought to renegotiate the previous government’s offshore revenue-sharing agreement with Exxon and its partners. The deal was inked only days before Exxon disclosed an increased estimate for the size of its 8-billion-barrel find, which led some politicians to accuse the oil giant of taking advantage of the new South American petrostate (Energywire, March 25, 2020).
“By necessity, frontier countries offer friendly contract terms to attract investment, but things tend to change quickly when companies make large discoveries. When citizens and policymakers become aware of the economic resources at stake, they often call for a reassessment of contracts to better reflect risks and rewards for investors,” said Cahill, who spent more than a decade as an adviser to oil and gas companies before joining CSIS in 2020.
“Governments must balance public expectations and the desire for more revenues on the one hand against concerns over contract sanctity and future investment on the other,” he wrote.
In an email, Cahill described his Guyana commentary as “a balanced piece of analysis” and said his contact with Exxon at CSIS and his previous jobs was “pretty limited,” aside from events and conference.
“The same is true for many other companies,” he added. “I’m an analyst, not an advocate, and I strive to be analytical and unbiased in my writing and other work for CSIS.”
Like Brookings and many other think tanks, CSIS offers major corporate donors access to its fellows and leadership. Exxon is one of more than 150 companies that have contributed to CSIS, according to its corporate donor webpage. CSIS reported roughly $45.5 million in revenue in 2019, its most recent publicly available tax filing shows.
“Corporate partners are frequently invited to CSIS for private and off-the-record conversations about current affairs and how they relate to their business,” the donor page says. “Members are also invited to monthly briefings to hear from CSIS scholars on current affairs and have the opportunity to schedule private briefings with the Center’s experts to dive deeper on areas of interest.”
CSIS didn’t directly respond to questions about the perks it advertises to potential business supporters. But spokesman Andrew Schwartz accused E&E News of “cherry picking pieces of information” and of being similarly conflicted because Exxon is a longtime subscriber.
“You are clearly insinuating that CSIS is a shill for ExxonMobil’s interests and nothing could be further from the truth,” he wrote in an email. “Exxon funding is not earmarked for specific scholars, reports, or research. CSIS maintains complete independence over our research, findings, and recommendations.”
‘Shadow groups’ to centrist think tanks
McCoy, the Exxon lobbyist, described the company’s embrace of Brookings and CSIS as part of an evolution in its effort to thwart climate action.
“Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes,” he said during Greenpeace UK’s sting. “Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes that’s true. But there’s nothing illegal about that.”
Now, McCoy said, “the science has gotten better [and] we’ve gotten smarter.”
He didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Exxon spokesman Casey Norton said McCoy’s think tank comments “in no way represent the company’s position.” The oil giant similarly has distanced itself from its lobbyist’s remarks on a carbon tax, which he said Exxon only supported as a “talking point” (Energywire, July 6).
Exxon also defended the work of Brookings and CSIS, and said it intends to continue supporting them.
“We value access to the reports and assessments made by world-class researchers and experts who consider and evaluate public policy alternatives on issues of importance to the energy industries,” Norton said in a statement.
But some experts dispute the notion that groups such as CSIS and Brookings can take money from Exxon and not be influenced by the company. Even if the oil company’s contributions are relatively small compared with the think tanks’ annual budgets, they could make up a substantial portion of the salaries of certain scholars.
Furthermore, many well-meaning think tank fellows may not fully understand how their climate work is being shaped and weaponized by the oil industry to thwart the actions needed to address the problem, according to Supran, the Harvard history researcher.
“People who don’t appear to be intentionally peddling climate denial and delay, I essentially would see them as pawns in Exxon’s propaganda campaign,” he said. “They are essentially being used by the fossil fuel industry to perpetuate a narrative that protects the status quo.”
Reporters Nick Sobcyzk and Mike Lee contributed.
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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/the-claremont-institute/
no lnx twt
How a little known right-wing think tankcontinues to add fuel to Trump's 'Big Lie'
Meaghan Ellis November 05, 2021
Former President Donald Trump may have had an overwhelming number of supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol to "stop the Steal, but one conservative think tank is still helping to perpetuate the big lie.
According to Vice News, the Claremont Institute and its top-ranking members played a dominant role aiding Trump as he attempted to overturn the presidential election.
Per Vice:
"Claremont Institute leaders' actions leading up to, during, and after Jan. 6 are the culmination of five years of increasingly alarmist rhetoric and calls to action from the think tank, whose embrace of Trump and Trumpism have helped mainstream fringe views into the Republican Party ecosystem by positioning themselves as the vanguard in an existential "cold civil war" between true Americans and anti-American progressives."
One leader in particular was Trump loyalists and lawyer John Eastman. Not only did he attempt to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election but he also echoed many of Trump's biggest lies about the election being stolen.
Like many of the conspiracy theorists, Eastman claimed "dead people voted" and Dominion Voting Systems' "'machines contributed to that fraud' by 'unloading the ballots from the secret folder,'" Vice reports.
“All we are demanding of Vice President Pence is this afternoon at 1 o'clock he let the legislators of the state look into this so we get to the bottom of it and the American people know whether we have control of the direction of our government or not," Eastman claimed. “We no longer live in a self-governing republic if we can't get the answer to this question. This is bigger than President Trump. It is the very essence of our republican form of government and it has to be done. And anybody that is not willing to stand up and do it does not deserve to be in the office."
As proof of the think tank leaders' actions, the publication also pointed to tweets and messages that made their stance quite clear. Vice highlighted a tweet shared by Claremont Institute president emeritus and senior fellow Brian Kennedy's tweet just one day before the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"We have been on Capitol Hill all day. We are in a constitutional crisis and also in a revolutionary moment," Kennedy tweeted on Jan. 5. “We must embrace the spirit of the American Revolution to stop this communist revolution. #HoldTheLine."
Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams also echoed similar claims in a YouTube video saying, "The mission of the Claremont Institute is to save Western civilization."
Welcome to the Claremont Institute
www.youtube.com
Political analysts have weighed in to explain just how disturbing the Claremont Institute's actions are as there are concerns about similar incidents occurring in the future.
"Laura K. Field, a political theorist at American University, recently explained why it is so disturbing.
"It's incredibly concerning. They're desperate to take on the role of leading the charge in terms of providing arguments for the anti-democratic populism of Trump, Field explained. "They really want to do everything they can to keep Republicans in power, even if it means manipulating through bad-faith measures the levers of power."
There are also concerns about the future because ongoing attacks leveled at America's voting systems "could lead to more distrust and division and skepticism about various institutions in the medium-to-long run."
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reminder of central player in denialosphere: heritage
https://www.mediamatters.org/bret-baier/foxs-flagship-straight-news-show-has-troubling-record-climate-crisis
no lnx many vid
Fox’s flagship “straight news” show has a troubling record on the climate crisis
Nearly 88% of Special Report’s climate segments since 2009 either spread misinformation or perpetuated false or misleading narratives
Special PROGRAMS
CLIMATE & ENERGY
WRITTEN BY ALICIA SADOWSKI
RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM ALLISON FISHER, REBECCA MARTIN, NIKKI MCCANN RAMIREZ & JANE LEE
PUBLISHED 06/16/21 12:01 PM EDT
Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Bret Baier is heralded as the network’s flagship “straight news” program that firmly embodies the show’s motto of “fair, balanced, and unafraid.” Under Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier’s direction, however, Special Report has failed to meet its own standards in covering the climate crisis and environmental protection, instead providing a platform for many of the same climate denier guests and fossil fuel industry talking points featured on the network’s opinion side.
Media Matters examined Special Report with Bret Baier’s coverage related to climate change and the environment between January 1, 2009, and May 3, 2021. We counted and analyzed segments devoted to climate change or the environment and those in which a network figure discussed the issue or engaged with a guest who brought it up. We then broadly categorized the show’s misinformation and misleading narratives into five different angles of attack -- regarding climate science, the economy, the efficacy and public demand for domestic climate action, global cooperation, and the urgency of the crisis. These narratives undermined, doubted, misrepresented, or otherwise dismissed climate science and/or drives for climate action or environmental protection. We counted each angle once per segment even if it arose multiple times; segments often included more than one angle.
Jump to a section
KEY FINDINGS
SPECIAL REPORT IS PART OF THE DECADESLONG AND ONGOING CAMPAIGN TO DELAY CLIMATE ACTION
BAIER’S “STRAIGHT NEWS” COVERAGE OF THE CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT ECHOES THE LIES OF FOX’S OPINION PERSONALITIES
SPECIAL REPORT UNDERMINES CLIMATE SCIENCE
SPECIAL REPORT SETS UP A FALSE CONFLICT BETWEEN A HEALTHY PLANET AND A THRIVING ECONOMY OR MISREPRESENTS THE EFFICACY AND PUBLIC DEMAND FOR CLIMATE ACTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS
SPECIAL REPORT FUELS NATIONALISTIC AND MISLEADING NARRATIVES OPPOSING GLOBAL CLIMATE EFFORTS
SPECIAL REPORT UNDERMINES THE SERIOUSNESS AND URGENCY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS
CONCLUSION
METHODOLOGY
Key Findings
From January 1, 2009, to May 3, 2021, Special Report aired at least 972 segments covering stories related to climate change or the environment.
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At least 851 of those segments -- more than 87% -- featured false or misleading narratives and misinformation.
Since 2009, Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier, guest anchors, correspondents, and guests on Special Report have undermined, doubted, misrepresented, or otherwise dismissed climate science and the urgency of climate action at least 1,333 times.
Of the 851 Special Report segments that attacked or misrepresented climate change or environmental protection:
14% undermined climate science.
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29% set up a false conflict between a healthy planet and a thriving economy.
43% misrepresented the efficacy of climate action or the public demand for environmental protections.
8% fueled nationalistic defenses of climate inaction and/or misled viewers about global climate efforts.
more than 5% undermined the seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis.
Special Report’s specific attacks undermining climate science were most frequent at the start of Baier’s run as anchor, which began in January 2009. The show spread nearly four times as much misinformation or false or misleading narratives attacking climate science during President Barack Obama’s first year in office (when climate legislation was being considered in Congress) than during President Donald Trump’s first year.
During President Joe Biden’s first four months in office, Special Report was already spreading climate-related misinformation and false or misleading climate narratives at more than three times its weekly rate of 2020.[SO BS SIDE EFFECT COLLATERAL DAMAGE TO FOX RAISON D'ETRE ATTACK DEMONIZE LIBS/DEMS?!
Special Report is part of the decades-long and ongoing campaign to delay climate action
In reviewing over a decade of Special Report’s climate coverage, Media Matters found at least 851 segments that featured misinformation or false or misleading narratives that undermine efforts to address the climate crisis or environmental degradation. Many of these same attacks are also heavily promoted by Fox’s opinion shows, which points to the shared talking points of the network’s “news” division and some of its most toxic prime-time personalities.
These attacks on science are not isolated incidents -- they can be contextualized within the clear template of industry-funded science denial. As early as 1977, Exxon scientists were aware of the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels, but the company spent the next two decades leading misinformation campaigns to question the scientific basis of climate change, lobbying congressional representatives to reject domestic environmental regulations and international climate treaties, and spreading narratives to falsely pit the health of the economy against the need for environmental protections.
More than four decades after Exxon’s initial discovery, Fox News has scrupulously parrotted its successful misinformation campaigns, despite international and domestic studies overwhelmingly warning of the dire consequences of fossil fuels’ contributions to climate change.Special Report’s complicity in promoting these industry narratives is part of the larger, systemic failure of the U.S. to grapple with the climate crisis, which also includes denying communities equitable access to healthy environments, often at the expense of people of color, as well as the failure to pass meaningful climate and environmental legislation in the last decade. And the same science-denial talking points featured on Special Report have even been recycled by Fox News opinion shows and other bad actors (following a similar blueprint to the fossil fuel industry’s strategy to undermine climate science) to deny the existence and seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic and to dismiss the urgency of finding solutions for this public health crisis.
Baier’s “straight news” coverage of the climate and environment echoes the lies of Fox’s opinion personalities
Media Matters’ extensive review of Special Report’s coverage of the climate crisis and environmental protections since 2009 found a persistent theme of the program sowing doubt about the existence of climate change and the efficacy of climate solutions.
Of the 851 climate or environment-related segments on Special Report that included such instances, 477 occurred during correspondent segments, 174 occurred during guest segments, and 200 were perpetuated by Baier or guest anchors. Excluding segments featuring guest anchors, Baier himself espoused or allowed 1,116 instances of climate misinformation and false or misleading narratives during the studied time period.
Week after week, year after year, Special Report viewers -- who are promised an objective and unbiased analysis of the issues -- have been inundated with misleading statements that reflect Fox’s opinion-side rhetoric: denying climate science, shirking responsibility for environmental degradation, downplaying the severity of climate change, and recklessly casting solutions as too costly or leading toward a slippery slope of tyranny. Here are the types of attacks we found.
Special Report undermines climate science
The overwhelming consensus from scientists, both domestic and abroad, is clear: Warming trends over the past century are extremely likely to be caused by human activities emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
In 2007, just two years before Bret Baier took the helm of Fox's flagship news program, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international coalition of scientists who assess peer-reviewed scientific papers to summarize knowledge of the causes of climate change, released a report stating that the “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that oceans and other ecosystems were “being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.” The report said anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions were “very likely” the cause of global average temperature rise, and it also urged policymakers to consider “a wide variety of policies and instruments” to “create the incentives for mitigation action.” These findings were strengthened in the IPCC's next six-year review in 2013, emphasizing that changes in the climate since the 1950s were “unprecedented over decades to millennia.”
Despite these direct warnings from the world’s scientific experts, Baier’s viewers have heard a different story: Special Report’s coverage of climate change and environmental degradation has flatly denied science, focused on debunked, concocted controversies that attempted to dismantle scientific consensus, and selectively reported cool weather events to dismiss warnings of dire climate change consequences.
Overall, 14% of the misinformation and misleading or false narratives about climate change spread by Special Report since 2009 have undermined the consensus and conclusions of climate science, with nearly half of that misinformation -- 46% -- occurring within the first three years of Baier's run. In fact, throughout Obama’s first term, Special Report spread two and a half times as many instances of misinformation and false or misleading narratives undermining climate science as it did during Trump’s term.
Within just his first month as anchor, Baier ran a misleading climate segment on January 28, 2009, which cited David Kreutzer of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank funded in part by the fossil fuel industry.Kreutzer suggested that scientists were moving to use the term “climate change” instead of “global warming” to distract from cooling trends and make it “easier” to blame humans for natural environmental variation. In February 2010, Baier himself even claimed that “‘global warming,’ the phrase, has been changed really to ‘climate change’ by supporters,” and he hosted current Fox prime-time star Tucker Carlson to lament that “there’s nothing that can’t be explained by the phrase ‘climate change.’” (While Fox News is still undermining climate science by conflating weather patterns with long-term climate disruption, the term “climate change” was actually championed by longtime Republican strategist Frank Luntz in an infamous 2002 memo advising the GOP on how to cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activity was warming the planet.)
Baier has continued to attack the science of climate change by giving climate skeptics’ opinions equal weight to peer-reviewed scientific consensus. In February 2015, Baier ran a segment that cited a “retired accountant, blogger, and self-described climate historian” who baselessly claimed that climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had been modified to be “more supportive of those who say the planet is warming and that man is directly responsible.” The segment also cited another Heritage Foundation representative, Nick Loris, who cast doubt on the human-made drivers of climate change and falsely suggested that scientists do not believe policies restricting greenhouse gas emissions would be effective.
In October 2018, the next IPCC report estimated that human activities have caused approximately 1 degree Celsius of global warming above preindustrial levels, which is already wreaking havoc on communities, causing more extreme weather events and rising oceans. The report also gave a more dire warning of the urgency of climate change, telling policymakers they had as little as 12 years to limit warming to 1.5 C before climate change and the ensuing environmental degradation reach an irreversible tipping point. The report gave special note to a change in the “frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of weather and climate extremes,” yet Baier’s reporting has failed to note the potential impact of climate change on extreme weather events. The program even flatly denied the existence of climate change as recently as February 2019.
Special Report dismissed the IPCC’s warnings once again, and Baier ran a segment in May 2019 that quoted Marc Morano, a fossil fuel industry-funded climate skeptic who has been described as “a central cell of the climate-denial machine.” In the segment, Morano dismissed another U.N. report warning of mass species extinction as “politics, not science.”
Video file
CitationFrom the May 6, 2019, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier
Between 2009 and 2021, Morano’s climate denial was highlighted in at least 10 segments on Special Report, similar to his frequent visits on Fox opinion shows such as Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Morano appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight in April of this year, responding to Carlson’s opening question on the Biden infrastructure bill: “How much of this bill is geared not toward cleaning up the environment, which we could badly use, but toward this global warming theory that they have? How much of it is climate-based?” Morano again argued that a focus on climate change was not due to necessity or scientific consensus, but claimed that it was simply a maneuver to accrue political power.
Video file
CitationFrom the April 1, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
Special Report's undermining of climate science wasn’t just left to his guests or correspondent segments -- Baier himself recently engaged in the same rhetoric to doubt climate science as a figure from Fox’s opinion side, The Five’s Jesse Watters. On May 3, Watters complained that “the worst part about the whole story” is that “Biden isn’t certain schools are gonna be open this fall, because, you know, he does not have a crystal ball. But at the same breath he says if we don't spend a trillion dollars on green energy, he knows the Earth's temperature, to a degree, in a hundred years. It’s hard to square those.”
Video file
CitationFrom the May 3, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Five
Baier attempted to make the same point in the next hour, asking why the Biden administration was being cautious in making predictions about school openings while citing scientific unknowns, but “they don’t have that same phrasing when talking about climate change.”
Video file
Citation From the May 3, 2021, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier
Special Report sets up a false conflict between a healthy planet and a thriving economy or misrepresents the efficacy and public demand for climate action and environmental protections
Fox News figures and other right-wing media personalities have often falsely pitted the economy against the environment, demonizing climate solutions as either too expensive or a waste of money that will not bring adequate returns in the green economy, in an effort to justify a lack of congressional action. Special Report’s coverage was no different throughout the last decade, with 29% of the misinformation or misleading narratives that it spread perpetuating that false dichotomy or failing to consider the cost of climate inaction, and 43% misrepresenting the efficacy and public demand for climate action.
Special Report often emphasized the immediate cost of climate solutions while also pushing narratives that depicted environmental regulations as ineffective or decried the supposedly “socialist” implications of climate legislation. Almost one in three of the problematic segments identified by Media Matters -- around 273 -- both undermined the efficacy of climate action and portrayed potential environmental protections as hurting the economy.
Scientists and policy experts have repeatedly warned that transitioning to a clean energy economy -- often incentivized through legislation -- is not only necessary to ensure a livable planet, but will also reduce the price of mitigation after irreversible climate impacts take hold. In 2018, the Fourth National Climate Assessment warned that the “continued warming that is projected to occur without substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is expected to cause substantial net damage to the U.S. economy throughout this century, especially in the absence of increased adaptation efforts.” Another recently published study in Scientific Reports estimated that the cost of failure to keep warming to a 1.5 C threshold rose “from 1.3 trillion dollars per year of inaction in 2010 to over 5 trillion dollars per year in 2020.”
Yet despite the long-term economic suffering promised by increasingly extreme weather and climate disasters, regional temperature changes reducing crop yields, and environmental degradation reducing tourism and recreation, much of Special Report’s climate coverage since 2009 has been fed by fossil fuel industry talking points emphasizing short-term -- and often biased -- economic costs.
Beginning during the Obama administration, Special Report relentlessly attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, framing its mitigation efforts as executive overreach without regard to the economy.
In April 2009, then-chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle declared on Special Report that the EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide could be restricted under the Clean Air Act “could hardly be more sweeping because it could affect everything from airliners to lawnmowers and almost every corner of the U.S. economy,” fearmongering that it “has the potential for shutting down or slowing down virtually all economic activity” without mentioning the environmental benefits of the proposed regulations.
In a June 2011 segment on Special Report, disgraced former Fox correspondent Doug McKelway cited the Heritage Foundation's Nick Loris, who argued that President Obama and then-Commerce Secretary nominee John Bryson's carbon emission reduction policies “are intended to raise energy prices, and lower-income families pay a disproportionately higher percent of their income on energy prices,” resulting in the policies “hurting those people more than helping them.” In reality, Loris was pushing an oversimplified view of carbon pricing legislation. A study by the World Resources Institute found that legislation addressing either a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program does not “inherently help or hurt lower-income households.” Its impact depends on how the policy is designed; for example, a small portion of the revenue raised from carbon pricing could be offered as rebates to protect low-income households from increasing energy prices.
A month later, Angle appeared in another segment quoting both Loris, who claimed that the Obama administration’s plan to increase fuel efficiency standards would “be a significant ramp-up,” and the former chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association, who fearmongered that the change would be costly to business and result in hundreds of thousands of job losses. In April 2014, Baier himself responded to the announcement that a federal appeals court upheld stricter emission standards from the EPA by citing complaints from anonymous “state and industry groups'' that the “new limits on toxins” would “cost billions of dollars annually to comply.”
In March 2016, current Fox prime-time host Laura Ingraham appeared on Special Report and mocked people “losing sleep over the environment every night,” declaring that the Obama administration’s environmental regulations were actually “about redistributing wealth and making America poorer.” Baier failed to push back on this absurd framing.
During the Trump administration, however, it became clear that Special Report was complicit in the demise of the network’s “news side,” serving as an echo chamber of misinformation to advance the GOP agenda. In Obama’s first term, Special Report worked to oppose the administration’s efforts to curb climate change, spreading one and a half times more misinformation and false or misleading narratives about than it did during the Trump presidency, when the show championed positive coverage of the short-term economic benefits of rolling back Obama-era regulations. During Trump’s final year in office, Special Report -- seemingly sympathetic to the president’s apathetic stance on the climate -- spread the least amount of misinformation or misleading narratives about climate change during the studied time period, with only 52 instances.
One segment from December 2016 demonstrates how the show used misinformation and dubious claims to pave the way for Trump’s deregulatory agenda. Correspondent James Rosen cited the conservative American Action Forum’s claim that “recent EPA rules on heavy trucks pushed the total regulatory price tag over the next 10 years over the $1 trillion mark,” requiring “every man, woman, and child in our regulation nation to cough up $3,080 a piece to satisfy it.” The heavy trucks regulation in question -- an increase in the fuel efficiency standards -- would ultimately have reduced global warming emissions by 1.1 billion tonnes and saved the trucking industry $170 billion per year. Despite AAF Director of Regulatory Policy Sam Batkins admitting that the group does little research to check whether cost estimates fit reality, Rosen assured viewers that “Mr. Trump has vowed to carry a war of attrition to the regulatory beast.”
Special Report’s focus on the perceived economic disruption and “socialist” implications of climate legislation has dogged Democratic efforts at climate mitigation, demonizing all legislation -- from Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal to the Green New Deal to Biden’s more moderate 2021 climate plan -- as radical attempts to wreak havoc on the American economy and livelihoods.
Attacking and spreading misinformation about the Green New Deal has been Fox News’ priority for the past two years; when it was first introduced, the network aired far more segments than its cable network counterparts on the proposal. As the flagship program of Fox’s “news” division, Special Report made no effort to differentiate itself from the network’s opinion coverage, with Baier characterizing the deal as “one of the most controversial political manifestos” and suggesting that the expensive price tag would lead to wasteful spending as part of “the Democrats' campaign against the prosperous.”
In February 2019, Baier hosted Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemmingway to complain that “there is not really a case being made for why you would need to upend your lives, destroy life as you know it, destroy wealth, destroy job opportunities, get rid of massive industries that employ thousands and millions of people, and for what?” Hemingway concluded that polls showing American support for the deal could only be attributed to pollsters asking people if they “want free things,” referring to the Green New Deal’s proposed guaranteed “economic security." Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York dismissed public support for funding the deal, claiming that “the idea that most Americans would think that climate change is a World War II-like crisis is really unlikely.”
Video file
Citation From the February 7, 2019, edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier
These pointed attacks on the Green New Deal reflect the rhetoric often espoused on Fox opinion shows, such as by Sean Hannity, who referenced the Green New Deal in relation to Biden on April 20, 2020, claiming that “there are no moderates in today's radical, extreme Democratic socialist party.” In July 2020, Hannity lambasted Biden for “taking his cues from the most radical, the most extreme socialist extremist that this party has ever embraced, the Democratic modern socialist party.” Hannity then complained about the price tag of the climate proposal, exclaiming that it would “turn America into a socialist, bankrupt hellhole.”
Baier did not push back in January after Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel used language similar to Hannity’s rants to attack the incoming Biden administration and the climate bill, stating that she would not “cede our country to the far left who want to turn toward socialism, institute the Green New Deal, and remake America as we know it.”
Video file
Citation From the July 14, 2020, edition of Hannity
Special Report fuels nationalistic and misleading narratives opposing global climate efforts
Efforts to prevent and counter the worst consequences of global climate change have to be negotiated at the international level and require unprecedented cooperation between countries in order to succeed. But in covering those efforts, such as the U.S. signing on to the Paris climate agreement under Obama, Baier and his guests on Special Report insteadechoed isolationist narratives to undermine global mitigation efforts. Like Fox opinion-side personalities, they suggested that international mitigation efforts are detrimental to the U.S. economy, that they favor China and India over America, and that global cooperation would fail to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Statements that fueled these nationalistic and misleading narratives opposed to global climate efforts constituted 8% of the total misinformation and false narratives spread on Special Report during the studied time period.
In an appearance on Special Report in December 2009, the late conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer repeated one of the most prevalent talking points used to oppose climate action, suggesting that an international climate agreement would “mean a serious constriction of the U.S. economy, a lowering of our standard of living.” This claim is false and driven by a flailing fossil fuel industry attempting to distract from its own “terminal decline” by scapegoating climate mitigation efforts.
This line of attack was echoed on the network’s opinion side as recently as this year, when climate denier Marc Morano appeared on the January 21 episode of Fox & Friends First to claim that rejoining the Paris agreement is “climate virtue signaling” that will “hammer middle America, blue-collar America, [and] Americans on middle class and lower income.” In reality, committing to Paris emission reductions and building a 100% clean energy economy would create up to 25 million well-paid American jobs, and clean energy jobs are “more likely to be unionized and come with health care and retirement benefits than the rest of the private sector.”
In a May 2014 appearance on Special Report, Krauthammer pushed the idea that international agreements, specifically the Paris climate accord, would benefit China at the expense of American prosperity because China lacked a legally binding commitment to emissions reductions. Krauthammer stated, “As we dismantle the coal plants in our country, China and India together are adding one coal fire plant every other week. The net effect is to shift the U.S. coal energy generating industry from here to India and China. It will have zero effect.”
This argument was repeated on the May 31, 2017, edition of Fox & Friends, when Fox Business host Stuart Varney denigrated the Paris climate accord as an “unequal” agreement meant to “take money and resources off Europe and America” to “give it to other countries,” including China. More recently, Fox opinion host Laura Ingraham expanded upon this argument in April, characterizing global cooperation on climate as tentative at best, with each nation pursuing “what’s in its best interest.” Ingraham then dismissed Biden’s “grand” climate plans as ineffective for failing to reduce global temperatures “at all.”
These are bad-faith arguments and they do not account for the fact that not only has the U.S. caused more global warming than any other country and maintains the higher per capita emissions rates, but it also lags behind China on substantive commitments to renewable energy and technology. Furthermore, climate change and its disruptions transcend national borders and are intrinsically linked to the public health, socioeconomic well-being, and growth of every nation.
In yet another appearance on Special Report in May 2017 dismissing the impact of Trump’s promise to pull out of the Paris accord, Krauthammer advanced the argument that U.S. participation in the “extremely weak” agreement was inconsequential, and he claimed it only made a “marginal difference” if “we are in it or out of it.” This sentiment on climate policy efficacy was also echoed this year on Fox’s opinion side by Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg on the January 21 edition of Fox & Friends. He argued that rejoining the Paris agreement would “cost a fortune and cut almost nothing, so basically achieve almost nothing to fix climate change.”
These arguments exploit legitimate concerns of the Paris agreement --that measures agreed to at the accord will not be enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius -- not to garner support for the strengthening of global commitments, but to gripe about the inherent complexities of any global treaty and ultimately erode support for addressing the climate crisis on any level. Despite Paris’ shortcomings, the U.S.’s participation in the agreement — as the second biggest greenhouse gas emitter — represented a critical step toward global climate mitigation. As international markets transition toward clean energy, it is imperative that the United States can advocate for American jobs and workers. Moreover, global emissions reductions work -- in 2016, global emissions flat-lined for the third year in a row even as the global economy grew, partly because the U.S. and China cut their emissions.
Special Report undermines the seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis
Baier and his guests made statements that undermined the seriousness and urgency of the climate crisis in more than 5% of Special Report’s misinformation and false or misleading narratives around climate change.
These bad-faith arguments have also come from Fox’s opinion side, which has framed the idea of addressing climate change as requiring personal sacrifice from individual viewers. Special Report suggested climate-conscious consumers should not own pets, should limit their hamburger intake, should accept rougher toilet paper, and should feel guilt for using water at hotels or pumping gas for their car. These segments’ reckless linking of personal consumer choices to environmental protection lets the real culprits -- the 100 companies responsible for 71% of global emissions -- escape responsibility for the worst impacts of climate change, while discouraging popular support for climate action.
Special Report also followed Fox’s signature strategy of focusing on some prominent people’s actions to deflect from those individuals’ concerns about the climate, using charges of hypocrisy as a smokescreen for climate inaction. Baier dedicated segments to personal carbon footprints, pointing to Obama traveling to an Earth Day rally; first lady Michelle Obama flying to Copenhagen to advocate for Chicago to host the Olympics; Prince Charles encouraging environmental awareness; Hillary Clinton traveling during her presidential campaign; and, most recently, Biden administration climate envoy John Kerry using a private jet.
On the February 4 edition of Special Report, correspondent Kristin Fisher noted that Kerry was “not necessarily leading by example by taking a private plane to Iceland to accept an environmental award.” Later in the episode, Fox contributor Byron York said that “he's got a government plane now, and you don't marry into a billionaire family if you want to fly commercial.”
This coverage on Fox’s flagship “straight news” show echoed a line of attacks on Kerry from Fox’s opinion hosts, such as Sean Hannity’s January 28 statement that “it’s almost as if John Kerry isn’t that concerned about the environment after all” and Tucker Carlson’s February 3 accusation that Kerry was being “hypocritical.” These personal attacks and red herring arguments serve dual roles -- to villainize and discredit specific activists while trivializing the urgency of the climate crisis. It is a well-worn tactic, as demonstrated by Special Report, that is used across the network’s opinion and “straight news” programming.]GORE TENN HOUSE]
Video file
CitationFrom the January 28, 2021, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Video file
CitationFrom the February 3, 2021, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight
Conclusion
Climate scientists have overwhelmingly warned for years that unless immediate action is taken to address the climate crisis, irreversible environmental consequences will impact every aspect of our daily lives -- ranging from an exacerbated refugee crisis to devastating economic impacts to irreversible environmental degradation.
The stakes for news media to cover this issue seriously and responsibly could not be higher as Biden attempts to simultaneously reestablish United States' leadership in global mitigation and advocate for bold climate legislation, while the deadline to limit global warming to 1.5 C draws closer.
Yet climate coverage on Special Report with Bret Baier has been characterized by blatantly false, biased, and desperate attempts to undermine climate change action and environmental protections. Ultimately, Special Report is another extension of Fox News’ climate denial machine, serving to sow misinformation and doubt to defend the politicians who actively prevent any climate mitigation.
Methodology
Media Matters searched transcripts in the Nexis database for Fox News Channel’s Special Report with Bret Baier for any of the terms and any derivations of the terms climate change, global warming, climate, global temperatures, climate science, climate scientist, Paris climate, climate accord, Paris accord, climate agreement, Paris agreement, climate deal, climate crisis, environment, Environmental Protection Agency, green new deal, climate conference, climate plan, carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, green, Keystone Pipeline, Dakota Pipeline, or energy from January 1, 2009, through May 3, 2021.
We included any segment when climate change or environmental protection was the stated topic of discussion...
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provide fodder for BS reports: Many hypertext links in the End Notes don't work, including the first. Others point to web pages that generate a "404" page missing response. While some End Notes refer to official data, many point to ideological marketing organizationslike the Heritage Foundation and polemics based on *a priori*assumptions.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/house-republicans-paint-a-labor-vision-thats-straight-out-of-the-19th-century-robber-barons-era/
dcj dcr
Ten House Republicans who fashion themselves policy wonks are out with their diagnosis of what ails the American worker. Their proposed cure is a future that would be brutish, nasty and short.
The Hobbesian, dog-eat-dog policies the Republican Study Group proposes would enhance the power of those born to privilege, just so long as nothing knocks them off their comfortable perch.
The report proposes:
- No forgiveness of student loanseven though our federal government authorized students to borrow huge sums to attend worthless commercial schools that went bankrupt, leaving them with no degree, just debt. The Republican plan lacks even the mercy provisions for debtors written into Hammurabi's Code almost 4,000 years ago, which wiped away debts when storms, war or corruption ruined a borrower's finances.
- A turn away from comprehensive higher education, especially liberal arts, to focus on technical skills and employability.Forget about developing the rigorous and thoughtful minds that enable young people to become informed citizens.
- Throughout, the report makes recommendations that would require a larger federal government workforce to police workers, students, poor people and immigrants.
- Empower workers by further weakening, if not eliminating, unions. TheRepublican Study Group report calls for workers to have more freedom to negotiate directly with their employers, a solution in search of a problem. "Our approach would unleash the full potential of the American people by refocusing labor policy to provide workers more control over their own future," [SEE CA PROP 22 BS ADS I HAVE TIME/FREEDONM TO TAKE CARE OF MY AA GPA]the report states. Given that individual workers are mostly commodities, that's the equivalent of urging that each grain of wheat in a silo be free to negotiate whether it goes into the grist mill first or last.
- Get tough on the poor and immigrants, who are portrayed as greedy thieves who shirk work, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. The poor and hungry get the blame for high levels of what the report artfully calls "improper payments" despite evidence that mostly these are screwups by federal agencies, not applicants. Not a word, by the way, is said about thieving defense contractors, farmers and other business operators even though a link in the report is full of examples where such businesses benefit from fraud, waste and abuse.
The 66-page report, Reclaiming the American Dream: Proposals to Empower the Workers of Today and Tomorrow, is amazingly slipshod. Frankly, the study group, lead byRep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) and its staff should be ashamed that they published such low-quality work.
Many hypertext links in the End Notes don't work, including the first. Others point to web pages that generate a "404" page missing response. While some End Notes refer to official data, many point to ideological marketing organizations like the Heritage Foundation and polemics based on *a priori*assumptions.
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some interlocks between cato, atlas, aei and cei
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aha-let: a friendly venue with gravitas: built in audience, devos uses 2x
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420 DL jacques
Organization of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Scepticism
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Please download from the open access at the journal site: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09644010802055576 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 esp ouse 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.
In summary, environmental scepticism consists of four key themes. First, environmental scepticism is defined by its denial of the seriousness of environmental problems and dismissal of scientific evidence documenting these problems. This primary theme sets environmental scepticism apart from earlier environmental opposition movements like the US ‘wise use movement’ and ‘sage brush rebellion’ (Switzer 1997). Second, environmental scepticism draws upon the first theme to question the importance of environmentally protective policies. Third, environmental scepticism endorses an anti-regulatory/anti-corporate liability position that flows from the first two claims. Lastly, environmental sceptics often cast environmental protection as threatening Western progress.
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320 corona fail
https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/03/16/climate-science-deniers-downplayed-covid-19-cato-acsh-aei
Meet the Climate Science Deniers Who Downplayed COVID-19 Risks
By Sharon Kelly • Monday, March 16, 2020 - 15:25
no lnx many
On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the outbreak of novel coronavirus 2019, which causes the disease COVID-19, was officially a “public health emergency of international concern.” At the time, there were cases confirmed in 19 countries and deaths in China had reached 170.
The very next day, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) published an article titled, “Coronavirus in the U.S.: How Bad Will It Be?”
“Is coronavirus worse than the flu?” it began. “No, not even close.”
“It already has spread from person-to-person in the U.S., but it probably won't go far,” ACSH added. “And the American healthcare system is excellent at dealing with this sort of problem.”
ACSH is one of several organizations promoting climate science denial that are now spreading misinformation on the coronavirus, with potentially deadly consequences.
American Council on Science and Health?
The ACSH presents itself to the public as a proponent of “peer-reviewed mainstream science,” in the words of the organization’s mission. Their experts have frequently been quoted in mainstream newspapers and magazines, and they pen columns criticizing journalists who write critically about companies like Monsanto. The group has received funding from oil giants including ExxonMobil, as well as from the agribusiness, chemical and tobacco industries to name a few.
When it comes to climate change, ACSH has published a steady stream of articles downplaying climate science and criticizing efforts to slow carbon emissions — even in the face of a mountain of peer-reviewed research on the climate crisis.
ACSH slammed the medical journal The Lancet as “an ideologically driven outlet with a very clear political agenda where being sensationalist and culturally woke trumps evidence and reasonability” (after the Lancet published an article titled “The carbon footprint”). The purported “pro-science” advocacy group has labeledGreta Thunberg’s activism “doomsday prophesying.” It has (falsely) suggested that climate change is less of a concern because “more people die in winter than in summer” (they don’t).
And that’s all just in the past nine months. The ACSH’s stance against climate action dates back to at least 1997.
When it comes to coronavirus, now a global pandemic, ACSH’s authors rushed to judgment. They assured readers that there was little to worry about, and put some of the same faulty thinking that underlies their stance on climate change on display.
ACSH isn’t alone. Other organizations that have also engaged in climate science denial made similar missteps on COVID-19, including prominent organizations that fanned the flames of conspiracy theories or confidently promoted complacency when circumstances required rapid action.
To be clear: No one should be faulted for failing to foresee precisely how severe of a problem COVID-19 would prove to be. None of us has a crystal ball and few, if any, expected this situation to unfold in this particular way.
But these organizations published positions that not only wound up being laden with false reassurances, but they did so based on claims that they made confidently at the time that now appear to have been false or misleading.
Defending Conspiracy Theorists
Take for example, the American Enterprise Institute’s (AEI) publications on COVID-19.
AEI fanned the flames of a conspiracy theory that claims COVID-19 was developed for biological warfare.
AEI resident scholar Michael Rubin published a piece titled, “Was coronavirus a bioweapon? We don’t know, but history shows we can’t trust China.”
The article defended Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas for his Fox News interview circulating the theory.
Roger Bate, an AEI visiting scholar, also penned a January 29 piece headlined, “The media is driving the overreaction to the coronavirus.”
The piece argues against action on COVID-19, without citing any evidence about the virus itself, but instead based on characterizations and generalizations. “I’ve seen several news reports essentially implying that, even if quarantining travelers or imposing travel bans to China are overreactions to the risk of the coronavirus, this is ok because it’s better to be safe than sorry,” he wrote. “Companies are so fearful of negative press that they seem to base much of their own rhetoric on what the media and liberal elites demand. While some of this is arguably harmless — note much of the hot air at Davos about climate change — when it becomes corporate policy and is echoed by government policy, it then has real consequences.”
“A contagion will happen at some point, and it’s important we recognize it and react,” he added.
“Unless the coronavirus mutates into something far more dangerous,” he concluded, “this isn’t it.”
To be sure, there was not a visible consensus on those views within AEI. That same day, another AEI fellow published an article calling the coronavirus a “big economic deal,” citing its impact on China’s economy. And a three-paragraph AEI post later labeled claims that COVID-19 is a bioweapon “fake news.”
Those other pieces, however, do not undo any impacts from AEI publishing claims that proved to be baseless.
Reading Comprehension
Other times, articles downplaying the risks from COVID-19, penned by organizations that have adopted climate-science denying stances, present arguments laced with logical fallacies.
In some cases, it’s not clear whether the authors understood the comments they were critiquing.
Take, for instance, the Cato Institute’s March 4, 2020 column on “COVID-19 Deaths and Incredible WHO Estimates.” That piece attacks a statement by the WHO’s director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported COVID-?19 cases have died.”
Cato’s column labeled that statistic “sensationalist nonsense.” The number doesn’t take into account the fact that mild cases are more likely to go unreported, Cato’s Alan Reynolds wrote.
That, of course, is exactly why Dr. Adhanom included the word “reported” in his description of the statistic. There’s no ball being hidden here. And in case readers missed that word and its importance, The Times’ report included an explanation of that precise context. (“But the figure came loaded with caveats,” The Times wrote. “Experts, including those at the WHO, say that when more is known about the epidemic, the death rate will be considerably lower.”)
One day later, President Trump took a similar tack to Cato’s, calling the 3.4 precent statistic “really a false number.”
“Now, this is just a hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this,” Trump added.
It’s not clear where exactly Trump picked up his impression — but then of course, Trump has his own well-known stance on climate science.
'Not Even Close'
The author of the ACSH piece claiming that coronavirus is “not even close” to as bad as the flu was Dr. Alex Berezow — a PhD in microbiology, according to his bio, not a medical doctor. Berezow has been interviewed about coronavirus precautions by the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Insider, and Yahoo News.
Berezow doubled down on his claim that the flu is a worse threat than coronavirus in a February 18 article. “Influenza is far deadlier than the Wuhan coronavirus, but few people worry about it,” that article begins, referring to the virus with the Chinese city initially at the center of the outbreak (a practice that's since been viewed as stigmatizing and racist, amid a growing number of cases of stigma-motivated racial violence).
A few weeks later, Berezow changed his tune, offering readers assurances that even if COVID-19 was far more deadly than the flu, there was still little reason for alarm in an article calling media reports “unreliable” and “sensationalism.”
“Even though the Wuhan coronavirus is currently thought to have a case-fatality rate of 2 percent (which would make it 20 times deadlier [than influenza]),” he wrote, “it’s unlikely that it will rack up a similar annual death toll because — at least for the time being — it is not going to infect hundreds of millions of people.”
A week later, on February 27, Berezow admitted he had changed his mind, saying that the facts had changed and writing: “When COVID-19, aka the Wuhan coronavirus, first emerged, it seemed most likely that the virus would fizzle out. But as the disease continues to spread, that outcome now appears nearly impossible.”
But by mid-March, Berezow was back to arguing that, as he wrote on March 11, “[f]or now, influenza remains the far bigger global public health threat.”
In contrast, public health organizations like the WHO have sought to offer information in ways that are both careful and candid. The Centers for Disease Control’s (neglected) guidelines for public health communication call for messaging that’s consistent, accurate, and doesn’t withhold important information.
There’s an enormous amount of uncertainty about what the coming days will bring when it comes to this pandemic. But if we’re all going to make the best decisions possible today, we’d be well-served to pay close attention to medical science.
And when so much of the message that there’s nothing to worry about on climate change comes from think tanks like Cato, AEI, and ACSH that made unsupported and flawed calls on COVID-19, it’s worth taking a moment to pause and think about that as well.
Because as monumental as the impacts of this pandemic are now, the science tells us that if we fail to dramatically cut carbon and methane emissions, the impacts of climate change may be even more profound over the long run.
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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/devos-slams-union-bullies-for-opposing-her-plan-to-send-federal-tax-dollars-to-private-and-religious-schools/
w. kellyanne at aei]
US. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was the headliner at an American Enterprise Institute event Tuesday morning to promote “Education Freedom Scholarships,” the Trump administration’s education tax credit proposal. In her remarks, DeVos attacked opponents of the plan as “union bullies” and declared that “union bosses don’t put kids first.”
Vilifying teachers’ unions is standard operating procedure for DeVos. In January, she used aHeritage Foundationevent marking the avowedly “nonpolitical” National School Choice Week to complain that teachers’ unions were “the only thing standing in the way” of more “school choice.”As Right Wing Watch noted at the time:
DeVos is an old hand at this. She has, in the words of Mother Jones’s Krisina Rizga, been “trying to gut the public schools for years.” Indeed, DeVos and her allies have spent many years and many millions of dollars engaged in bare-knuckled politics to elect politicians who will advance an anti-public-education, anti-labor, pro-privatization agenda, and her family has played a key role in building right-wing anti-public-education infrastructure.
At AEI, DeVos and White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway promoted the administration’s plan, which was proposed in February but hasn’t moved through either house of Congress. One news report from today’s event called it DeVos’s effort to “breathe new life” into the proposal by “calling out Republicans in Congress who have refused to entertain the idea and conservative education policy experts who’ve opposed the plan.”
At AEI, DeVos and Conway said conservatives who worry about increasing federal involvement in education are off-base, because states would have the freedom to use the federal money to design their own programs or simply supplement existing programs.
State “tax credit scholarship” programs are basically a way for legislators to divert tax dollars to private and religious schools without using vouchers, which have been consistently unpopular with voters. The Trump-DeVos proposal would allow for up to $5 billion every year in federal tax credits for businesses and individuals who donate to state-based “scholarship granting organizations.”
In response to a questioner who said he was from the Alliance Defending Freedom, DeVos said the administration’s proposal included language that would require participating states not to prevent religious schools or nonprofits from accessing the tax dollars. DeVos has previously slammed state restrictions on public funding for religious schools.
DeVos and Conway had a lot of praise for Florida, one of the states that has most aggressively pushed “school choice” proposals. RWW’s Adele Stan reported last year that DeVos and her family had pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into a political action committee promoting voucher proponent Ron DeSantis, who narrowly defeated Andrew Gillum in last year’s governor’s race.
Following DeVos’ and Conway’s appearance was a panel conversation featuring officials from Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Tennesseetouting their own school–choice programs and backing the administration’s proposal.
When Trump announced DeVos’s nomination, People For the American Way called it “a high-water mark in the right wing’s long war on public education.”When DeVos was confirmed, the secretive right-wing Council for National Policy had its own ambitious policy agenda for her: “a gradual, voluntary return at all levels to free-market private schools, church schools and home schools as the normative American practice.”
Tags: Betsy DeVosKellyanne ConwayChurch-StateSchool ChoiceVouchersAmerican Enterprise InstituteTrump Administration
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bit lost see clintel
https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/09/06/climate-science-deniers-planning-coordinated-european-misinformation-campaign-leaked-documents-reveal
A coalition of climate science denial groups is gearing up for a European media blitz later this month, in an apparent bid to derail efforts to set an EU-wide “net zero” emissions target, documents obtained by DeSmog show.
Plans for a self-styled “European Declaration” include press conferences in Brussels, Rome and Oslo and a letter to be sent to leaders of EU and UN institutions, scheduled for mid-September.
The letter claims to have “400 independent Climate Scientists and Professionals” signed up so far.
Some notable signatories are part of a trans-Atlantic network of thinktanks pushing for environmental deregulation post-Brexit, and have a history of climate science denial. A number of former employees of the network’s member organisations are now staffers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet Brulle, Professor of Sociology at Drexel University and an expert on climate science denial, told DeSmog the campaign looked like a panicked response to recent high-profile efforts to highlight the climate crisis:
“The rise of the Extinction Rebellion movement, and the immense popularity and influence of Greta Thunberg, are having a significant impact on media coverage of climate change and concern about this issue. I would suspect that the aim of the campaign is to blunt the impact of these climate advocacy efforts.”
“The talking points are stale and patently scientific nonsense. That isn't critical. The point would be to keep the ‘contested’ nature of climate change alive.”
Geoffrey Supran, a Research Associate at Harvard University who gave evidence to the European Parliament in March on oil giant ExxonMobil’s historic promotion of climate science denial, said he thought the move was an attempt to distract from the various upcoming efforts to increase action on climate change globally, such as the UN Climate Action Summit at the end of the month:
“These people are the rhetorical equivalent to the kid in the classroom screaming ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ They're desperate for attention.”
“As always, they presumably hope to muddy the waters of public and political discourse on the climate crisis. To feed the echo chamber of sympathetic right-wing media and blogs, and to prey on naive and unsuspecting journalists who may be tempted to exercise false balance in their climate coverage.”
Coordinated effort
The campaign is being spearheaded by a new Netherlands-based climate science denial group called the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL), launched in April with funding from Niek Sandmann, a multimillionaire real estate developer.
The group’s co-founder Guus Berkhout, an engineering professor who began his career at Shell and set up the Delphi Consortium in the 1980s to develop new exploration methods for the oil and gas industry, told DeSmog that interest in the campaign had been “overwhelming”.
Berkhout said there were plans to hold press conferences in European capitals and that the effort was being “expanded to a World Climate Declaration”. He declined to offer further details or comment.
In addition to CLINTEL, the international organising group includes some well-known figures from the climate misinformation world, including:
- Professor Richard Lindzen, former Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (USA)
- Viv Forbes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition (Australia)
- Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, Speaker at the European Institute for Climate and Energy (Germany)
- Professor Jeffrey Foss, Contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada)
- Jim O’Brien, Chair and Co-founder of the Irish Climate Science Forum (Ireland)
- Terence Dunleavy, Founding Chairman of the International Climate Science Coalition (New Zealand)
In an email seen by DeSmog, Berkhout explains that “signatures are being collected from persons who give a valuable contribution to the climate debate and are recognised as such”. He goes on to boast that there are “already a lot of great names on the list”.
Of the 400 signatories, only a handful have a background in climate science, with the majority being writers, engineers and geologists with no direct expertise in the field.
In addition to the Cato Institute's Richard Lindzen,the list features numerous figures from US-based libertarian groups, including Patrick Michaels of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Charles Battig and Willie Soon from the Heartland Institute, which provides a total of 12 signatures alone. All three organisations are members of the Atlas Network, a Koch-funded international umbrella body of free-market groups.
UK affiliates of the network include the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance. A number of former employees of these groups are now working in Boris Johnson’s government.
Taxpayers’ Alliance founder Matthew Elliott is reportedly advising new Chancellor Sajid Javid, whose Conservative leadership campaign he ran, while former employee Chloe Westley has joined Boris Johnson’s Number 10 team. International Trade Secretary Liz Truss has appointed two special advisors from the IEA and ASI.
UK support
The UK’s principal climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation(GWPF)](https://www.desmog.co.uk/global-warming-policy-foundation), founded by former Chancellor [Nigel Lawson in the run-up to the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, is also well-represented in the campaign.
At least four members of its Academic Advisory Council feature in the letter’s signatories, and other contributors to the GWPF have also backed the “declaration”.
One is Northumbria University Professor Valentina Zharkova, who gave a lecture to the group last year claiming that climate change is caused by natural solar cycles. A paper Zharkova co-authored in June on the same subject was criticised for containing “basic errors” and an investigation into how it came to be published was launched by the scientific journal that printed it.
CLINTEL also has close ties to the GWPF. Berkhout wrote an essay for the UK group last year insisting that climate change was purely a natural phenomenon. And in February, the GWPF published an article by its Dutch counterpart that said: “Yes, the Earth is warming up. But that is business as usual. Earth’s history tells us that climate change has always happened.”
The following month GWPF director Benny Peiser spoke at a gathering in Amsterdam where CLINTEL announced its upcoming launch.
At that event, Berkhout
: “in this whole audience, apart from the organisation and a few brave ones, I don't see young people. So the first thing we are going to do is talk with the young people.” CLINTEL currently has a youth wing called “Young Clintel”.
The GWPF did not respond to a request for comment.
Other UK signatories include directors and former directors of lesser-known oil and gas companies, as well as five Fellows of the Geological Society, a professional body representing Earth scientists.
In addition to the EU “net zero” emissions target under consideration, planned “climate strike” protests and the upcoming UN Climate Action Summit, the media offensive may also, given its European focus, be timed to coincide with a crunch government meeting in Germany on how the country will meet its 2030 emissions target, set to take place on 20 September.
German signatories to the letter include a spokesperson for the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), which a Der Spiegel investigation earlier this year found had been working closely with the insurgent, far-right Alternative for Germany party to campaign against action on climate change.
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https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/02/19/how-tobacco-and-fossil-fuel-companies-fund-disinformation-campaigns-around-world
Fossil fuel companies have a long history of adopting public relations strategies straight from the tobacco industry's playbook. But a new analysis shows the two industries’ relationship goes much deeper — right down to funding the same organisations to do their dirty work.
MIT Associate Professor David Hsu analyzed organisations in DeSmog’s disinformation database and the Guardian’s tobacco database and found 35 thinktanks based in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand that promote both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries’ interests.
Of these organisations, DeSmog can reveal that 32 have taken direct donations from the tobacco industry, 29 have taken donations from the fossil fuel industry, and 28 have received money from both. Two key networks, based around the Koch brothers and Atlas Network, are involved in coordinating or funding many of the thinktanks.
While reviewing the Guardian’s database, Hsu recognized many of the names among those fighting tobacco regulations were the same as “those working to foment climate science denial”.
“This is a well-funded movement,” he says. “The strategies used in the tobacco debate are definitely strategies being used in the climate debate.”
[dataset chart]
no lnx
no docs vid graf
Anti-Science Industrial Complex
There exists an ever-growing network of self-described ‘free market’ organisations that create reports, make media appearances, and disseminate information that the industry then uses to lobby policymakers. This analysis shows that many of these organisations also take donations from the industries they research and report on.
As a Guardian investigation by Jessica Glenza, with additional reporting by Sharon Kelly, recently revealed, these organisations provided “a powerful voice of support to cigarette manufacturers in battles against tougher regulations”. And as DeSmog has previously shown, the same organisations have a long history of promoting climate science denial to discourage policymakers from implementing carbon pollution regulations.
It matters where the money for the thinktanks’ activities comes from, Hsu says:
“There’s a lot of good research that shows that regardless of what people think of how money affects what they do, people that receive large donations are responsive to those donor interests.”
“The fossil fuel industry and the tobacco industry are funding disinformation campaigns so societies and countries can’t take action in ways that would generally benefit everyone except the fossil fuel and tobacco industries.”
Buttons that read 'I heart CO2' from an author with ties to the free-market think tank Heartland Institute
Image: Buttons promoting a book by a Heartland Institute Advisory Board member. Credit: © Zach Roberts
“This is an interesting but not unexpected finding,” Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University, tells DeSmog.
“Several conservative thinktanks were involved early on in the development and dissemination of misinformation regarding the tobacco and health linkage. The techniques of spreading doubt about scientific findings were developed in the tobacco campaign.”
“When the climate change issue emerged, the conservative thinktanks were well equipped and capable of applying their developed skills to bolster another anti-regulatory campaign.”
From Marginal and Isolated to Mainstream and Trans-Atlantic
The thinktanks responded to questions from the Guardian saying “they are fiercely independent, unswayed by any donations, and they argue pro-business, low regulation and taxation positions as part of a broader free market philosophy.”
But these organisations are having their voices and influence amplified due to political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic, bringing what were once marginal ideas into the mainstream.
The election of Donald Trump in the US has seen the appointment of multiple officials with ties to these free market organisations. They have been placed in positions of power to shape federal energy and climate policy.
Among them are two previous employees of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has been described as a “corporate bill mill” by a former member.
One is Daniel Simmons, who now leads the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, an office one of his previous employers lobbied to eliminate. Simmons also worked at the Mercatus Center, which has taken funding from both fossil fuel and tobacco companies.
The other is Todd Wynn, who got his start at the tobacco industry-funded Cascade Policy Institute and later led ALEC’s Energy, Environment, and Agriculture Taskforce. Today he directs the US Department of Interior’s Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs. The Interior Department has authority for permitting fossil fuel industry extraction on the US’s vast federal lands.
View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter
Rick Perry
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@SecretaryPerry
Today, I had the privilege and honor of swearing in Daniel Simmons as the new Assistant Secretary of @ENERGY’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. Looking forward to great things coming from EERE in 2019.
And there are others. Trump’s first pick to lead the EPA, Scott Pruitt, chaired a ‘Civil Justice Taskforce’ for ALEC. And Myron Ebell, who headed Trump’s US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, is an analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) — a group which has received both fossil fuel and tobacco money.
The issue is not confined to the US. As politicians in the UK scramble for experts to provide them with information on Brexit, organisations such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Adam Smith Institute (ASI), and Taxpayers’ Alliance have likewise seen their profiles (and funding) grow.
The organisations were recently accused by a whistleblower of coordinating messaging to push for a hard Brexit, as part of a wider UK network of organisations based in or around offices at 55 Tufton Street.
All three organisations have taken donations from tobacco companies while lobbying for favourable regulations for the industry, while the IEA and ASI have taken money from both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.
Map by Richard Collett-White
Pay for Play?
There is evidence to suggest the research that comes from the tobacco and fossil fuel-funded network is not wholly impartial.
The IEA was last year caught in an undercover sting by Greenpeace’s investigative unit, Unearthed, suggesting the thinktank was willing to have some aspects of its research directed by funders and offering access to ministers in return for donations. The IEA denies the allegations.
The IEA was also recently censured by the UK’s Charity Commission for breaking its impartiality rules that are meant to prevent registered charities from conducting political lobbying.
Hans Gutbrod, Coordinator of Transparify, an NGO that rates thinktanks on their funding transparency, points out that this is “not a left-right issue”. However, he believes some pro-deregulation organisations have been captured by corporate interests. He told DeSmog:
“Original free market thinkers had repeatedly warned against the risks of narrow special interests trying to capture lawmakers and regulators. Yet such crony capitalism is exactly what is happening with a number of supposedly free-market thinktanks.”
“Rather than doing any policy research, they do thinly disguised lobbying work for a handful of corporations,” he said.
The IEA strongly denies that the source of its funding impacts its work. A spokesperson told DeSmog:
“The Institute’s editorial and policy output — in both our reports and our educational material — is decided by its research team and Academic Advisory Council only. Any funding we receive does not, under any circumstances, influence the focus or conclusions of our research.”
“As a free-market thinktank, it can hardly come as a surprise that we have published research that calls for deregulation. But the IEA does not take a corporate line on policy — we have published research in the past that calls for deregulation in a number of different sectors and markets; from financial services, to housing, to childcare.”
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Calls for Deregulation Post-Brexit
Collectively, many of the organisations that receive donations from the tobacco and fossil fuel industries are involved in a trans-Atlantic push for greater deregulation post-Brexit.
For instance, Shanker Singham, once listed as an expert for the US’s Heartland Institute, is a key figure pushing for the UK to deregulate when it leaves the EU without a deal. The Heartland Institute has received donations from both tobacco and fossil fuel companies.
Singham had unprecedented access to the UK government during the early stages of the Brexit negotiations and was the lead author of the IEA's 'Plan A+' report, which outlined its vision for an alternative Brexit. The IEA was also one of the organisations named on a radical alternative plan for post-Brexit UK-US trade deal alongside the Cato Institute, another organisation to have taken both tobacco and fossil fuel donations.
That report slams the EU as saddling the UK with regulations that are “damaging to growth” and singles out environmental protection rules as one of the areas where EU regulation is “moving in an anti-competitive direction”.
Meanwhile, the DC-based Heritage Foundation has hosted a slew of UK politicians, including International Trade Secretary Liam Fox, former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, and Brexit figurehead and former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. The Heritage Foundation has taken money from both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.
Ties to the Atlas Network
All of these organisations identify as ‘free-market’ thinktanks, and are coordinated — to an extent — through the Atlas Network.
Atlas is a Washington, D.C.-based outfit that works with more than 450 organisations across the world, connecting them “to the ideas and resources needed to advance the cause of liberty”, according to its website.
Atlas was founded by Antony Fisher in 1981 with the goal of bringing “innovative, market-based perspectives to issues of public policy.” Fisher also founded the IEA.
The Guardian revealed that more than a fifth of the organisations comprising the network “either argued against controls in some way, took industry donations, or both”. Of those organisations, DeSmog has identified 28 that also took donations from the fossil fuel industry.
Atlas itself has received substantial tobacco and fossil fuel industry backing.
The Guardian reports that Atlas received donations from British American Tobacco in 2015 and 2016, and Japan Tobacco International in 2016. According to PR Watch, tobacco giant Philip Morris contributed over $475,000 to Atlas in 1995 alone.
Among the fossil fuel industry donations Atlas has received, according to ExxonSecrets, ExxonMobil has given a total of $1,082,500 to the network since 1998.
When approached to comment for this story, a spokesperson for Atlas directed DeSmog to an FAQ for journalists. That document states that the network’s “views on donor transparency are informed by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and the guidelines they provide, which we follow faithfully without exception.”
“Any reporting that claims or implies that Atlas Network is secretive or operates with anything short of complete fidelity to the legal requirements governing nonprofit organizations such as ours is patently false and indefensible,” the document says.
Atlas claims to operate in 90 countries. Wherever Atlas goes, there are organisations pushing back against established science, where such science undermines the case for industry deregulation.
In the UK, DeSmog has previously revealed how Atlas is at the heart of a network of organisations pushing for a hard Brexit. It increased its spending in Europe fivefold between 2015 and 2016, the year of the Brexit referendum — with spending increasing from $340,000 in 2015 to $1.7 million the following year.
The Ever-Looming Influence of the Kochs
In the background of all this are the Koch brothers.
Koch Industries is the largest privately owned energy company in the United States. Co-owners of a vast petrochemical and industrial empire, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are major funders of libertarian political organisations in the US and abroad.
Of the 28 organisations that accepted both tobacco and fossil fuel money, 23 also received donations from the Kochs.
Atlas took donations from the Kochs totalling $101,658 in 2016, up from $82,426 in 2015. According to data collected by Greenpeace USA, Atlas has received $348,560 in combined donations from Koch-related foundations between 1998 and 2015.
The Kochs are also major donors to the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) — all organisations that have taken both tobacco and fossil fuel industry money.
UK organisations lobbying for a hard Brexit have also been indirect recipients of Koch money, often through Donors Trust— a foundation described by Mother Jones as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement”, which has received sizable donations from the Kochs — or Epicenter, which acts as the Atlas Network’s European offshoot.
And DeSmog recently revealed that the Kochs were the source of the dark money behind a shadowy group of well-connected ‘free speech advocates’ pushing libertarian ideology and climate science denial in the UK.
The Kochs’ far-reaching funding can have major consequences, Hsu says.
“Organisations, a lot of them funded by the Koch network, have used the tax advantages of philanthropic organisations to first recoup tax advantages and second to use them as an influencing mechanism on the public debate.”
“A lot of these so-called thinktanks or philanthropic organisations are thought of as perhaps more neutral than they really are. They really do reflect the Koch brothers’ agenda.”
The British online magazine Spiked, which features climate denial, is funded by the Koch brothers through the Charles Koch Foundation.
TAGS: Institute Economic Affairs (IEA)cato instituteheritage foundationAdam Smith InstituteAtlas Economic Research Foundationkoch industrieskoch family foundationTaxpayers AllianceDonald TrumpBritish American TobaccoTobacco Playbook
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Morning Edition’s Think Tank Sources Lean to the Right
Thirty-five percent of think tank sources on NPR’s morning news show were from conservative or center-right groups, while 19 percent involved progressive or center-left groups
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/the-foreign-policy-money-trail-in-washington-how-middle-eastern-powers-fund-government-think-tanks-and-influence-us-legislation/
The 2016 elections awakened Americans to a startling reality: the country’s political system is ripe for foreign interference. The Russians took full advantage of social media with bot armies and through unregistered foreign agents. While their influence garnered considerable attention and has led to increased enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), one area has remained largely off the congressional and media radar screens. Yet it remains a vital part of the way other governments try to influence policy in this country: the foreign funding of think tanks.
This story originally appeared at Tom Dispatch.
Most Americans undoubtedly have little idea what a think tank actually does. Having worked at two of them myself, it’s fair to say that even those of us who have labored inside these basic building blocks for policymaking in Washington are often still trying to figure out just what many of them do. Still, whether you know it or not, you’ve certainly seen think-tank employees on cable news, heard them on the radio, or read their op-ed pieces.
After all, think tanks are homes for so many of the “experts” who are the go-to sources for media coverage of foreign and domestic policy topics on just about any day — and are often key go-to sources for those making policy in Washington, too). You know, the former Department of Defense official you caught on NBC News discussing Iran or the Middle Eastern expert you saw quoted in Newsweek critiquing the Trump administration’s policies there. Outside the public eye, members of Congress and executive branch officials rely heavily on think tanks for expertise on a wide range of issues, for key congressional testimony, and even for quite literally helping craft public policy.
Those who run Washington generally trust the inhabitants of think tanks of their political bent to provide the intellectual foundations upon which much of public policy is built. At least in some cases, however, that trust couldn’t be more deeply misplaced, since cornerstones of the ever-expanding think-tank universe turn out to be for sale.
Every year foreign governments pour tens of millions of dollars into those very institutions and, though many think tanks are tax-exempt non-profits, such donations often turn out to be anything but charitable gifts. Foreign contributions generally come with critically important strings attached — usually a favorable stance toward that country in whatever influential work the think tanks are doing. In other words, those experts you regularly read or see on screen, whose scholarship and advice Washington’s politicians and other officials often use, are in some cases being paid, directly or indirectly, by the very countries on which they are offering advice and analysis. And here’s the catch: they can do so without ever having to tell you about it.
The Money Trail From Foreign Governments to Think Tanks
“I’ve never had to worry in my years at CAP about an analyst or me saying X, Y, and Z and worry about a funding source. Never thought about it. Never,” explained Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress (CAP). He was speaking at aMiddle East Institute (MEI) event in January entitled “The Role of Think Tanks in Shaping Middle East Policy.” MEI President Paul Salem echoed this sentiment, noting that funding, particularly foreign government funding, shouldn’t ever shape a think tank’s work. “Independence,” he proclaimed, “is sacred.”
Such comments, like the events themselves, are just the norm in Washington think-tank life — unless, that is, you follow the money, in which case they seem both striking and supremely ironic. On any given day, Washington is, in fact, awash in foreign-policy events at think tanks. There, experts convene to publicly discuss just about every topic you’d want to hear about — except one, of course: their funding. And that is what made the Katulis-Salem exchange particularly interesting. What they and their follow panelists never mentioned at an event extolling the importance of think tanks in helping craft political Washington’s Middle East policies was this: both CAP and MEI have received millions of dollars from authoritarian governments in the Middle East.
MEI has publicly reported receiving millions from Saudi Arabia and lesser amounts from the Persian Gulf states of Oman and Qatar. By far its largest donor, however, seems to have been the United Arab Emirates (UAE), reportedly making a “secret” $20 million contribution to that think tank, earmarked to “hire experts in order to counter the more egregious misperceptions about the region” and “to inform U.S. government policymakers.” In other words, in the spirit of that MEI panel title, the UAE’s funding was explicitly designed to shape that think tank’s — and so U.S. — policy considerations.
While hardly in that $20 million range, CAP has also publicly reported receiving at least $1.5 million from the UAE.
And keep in mind that those two think tanks are hardly the only ones receiving donations from countries in the Middle East. The Center for a New American Security, for instance, received $250,000 from the United Arab Emirates to produce a study on the need for the U.S. to export military-grade drones to countries like… the UAE. That think tank’s subsequent report on the topic notes that the U.S. doesn’t export drones to the UAE and other countries, but should because “this reluctance to transfer U.S. drones harms U.S. interests in tangible ways.” Never mind that a third of those killed in drone strikes in the devastating war in Yemen are civilians.
The Brookings Institution received a $14.8 million donation from Qatar. In fact, according to a New York Times analysis, nearly all of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington have accepted money from authoritarian regimes in the Middle East or elsewhere. And that, in turn, is just the tip of the iceberg, since think tanks are not legally required to publicly disclose their funding.
Charity or Influence Buying?
If think tanks are to be believed, the money they receive from such funders changes little. Recent events at a number of think tanks, including the Center for American Progress and the Middle East Institute, should, however, give pause to anyone who assumes that such institutions are by their nature insulated from the influence of foreign funders.
Recently, serious questions have been raised about whether CAP’s ties to the UAE, itself a close ally of the Saudi royals, contributed to its awkward response to the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist and Saudi citizen Jamal Khashoggi in that Kingdom’s embassy in Istanbul, Turkey. Following that killing, CAP released a response condemning the Saudis for their involvement in Khashoggi’s murder, but not calling for specific consequences to punish the Kingdom.
According to reporting by the Intercept’s Ryan Grim, such consequences were stripped from the statement by a CAP staffer who just happened to be Brian Katulis. Then, in December, CAP largely sat on the sidelines as the Senate passed a historic resolution to end U.S. involvement in the devastating Saudi-UAE war in Yemen. At the MEI event in January, Katulis dismissed those giving “energy and dynamism” to “the Yemen debate” for ignoring “the full complexity of the challenges.” Jamal Khashoggi’s name wasn’t even mentioned.
Despite MEI head Salem’s claim that “independence is sacred,” there’s reason to question how independent scholars can be when their work is, at least in part, dependent on foreign funding. In at least one case, for instance, Salem’s institute published the work of Fahad Nazer, who was directly on the Saudi payroll. While earning $7,000 a month as a foreign agent for Saudi Arabia, Nazer wrote several pro-Saudi articles for both think tanks and mainstream media outlets, including one for MEI that made no mention of his financial ties to the Saudis. That March 2018 article did, however, encourage yet more U.S. support for the country’s ruling crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who, Nazer wrote, would “be good for Saudi Arabia, the United States, and the world.”
Just seven months later, bin Salman would reportedly authorize the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi and, in January 2019, Nazer himself would become the official spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
Blurred Lines and Lack of Transparency
Nazer’s case also illustrates a growing pattern of interactions between think tanks that receive foreign funding and the registered foreign agents of those countries. In fact, Emirati foreign agents last year reported contacting think tanks at least 85 times, according to an analysis of Foreign Agents Registration Act filings for a forthcoming report on the Emirati lobby in the U.S. by the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, which I direct.
Perhaps not surprisingly, CAP’s Katulis and MEI were among the top think-tank contacts for UAE’s foreign agents. According to 2018 filings, Katulis was contacted at least 12 times by the Harbour Group, which the UAE paid more than $5 million in 2018 to “influence U.S. policy,” according to the firm’s FARA filings. Katulis was a particular focus for them because he was helping to organize a “study tour” in which think-tank experts would take a luxurious trip to both the UAE and Saudi Arabia. That group also contacted MEI at least 14 times on behalf of the UAE, directing most of its efforts towards a “speaking engagement at MEI” for the Emirati ambassador to the U.S., the same man who had directed that “secret” $20 million contribution to the institute.
Under current law, it is perfectly legal for think tanks that receive funding from foreign governments to also work with foreign agents registered to represent those very governments. FARA includes an exemption for those engaged in “bona fide… scholastic, academic, or scientific pursuits.” Like many parts of the FARA statute, it’s not at all clear what “bona fide” means, but think tanks are presumably exempt from registration if they meet this threshold.
While the work done by both think tanks and registered foreign agents can sometimes overlap, the two are worlds apart on one critical score: transparency. Under FARA, registered foreign agents are required to disclose a considerable amount of what they do, including whom they’re working for, how much they’re being paid, and whom they’re contacting, as well as when and where they do it, on behalf of foreign principals like the United Arab Emirates. And most of that information is available online. Anything they distribute on behalf of a foreign backer must also include a “conspicuous statement” to let anyone know that what they’re reading is being distributed on behalf of a foreign principal.
Think tanks receiving funding from foreign sources are, however, not required to do any of the above.
As is appropriate during tax season, most of this should, in the end, be blamed on the Internal Revenue Service. Think tanks usually operate as tax-exempt organizations and, according to the IRS, “a tax-exempt organization is generally not required to disclose publicly the names or addresses of its contributors set forth on its annual return.”
While MEI and CAP do both disclose their funding sources on their websites — for which they should be commended — many think tanks do not. And few, even among those that do, mention any potential conflicts of interest that might be reflected in their published reports or the speeches and media appearances of their members. Even more worrisome, a Project On Government Oversight investigation by Lydia Dennett found numerous examples of think-tank experts not reporting or mentioning financial ties to foreign governments when testifying before Congress. Hiding such potential conflicts of interest is likely to leave the public and policymakers with the impression that they’re hearing truly objective experts, when they may, in fact, be taking testimony from someone who is functionally or literally on the payroll of a country with a deep stake in what they’re telling Congress.
If think tanks are to remain credible sources of foreign-policy expertise, such ties must, at the very least, be laid bare.
A first step would simply be to require think tanks to publicly disclose any foreign funding they receive, something easily done by amending the IRS code. In addition, just as registered foreign agents are required to include a “conspicuous statement” letting readers know they’re working on behalf of a foreign power, think tanks should have to fully disclose their funding sources and any potential conflicts of interest in all their written products, as well as at speaking engagements, especially testimony before Congress. It should also be incumbent upon the media to do a better job of vetting sources. Sure, journalists are extraordinarily busy, but if a simple Google search can reveal that the Middle East “expert” you’re quoting is being paid by a country in the Middle East, it behooves you to tell your readers that.
Finally, transparency is essential, but it’s well past time for think tanks themselves to focus on the track records of the countries they’re getting money from. The Brookings Institution did just that by cutting ties with the Saudis shortly after the murder of Khashoggi and, soon after, MEI, too, announced that it would decline any further funding from the Saudi government. More recently, and following the questions raised about CAP’s involvement with the United Arab Emirates, that think tank announced that it would no longer accept UAE money. As a CAP spokesperson said, “It’s just the right thing to do.”
CAP, MEI, and Brookings are, however, the exceptions. Most think tanks haven’t done “the right thing” and dropped funding from autocratic regimes. Nor are they likely to voluntarily increase transparency about that funding. The burden then falls on Congress to enact reforms ensuring that senators and representatives will know when the expert they’re hearing discuss a specific country or the region it’s in is being paid by that very same country. Failure to act could leave Americans asking a simple and uncomfortable question: Which country is buying U.S. foreign policy today?
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2x? looking for saudi $
https://www.nytimes.com/**2014**/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html
lipton confess &
out of order
Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — two nations that host large United States military bases and view a continued American military presence as central to their own national security — have been especially aggressive in their giving to think tanks. The two Persian Gulf monarchies are also engaged in a battle with each other to shape Western opinion, with Qatar arguing that Muslim Brotherhood-style political Islam is the Arab world’s best hope for democracy, and the United Arab Emirates seeking to persuade United States policy makers that the Brotherhood is a dangerous threat to the region’s stability.
The United Arab Emirates, which has become a major supporter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies over the past decade, turned to the think tank in 2007 after an uproar in Congress about the nation’s plan to purchase control of terminals in several United States ports. After lawmakers questioned whether the purchase would be a national security threat to the United States, and the deal was scuttled, the oil-rich nation sought to remake its image in Washington, Mr. Hamre said.
The nation paid the research organization to sponsor a lecture series “to examine the strategic importance” of the gulf region and “identify opportunities for constructive U.S. engagement.” It also paid the center to organize annual trips to the gulf region during which dozens of national security experts from the United States would get private briefings from government officials there.
These and other events gave the United Arab Emirates’ senior diplomats an important platform to press their case. At a round table in Washington in March 2013, Yousef Al Otaiba, the ambassador to the United States, pressed Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about whether the United States would remain committed to his country given budget reductions in Washington.
Mr. Dempsey’s reply was quickly posted on the Facebook page of the United Arab Emirates Embassy: The country, he assured Mr. Al Otaiba and others in the crowd, was one of America’s “most credible and capable allies, especially in the gulf region.”
Access to Power
Small countries are finding that they can gain big clout by teaming up with American research organizations. Perhaps the best example is Norway.
As one of the world’s top oil producers, a member of NATO and a player in peace negotiations in spots around the globe, Norway has an interest in a broad range of United States policies.
The country has committed at least $24 million to an array of Washington think tanks over the past four years, according to a tally by The Times, transforming these nonprofits into a powerful but largely hidden arm of the Norway Foreign Affairs Ministry. Documents obtained under that country’s unusually broad open records laws reveal that American research groups, after receiving money from Norway, have advocated in Washington for enhancing Norway’s role in NATO, promoted its plans to expand oil drilling in the Arctic and pushed its climate change agenda.
Norway paid the Center for Global Development, for example, to persuade the United States government to spend more money on combating global warming by slowing the clearing of forests in countries like Indonesia, according to a 2013 project document describing work by the center and a consulting company called Climate Advisers.
Norway is a major funder of forest protection efforts around the world. But while many environmentalists applaud the country’s lobbying for forest protection, some have attacked the programs as self-interested: Slowing deforestation could buy more time for Norway’s oil companies to continue selling fossil fuels on the global market even as Norway and other countries push for new carbon reduction policies. Oilwatch International, an environmental advocacy group, calls forest protection a “scheme whereby polluters use forests and land as supposed sponges for their pollution.”
Kare R. Aas, Norway’s ambassador to the United States, rejected this criticism as ridiculous. As a country whose territory extends into the Arctic, he said, Norway would be among the nations most affected by global warming.
“We want to maintain sustainable living conditions in the North,” Mr. Aas said.
But Norway’s agreement imposed very specific demands on the Center for Global Development. The research organization, in return for Norway’s money, was not simply asked to publish reports on combating climate change. The project documents ask the think tank to persuade Washington officials to double United States spending on global forest protection efforts to $500 million a year.
“Target group: U.S. policy makers,” a progress report reads.
The grant is already paying dividends. The center, crediting the Norwegian government’s funding, helped arrange a November 2013 meeting with Treasury Department officials. Scholars there also succeeded in having language from their Norway-funded research included in a deforestation report prepared by a White House advisory commission, according to an April progress report.
John J. Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that he did not view as lobbying his scholars’ advocacy on topics foreign donors have funded them to study.
John J. Hamre, the president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that he did not view as lobbying his scholars’ advocacy on topics foreign donors have funded them to study.CreditDrew Angerer for The New York Times
Norway has also funded Arctic research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, at a time when the country was seeking to expand its oil drilling in the Arctic region.
Mr. Hamre, of the center, said he was invited to Norway about five years ago and given a presentation on the Arctic Circle, known in Norway as the “High North.”
“What the hell is the High North?” he said in an interview, recalling that he was not familiar with the topic until then.
But Norway’s government soon began sending checks to the center for a research program on Arctic policy. By 2009, after the new Norway-supported Arctic program was up and running, it brought Norway officials together with a key member of Congress to discuss the country’s “energy aspirations for the region.”
In a March 2013 report, scholars from the center urged the Obama administration to increase its military presence in the Arctic Circle, to protect energy exploration efforts there and to increase the passage of cargo ships through the region — the exact moves Norway has been advocating.
The Brookings Institution, which also accepted grants from Norway, has sought to help the country gain access to American officials, documents show. One Brookings senior fellow, Bruce Jones, offered in 2010 to reach out to State Department officials to help arrange a meeting with a senior Norway official, according to a government email. The Norway official wished to discuss his country’s role as a “middle power” and vital partner of the United States.
Brookings organized another event in April 2013, in which one of Norway’s top officials on Arctic issues was seated next to the State Department’s senior official on the topic and reiterated the country’s priorities for expanding oil exploration in the Arctic.
William J. Antholis, the managing director at Brookings, said that if his scholars help Norway pursue its foreign policy agenda in Washington, it is only because their rigorous, independent research led them to this position. “The scholars are their own agents,” he said. “They are not agents of these foreign governments.”
But three lawyers who specialize in the law governing Americans’ activities on behalf of foreign governments said that the Center for Global Development and Brookings, in particular, appeared to have taken actions that merited registration as foreign agents of Norway. The activities by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Atlantic Council, they added, at least raised questions.
“The Department of Justice needs to be looking at this,” said Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer at Sandler Reiff.
Ona Dosunmu, Brookings’s general counsel, examining the same documents, said she remained convinced that was a misreading of the law.
Norway, at least, is grateful for the work Brookings has done. During a speech at Brookings in June, Norway’s foreign minister, Borge Brende, noted that his country’s relationship with the think tank “has been mutually beneficial for moving a lot of important topics.” Just before the speech, in fact, Norway signed an agreement to contribute an additional $4 million to the group.
Limits on Scholars
The tens of millions in donations from foreign interests come with certain expectations, researchers at the organizations said in interviews. Sometimes the foreign donors move aggressively to stifle views contrary to their own.
Michele Dunne served for nearly two decades as a specialist in Middle Eastern affairs at the State Department, including stints in Cairo and Jerusalem, and on the White House National Security Council. In 2011, she was a natural choice to become the founding director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, named after the former prime minister of Lebanon, who was assassinated in 2005.
The center was created with a generous donation from Bahaa Hariri, his eldest son, and with the support of the rest of the Hariri family, which has remained active in politics and business in the Middle East. Another son of the former prime minister served as Lebanon’s prime minister from 2009 to 2011.
But by the summer of2013, when Egypt’s military forcibly removed the country’s democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, Ms. Dunne soon realized there were limits to her independence. After she signed a petition and testified before a Senate Foreign Relations Committee urging the United States to suspend military aid to Egypt, calling Mr. Morsi’s ouster a “military coup,” Bahaa Hariri called the Atlantic Council to complain, executives with direct knowledge of the events said.
Ms. Dunne declined to comment on the matter. But four months after the call, Ms. Dunne left the Atlantic Council.
In an interview, Mr. Kempe said he had never taken any action on behalf of Mr. Hariri to try to modify positions that Ms. Dunne or her colleagues took. Ms. Dunne left, he said, in part because she wanted to focus on research, not managing others, as she was doing at the Atlantic Council.
“Differences she may have had with colleagues, management or donors on Middle Eastern issues — inevitable in such a fraught environment where opinions vary widely — don’t touch our fierce defense of individual experts’ intellectual independence,” Mr. Kempe said.
Ms. Dunne was replaced by Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., who served as United States ambassador to Egypt during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the longtime Egyptian military and political leader forced out of power at the beginning of the Arab Spring. Mr. Ricciardone, a career foreign service officer, had earlier been criticized by conservatives and human rights activists for being too deferential to the Mubarak government.
Scholars at other Washington think tanks, who were granted anonymity to detail confidential internal discussions, described similar experiences that had a chilling effect on their research and ability to make public statements that might offend current or future foreign sponsors. At Brookings, for example, a donor with apparent ties to the Turkish government suspended its support after a scholar there made critical statements about the country, sending a message, one scholar there said.
“It is the self-censorship that really affects us over time,” the scholar said. “But the fund-raising environment is very difficult at the moment, and Brookings keeps growing and it has to support itself.”
The sensitivities are especially important when it comes to the Qatari government — the single biggest foreign donor to Brookings.
Brookings executivescited strict internal policiesthat they said ensure their scholars’ work is “not influenced by the views of our funders,” in Qatar or in Washington. They also pointed to several reports published at the Brookings Doha Center in recent years that, for example, questioned the Qatari government’s efforts to revamp its education system or criticized the role it has played in supporting militants in Syria.
But in 2012, when a revised agreement was signed between Brookings and the Qatari government, the Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself praised the agreement on its website, announcing that “the center will assume its role in reflecting the bright image of Qatar in the international media, especially the American ones.” Brookings officials also acknowledged that they have regular meetings with Qatari government officials about the center’s activities and budget, and that the former Qatar prime minister sits on the center’s advisory board.
Mr. Ali, who served as one of the first visiting fellows at the Brookings Doha Center after it opened in 2009, said such a policy, though unwritten, was clear.
“There was a no-go zone when it came to criticizing the Qatari government,” said Mr. Ali, who is now a professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. “It was unsettling for the academics there. But it was the price we had to pay.”
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WASHINGTON — The agreement signed last year by the Norway Ministry of Foreign Affairs was explicit: For $5 million, Norway’s partner in Washington would push top officials at the White House, at the Treasury Department and in Congress to double spending on a United States foreign aid program.
But the recipient of the cash was not one of the many Beltway lobbying firms that work every year on behalf of foreign governments.
It was the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit research organization, or think tank, one of many such groups in Washington that lawmakers, government officials and the news media have long relied on to provide independent policy analysis and scholarship.
More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research.
The think tanks do not disclose the terms of the agreements they have reached with foreign governments. And they have not registered with the United States government as representatives of the donor countries, an omission that appears, in some cases, to be a violation of federal law, according to several legal specialists who examined the agreements at the request of The Times.
As a result, policy makers who rely on think tanks are often unaware of the role of foreign governments in funding the research.
Joseph Sandler, a lawyer and expert on the statute that governs Americans lobbying for foreign governments, said the arrangements between the countries and think tanks “opened a whole new window into an aspect of the influence-buying in Washington that has not previously been exposed.”
“It is particularly egregious because with a law firm or lobbying firm, you expect them to be an advocate,” Mr. Sandler added. “Think tanks have this patina of academic neutrality and objectivity, and that is being compromised.”
The arrangements involve Washington’s most influential think tanks, including the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Atlantic Council. Each is a major recipient of overseas funds, producing policy papers, hosting forums and organizing private briefings for senior United States government officials that typically align with the foreign governments’ agendas.
Most of the money comes from countries in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia, particularly the oil-producing nations of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Norway, and takes many forms. The United Arab Emirates, a major supporter of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, quietly provided a donation of more than $1 million to help build the center’s gleaming new glass and steel headquarters not far from the White House. Qatar, the small but wealthy Middle East nation, agreed last year to make a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, which has helped fund a Brookings affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States relations with the Islamic world.
Some scholars say the donations have led to implicit agreements that the research groups would refrain from criticizing the donor governments.
“If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware — they are not getting the full story,” said Saleem Ali, who served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar and who said he had been told during his job interview that he could not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers. “They may not be getting a false story, but they are not getting the full story.”
In interviews, top executives at the think tanks strongly defended the arrangements, saying the money never compromised the integrity of their organizations’ research. Where their scholars’ views overlapped with those of donors, they said, was coincidence.
“Our business is to influence policy with scholarly, independent research, based on objective criteria, and to be policy-relevant, we need to engage policy makers,” said Martin S. Indyk, vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings, one of the oldest and most prestigious think tanks in Washington.
“Our currency is our credibility,” said Frederick Kempe, chief executive of the Atlantic Council, a fast-growing research center that focuses mainly on international affairs and has accepted donations from at least 25 countries since 2008. “Most of the governments that come to us, they understand we are not lobbyists. We are a different entity, and they work with us for totally different purposes.”
In their contracts and internal documents, however, foreign governments are often explicit about what they expect from the research groups they finance.
“In Washington, it is difficult for a small country to gain access to powerful politicians, bureaucrats and experts,” states an internal reportcommissioned by the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry assessing its grant making. “Funding powerful think tanks is one way to gain such access, and some think tanks in Washington are openly conveying that they can service only those foreign governments that provide funding.”
The think tanks’ reliance on funds from overseas is driven, in part, by intensifying competition within the field: The number of policy groups has multiplied in recent years, while research grants from the United States government have dwindled.
Foreign officials describe these relationships as pivotal to winning influence on the cluttered Washington stage, where hundreds of nations jockey for attention from the United States government. The arrangements vary: Some countries work directly with think tanks, drawing contracts that define the scope and direction of research. Others donate money to the think tanks, and then pay teams of lobbyists and public relations consultants to push the think tanks to promote the country’s agenda.
“Japan is not necessarily the most interesting subject around the world,” said Masato Otaka, a spokesman for the Japanese Embassy, when asked why Japan donates heavily to American research groups. “We’ve been experiencing some slower growth in the economy. I think our presence is less felt than before.”
The scope of foreign financing for American think tanks is difficult to determine. But since 2011, at least 64 foreign governments, state-controlled entities or government officials have contributed to a group of 28 major United States-based research organizations, according to disclosures by the institutions and government documents. What little information the organizations volunteer about their donors, along with public records and lobbying reports filed with American officials by foreign representatives, indicates a minimum of $92 million in contributions or commitments from overseas government interests over the last four years. The total is certainly more.
After questions from The Times, some of the research groups agreed to provide limited additional information about their relationships with countries overseas. Among them was the Center for Strategic and International Studies, whose research agenda focuses mostly on foreign policy; it agreed last month to release a list of 13 foreign government donors, from Germany to China, though the organization declined to disclose details of its contracts with those nations or actual donation amounts.
In an interview, John J. Hamre, president and chief executive of the center, acknowledged that the organization’s scholars at times advocate causes with the Obama administration and Congress on the topics that donor governments have funded them to study. But Mr. Hamre stressed that he did not view it as lobbying — and said his group is most certainly not a foreign agent.
“I don’t represent anybody,” Mr. Hamre, a former deputy secretary of defense, said. “I never go into the government to say, ‘I really want to talk to you about Morocco or about United Arab Emirates or Japan.’ I have conversations about these places all the time with everybody, and I am never there representing them as a lobbyist to their interests.”
Several legal experts who reviewed the documents, however, said the tightening relationships between United States think tanks and their overseas sponsors could violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the 1938 federal law that sought to combat a Nazi propaganda campaign in the United States. The law requires groups that are paid by foreign governments with the intention of influencing public policy to register as “foreign agents” with the Justice Department.
Michele Dunne resigned as the head of the Atlantic Council’s center for the Middle East after calling for the suspension of military aid to Egypt in 2013.CreditGlobal Development Network
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“I am surprised, quite frankly, at how explicit the relationship is between money paid, papers published and policy makers and politicians influenced,” said Amos Jones, a Washington lawyer who has specialized in the foreign agents act, after reviewing transactions between the Norway government and Brookings, the Center for Global Development and other groups.
At least one of the research groups conceded that it may in fact be violating the federal law.
“Yikes,” said Todd Moss, the chief operating officer at the Center for Global Development, after being shown dozens of pages of emails between his organization and the government of Norway, which detail how his group would lobby the White House and Congress on behalf of the Norway government. “We will absolutely seek counsel on this.”
Parallels With Lobbying
The line between scholarly research and lobbying can sometimes be hard to discern.
Last year, Japan began an effort to persuade American officials to accelerate negotiations over a free-trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of Japan’s top priorities. The country already had lobbyists on retainer, from the Washington firm of Akin Gump, but decided to embark on a broader campaign.
Akin Gump lobbyists approached several influential members of Congress and their staffs, including aides to Representative Charles Boustany Jr., Republican of Louisiana, and Representative Dave Reichert, Republican of Washington, seeking help in establishing a congressional caucus devoted to the partnership, lobbying records show. After those discussions, in October 2013, the lawmakers established just such a group, the Friends of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
To bolster the new group’s credibility, Japanese officials sought validation from outside the halls of Congress. Within weeks, they received it from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to which Japan has been a longtime donor. The center will not say how much money the government has given — or for what exactly — but an examination of its relationship with a state-funded entity called the Japan External Trade Organization provides a glimpse.
In the past four years, the organization has given the center at least $1.1 million for “research and consulting” to promote trade and direct investment between Japan and the United States. The center also houses visiting scholars from within the Japanese government, including Hiroshi Waguri, an executive in the Ministry of Defense, as well as Shinichi Isobe, an executive from the trade organization.
In early December, the center held an event featuring Mr. Boustany and Mr. Reichert, who spoke about the importance of the trade agreement and the steps they were taking to pressure the White House to complete it. In addition, at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing later that month, Matthew P. Goodman, a scholar at the center, testified in favor of the agreement, his language driving home the very message Japan’s lobbyists and their congressional allies were seeking to convey.
The agreement was critical to “success not only for the administration’s regional economic policy but arguably for the entire Asia rebalancing strategy,” Mr. Goodman said.
Mr. Hamre, the center’s president, acknowledged that his organization’s researchers were pushing for the trade deal (it remains pending). But he said their advocacy was rooted in a belief that the agreement was good for the United States economy and the country’s standing in Asia.
Andrew Schwartz, a spokesman for the center, said that language in the agreements the organization signs with foreign governments gives its scholars final say over the policy positions they take — although he acknowledged those provisions have not been included in all such documents.
“We have to respect their academic and intellectual independence,” Mr. Otaka, the Japanese Embassy spokesman, said in a separate interview. But one Japanese diplomat, who asked not to be named as he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said the country expected favorable treatment in return for donations to think tanks.
“If we put actual money in, we want to have a good result for that money — as it is an investment,” he said.
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2x?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/us/politics/think-tanks-research-and-corporate-lobbying.html
no many links
How Think Tanks
Amplify Corporate
America’s Influence
Think tanks are seen as independent, but their scholars often push donors’
agendas, amplifying a culture of corporate influence in Washington.
By ERIC LIPTON and
BROOKE WILLIAMS
WASHINGTON — As Lennar Corporation, one of the nation’s largest home builders, pushed ahead with an $8 billion plan to revitalize a barren swath of San Francisco, it found a trusted voice to vouch for its work: the Brookings Institution, the most prestigious think tank in the world.
“This can become a productive, mutually beneficial relationship,” Bruce Katz, a Brookings vice president, wrote to Lennar in July 2010. The ultimate benefit for Brookings: $400,000 in donations from Lennar’s different divisions.
Think Tanks Inc.
Articles in this series examine how research institutions have become part of the corporate influence machine in Washington.
Think Tank Scholar or Corporate Consultant? It Depends on the Day
The think tank began to aggressively promote the project, San Francisco’s biggest redevelopment effort since its recovery from the 1906 earthquake, and later offered to help Lennar, a publicly traded company, “engage with national media to develop stories that highlight Lennar’s innovative approach.”
And Brookings went further. It named Kofi Bonner, the Lennar executive in charge of the San Francisco development, as a senior fellow — an enviable credential he used to advance the company’s efforts.
“He would be a trusted adviser,” an internal Brookings memo said in 2014 as the think tank sought one $100,000 donation from Lennar.
Photo
Kofi Bonner, then a regional vice president for Lennar Corporation, at Hunters Point in San Francisco in 2008. The Brookings Institution named him a senior fellow in 2014. Credit Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Think tanks, which position themselves as “universities without students,” have power in government policy debates because they are seen as researchers independent of moneyed interests. But in the chase for funds, think tanks are pushing agendas important to corporate donors, at times blurring the line between researchers and lobbyists. And they are doing so while reaping the benefits of their tax-exempt status, sometimes without disclosing their connections to corporate interests.
Thousands of pages of internal memos and confidential correspondence between Brookings and other donors — like JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank; K.K.R., the global investment firm; Microsoft, the software giant; and Hitachi, the Japanese conglomerate — show that financial support often came with assurances from Brookings that it would provide “donation benefits,” including setting up events featuring corporate executives with government officials, according to documents obtained by The New York Times and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting.
Similar arrangements exist at many think tanks. On issues as varied as military sales to foreign countries, international trade, highway management systems and real estate development, think tanks have frequently become vehicles for corporate influence and branding campaigns.
U.S. & POLITICS By A.J. CHAVAR and ERIC LIPTON 1:43
‘This Is Thinly Disguised Lobbying’
Video
‘This Is Thinly Disguised Lobbying’
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, explains how some think tanks engage in “thinly disguised lobbying” to influence lawmakers. By A.J. CHAVAR and ERIC LIPTON on Publish Date August 7, 2016. . Watch in Times Video »
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“This is about giant corporations who figured out that by spending, hey, a few tens of millions of dollars, if they can influence outcomes here in Washington, they can make billions of dollars,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, a frequent critic of undisclosed Wall Street donations to think tanks.
Washington has seen a proliferation of think tanks, particularly small institutions with narrow interests tied to specific industries. At the same time, the brand names of the field have experienced explosive growth. Brookings’s annual budget has doubled in the last decade, to $100 million. The American Enterprise Institute is spending at least $80 million on a new headquarters in Washington, not far from where the Center for Strategic and International Studies built a $100 million office tower.
The shift has occurred as nonprofits in general have been under increasing pressure from their donors to meet specific goals. But for think tanks, that pressure can threaten their standing as independent arbiters in policy debates in Congress, the White House and the news media.
“Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to the greatest generation, in the post-World War II era of philanthropy, where they said, gosh, ‘Here is $1 million; spend it how you wish,’” Kimberly Churches, the managing director at Brookings, said in an interview.
Think tank executives reject any suggestion that they are tools of corporate influence campaigns and say they are simply teaming up with donors that have similar goals, like helping cities with economic development.
“We do not compromise our integrity,” said Martin S. Indyk, Brookings’s executive vice president. “We maintain our core values of quality, independence, as well as impact.”
But he acknowledged that the arrangement to appoint the Lennar executive as a senior fellow had created the “appearance of a conflict of interest.” And he said that Brookings, in the interest of transparency, had recently decided to prohibit corporations or corporate-backed foundations from making anonymous contributions.
At think tanks like Brookings, the majority of reports and events, with titles like “Five Evils: Multidimensional Poverty and Race in America” or “India at the Global High Table,” have no obvious link to corporate donors.
Still, the benefits afforded to corporations looking to cloak themselves with the authority of think tanks are strikingly evident, according to a review of documents from more than a dozen institutions.
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The likely conclusions of some think tank reports, documents show, are discussed with donors — or even potential ones — before the research is complete. Drafts of the studies have been shared with donors whose opinions have then helped shape final reports. Donors have outlined how the resulting scholarship will be used as part of broader lobbying efforts. The think tanks also help donors promote their corporate brands, as Brookings does with JPMorgan Chase, whose $15.5 million contribution is the largest by a private corporation in the institution’s history.
Despite these benefits, corporations can write off the donations as charitable contributions. Some tax experts say these arrangements may amount to improper subsidies by taxpayers if think tanks are providing specific services.
“People think of think tanks as do-gooders, uncompromised and not bought like others in the political class,” said Bill Goodfellow, the executive director of the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based think tank. “But it’s absurd to suggest that donors don’t have influence. The danger is we in the think tank world are being corrupted in the same way as the political world. And all of us should be worried about it.”
A group of Democratic state attorneys general is investigating whether Exxon Mobil worked with certain think tanks in past decades to cover up its understanding of fossil fuels’ impact on climate change, in part by financing reports questioning the science, a suggestion the company rejects.
Document: Brookings Institution and Its Corporate Donors
Executives at Brookings, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and other think tanks say they have systems in place to ensure that their reports are based on scholars’ independent conclusions.
“We strongly believe in our model of seeking solutions to some of our country’s most difficult problems,” John J. Hamre, the chief executive at C.S.I.S., said in a written reply to questions. “We gather stakeholders, vet ideas, find areas of agreement and highlight areas of disagreement.”
Yet researchers at think tanks are seeing corporate influence firsthand. Rachel Stohl, a senior associate at the Stimson Center in Washington, said she had been quizzed by potential donors as she tried to raise money for research on the military’s use of armed drones.
“‘Are you going to say drones are bad?’” she recalled one potential financial backer asking. “‘We are not interested in funding something that says drones are bad.’”
Donations and Rewards
The confidential Brookings spreadsheet had an unassuming title: Corporate Overviews Tracking. It listed nearly 90 corporations, from Alcoa to Wells Fargo, providing a glimpse of the vast electronic file that Brookings maintained on donors and prospects, and the benefits it might offer.
The database, along with thousands of pages of emails, solicitations for money and memos on meetings with corporate officials, highlighted Brookings’s practice of assuring that donors would see results from their contributions.
The Brookings Institution, which operates on a $100 million annual budget, twice what it was a decade ago. Credit Greg Kahn for The New York Times
The files included company priorities and a tally of donations. General Electric wanted to fund work on rail networks and clean energy programs — both critical parts of its business — and Brookings then featured G.E. executives, joined by officials from the White House and Congress, at events that focused on these industries.
In 2004, Brookings established its Metropolitan Policy Program, devised to stimulate economic growth in cities. As the country was emerging from recession, Brookings bolstered its ties to corporate donors in 2010 by naming Marek Gootman, a lobbyist from Patton Boggs, as its first director of strategic partnerships. He was assigned to work with “a national network of elected, business and civic leaders engaged in city and metropolitan area policy development and implementation.”
From the start, the program blended a variety of insights on urban matters, including from corporate, nonprofit and government sources. And Mr. Indyk noted that any reports issued were made public.
Donations to the program exploded, from $4.3 million in 2005 to $12.5 million in 2013, nearly 20 percent of Brookings’s overall program spending that year.
K.K.R., after starting special funds around 2010 to invest in real estate and other infrastructure projects, donated $450,000 to Brookings, some of it as the institution agreed to set up meetings for a top K.K.R. executive with community leaders in Philadelphia and Detroit, where the company was considering real estate projects. Brookings separately produced a report, published on K.K.R.’s website, promoting one of the company’s infrastructure projects in New Jersey, after the company executive suggested such a piece.
In advance of a 2014 event Brookings officials attended with corporate executives including Henry R. Kravis, a co-chairman of K.K.R., one memo marked as confidential noted: “K.K.R. has given a total of $350K to Brookings. Last gift came in on 3/27/2014 for $150K to Metro; Henry has donated $75K to Brookings, most going to the individual unrestricted fund.”
The tally demonstrates the important distinction that Brookings makes between “unrestricted” donations, which the think tank can spend on any research, and project-based funding restricted to specific topics that the donor has a particular interest in.
Photo
Marek Gootman, center, with Gina Luna, a JPMorgan Chase executive, in April. Formerly a lobbyist at Patton Boggs, Mr. Gootman was appointed in 2010 as Brookings’s first director of strategic partnerships. Credit Erin Hull for The New York Times
Lennar joined Brookings’s Metropolitan Leadership Council, established for the program’s top donors, in July 2010. That month, the company won approval to redevelop Hunters Point in San Francisco, turning the area into a more than 700-acre mix of housing, education and commercial development.
Brookings would later name the project one of the three most “transformative investments in the United States.”
The San Francisco project generated controversy from the beginning, with critics concerned about toxic waste left by the former Navy shipyard.
Lennar joined with Brookings as protests were escalating in 2010. One complaint, filed by area residents with the Environmental Protection Agency, said the San Francisco Health Department was “conspiring with Lennar Corporation to conceal the health threats of asbestos-laden dust.” The company was busy at the time looking for investors to help it complete the project, known as the San Francisco Shipyard.
A spokesman for Lennar, Glenn Bunting, disputed claims that the company had donated to Brookings out of self-interest — and said the alliance was not related to the protests.
“There was nothing needed in the way of assistance for Lennar to ‘buy’ from Brookings,” Mr. Bunting said in an email. Brookings, though, continued to promote the project.
“San Francisco’s Shipyard project is both physically and economically transformative for the Bay Area and globally significant,” Mr. Katz, the Brookings vice president, said in a news release issued by San Francisco’s mayor in 2011 as Lennar’s hunt for major investors intensified. “This project promises to set a new paradigm for successfully conceiving, financing and delivering transformative infrastructure projects in the United States.”
Follow-up memos were more explicit: Brookings, as it sought an additional $50,000 from Lennar in 2014, said it was prepared to “use our convening power, research expertise, network connections and knowledge of innovative practices to help further drive the ultimate impact and success” of Lennar’s project and to “provide public validation of San Francisco’s efforts through national and local media coverage.”
The think tank soon delivered.
In a July 2014 document, Brookings sought more money from Lennar while offering to help with its San Francisco project.
Mr. Katz made appearances alongside Mr. Bonner, the Lennar executive, to promote the project to government officials and business leaders in California. In 2014, around the time the think tank sought an additional round of money from Lennar, Brookings invited its new nonresident senior fellow, Mr. Bonner, who has a master’s degree in architecture and is a former government planner for several California cities, to appear at an event at its headquarters.
“I am working in San Francisco in a fabulous property,” Mr. Bonner said at the event, referring to Lennar’s Shipyard project.
In March, at a conference of real estate developers and investors in Cannes, France, Lennar sponsored a session in which Brookings researchers helped the company highlight the Shipyard.
“Kofi is what I would describe as the quintessential city builder,” Julie Wagner, a Brookings nonresident senior fellow, said as she introduced Mr. Bonner at an event where projects with no connection to donors were also featured.
At least some of the $400,000 Lennar has donated to Brookings since 2010 has come from its SunStreet Energy division, which sells rooftop solar systems, at the same time that Brookings’s metropolitan program has published research on the rooftop solar industry.
Mr. Indyk said the collaboration simply reflected shared goals of revitalizing cities. Brookings scholars promoted other real estate projects, he said, involving local governments, universities or even developers that were not donors — including one in Detroit backed by Dan Gilbert, the founder of Quicken Loans, and one in Seattle backed by Paul G. Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft.
But Mr. Indyk acknowledged that naming Mr. Bonner, who declined to be interviewed, a Brookings nonresident scholar had “created the impression that because Lennar was giving money, he was getting the title.” His post, which was unpaid, was not renewed.
Martin S. Indyk, the Brookings Institution’s executive vice president, said the think tank’s collaboration with Lennar to redevelop Hunters Point in San Francisco reflected a shared goal to revitalize cities. “We do not compromise our integrity,” he said. Credit T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
Hitachi has been another large donor to the metropolitan program, giving a total of $1.8 million to Brookings over the last decade, according to Brookings documents. The think tank reviewed the company’s corporate marketing and sales strategy targeting the United States, an internal memo shows. Brookings also organized public events that featured top Obama administration officials and allowed Hitachi executives to promote their products.
“Metro has held nine meetings and several conference calls in the past six months with executives from Hitachi’s water, transportation and data business lines and are collaborating more fully on defining what it means to be a ‘Smart City,’” a confidential Brookings memo said.
Officials at Brookings said they had not lobbied for Hitachi, and they provided examples of reports that they said included conclusions challenging the company’s position. “Helping a corporation’s for-profit agenda is not in any way our agenda,” Ms. Churches, the managing director, said.
Yet Ms. Churches also said the contract language with donors like Lennar and Hitachi was “inelegant,” although not improper.
When asked if the documents read like a fee-for-service agreement, she said, “It could be misconstrued.”
Mr. Indyk said Brookings had recently changed its policies so that “today, there is no way in which those words would be used in our documents.”
‘Growing the Economy’
When JPMorgan offered a major donation to the metropolitan program in 2011, Brookings created the Global Cities Initiative, complete with a new logo that called it a “joint project of Brookings and JPMorgan Chase.”
The project was premised on a common interest between the bank and the think tank. Brookings wanted to promote economic growth in cities by encouraging international trade, and JPMorgan wanted to gain new business by offering loans to companies in the same markets.
In contract documents, Brookings emphasized that it would control the conclusions of its reports and said it would “not directly or indirectly communicate with any party” to help get JPMorgan business.
Mr. Indyk and executives from JPMorgan said the company and the think tank simply agreed on a worthy agenda.
“This was about growing the economy, and we are incredibly proud of the results of this initiative,” said Peter Scher, the head of the corporate responsibility program at JPMorgan. “We believe it’s had a huge impact in more than 30 cities that are involved.”
At the same time, hundreds of pages of memos — status reports to JPMorgan, internal reports by Brookings staff to prepare for meetings with top bank executives, and formal documents soliciting more money — make clear that Brookings saw the Global Cities Initiative as a branding effort that could help JPMorgan bolster its standing in cities.
“Bottom line: Growing metro economies is good for the nation and for JPMC; also, many U.S. cities are JPMC clients — motivation to support them and their clients,” said one Brookings document dated July 2011, as officials from the think tank met with top bank executives to discuss a planned donation that eventually totaled $15 million.
The Global Cities Initiative, another document written by a Brookings senior fellow explained, “must mean a marriage between JPMC corporate interests” and “Brookings continued thought leadership.”
JPMorgan, in a document dated a month before the agreement was signed, said the pending donation to Brookings “deepens/extends relationships with important client base among business and civic leaders both in the U.S. and abroad.”
And Brookings was ready to do its part.
“Our events, which in part target these audiences,” said an internal 2014 Brookings memo, referring to the Global Cities Initiative and federal and state leaders, “have yielded 100+ media hits, with 97% of them referencing GCI and 90% referencing JPMorgan; by the end of this year, we will have held events in 13 domestic markets and 9 international markets.”
At times, Brookings officials seemed worried they were not doing enough for the bank.
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One of hundreds of documents detailing confidential discussions between Brookings and JPMorgan in 2011 as the parties were negotiating a $10 million gift for the Global Cities Initiative.
“No one wants to create overt marketing opportunities for JPMC, but we need to carve out roles and thought leadership opportunity for market presidents,” said a 2013 Brookings memo, referring to a dinner with the bank’s executives. “We need to do a better job tying it back to JPMC.”
It remains difficult to assess whether the relationship helped the bank’s business, but Mr. Scher said that was not the goal.
“If the Global Cities Initiative strengthens the economic competitiveness of cities, it’s a win for small businesses, job creation and everyone involved in these communities, including us,” Mr. Scher said in a statement.
Donations from the corporations to Brookings are tax exempt based on the premise that the think tank’s work benefits the public good, not a company’s bottom line.
But two lawyers who specialize in nonprofit law — Miranda Perry Fleischer, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law, and Clifford Perlman, a partner at a New York-based firm — said Brookings’s agreements raised questions.
“Tax deductions are subsidies that are paid for by all taxpayers,” Ms. Fleischer said. “And the reason the subsidy is provided is that the charitable organization is supposed to be doing something for the public good, not that specifically benefits the private individual or corporation in the form of providing them goods or services.”
Mr. Indyk said that opinion was “totally unfounded,” noting that Brookings had retained its own lawyers to review the documents and found no problems.
“Brookings’s conclusion that all of these activities it engaged in with these donors primarily benefited the public rather than the donors is consistent with the applicable federal tax standards,” Douglas Varley, one of the lawyers for Brookings, said in a statement.
Close Partnerships
Other think tanks have been even more closely aligned with corporate agendas.
FedEx teamed up with the Atlantic Council — a think tank that focuses on international relations, with annual revenue that has surged to $21 million from $2 million in the last decade — to build support for a free-trade agreement the company hoped would increase business.
Document: Atlantic Council and Corporate Donors
Six months before the Atlantic Council report was issued, FedEx and the think tank worked on plans to use the report as a lobbying tool.
“The impact and reach of the report would be maximized by a rollout event” including a “public report launch with member(s) of Congress from one of the relevant committees,” said a two-page summary drafted by the Atlantic Council months before the study was completed.
FedEx and the Atlantic Council, working with the European American Chamber of Commerce, also told companies being asked to participate in the study that the goal was to “emphasize the positive impact that a comprehensive agreement would have on American and European small businesses.”
When the report came out in late 2014, its conclusions mirrored arguments FedEx had been aggressively pushing on Capitol Hill, including recommending a reduction in trans-Atlantic tariffs and allowing more duty-free shipments.
An executive vice president at FedEx, Rajesh Subramaniam, attended an event at Atlantic Council headquarters in Washington to celebrate the release of the final report. So did a key supporter, Representative Erik Paulsen, Republican of Minnesota.
“This is very exciting,” Mr. Subramaniam said at the event, referring to the potential for more trade. “The upside opportunity is quite large.”
Frederick Kempe, the Atlantic Council president, said that FedEx had donated just $20,000 to help fund the effort and that the staff at the Atlantic Council had handled the research.
Photo
A 2013 Atlantic Council brochure detailed the benefits of membership in the think tank’s corporate program.
“There is no doubt the work of think tanks has more credibility than the work of lobbyists, but the only way we preserve it is through intellectual independence,” Mr. Kempe said.
‘We Do Not Lobby’
General Atomics, the California-based manufacturer of Predator drones, had a clear problem. Prospects for sales were falling as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wound down. The company wanted the Obama administration to change its policy to allow for sales to other countries, a lucrative proposition.
“When the budgets are going down in the U.S., you would like to be able to export more,” Frank Pace, the president of the company’s aircraft systems group, told a Reuters reporter in late 2013 at an air show in Dubai.
At about that time, the industry turned to the Center for Strategic and International Studies for help, providing money that the think tank used to conduct a study on drone policy, including exports.
While defense contracting giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing have cumulatively donated at least $77 million since 2010 to two dozen think tanks, disclosure records show, General Atomics’s contribution to the Center for Strategic and International Studies was quite small — in the tens of thousands of dollars.
C.S.I.S. set up confidential meetings at its headquarters with company representatives, inviting top officials from the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, the State Department and the office of the defense secretary, according to emails and other documents obtained by The Times through open records requests.
Document: C.S.I.S. and the Military Drone Maker
“Our series will be unique in convening a much broader group of stakeholders than is typical,” Samuel J. Brannen, the think tank’s lead scholar, wrote in an email to Aaron W. Jost, one of the State Department officials in charge of regulating drone exports.
As a think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies did not file a lobbying report, but the goals of the effort were clear.
“Political obstacles to export,” read the agenda of one closed-door “working group” meeting organized by Mr. Brannen that included Tom Rice, a lobbyist in General Atomics’s Washington office, on the invitation lists, the emails show.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin, drone makers that were major C.S.I.S. contributors, were also invited to attend the sessions, the emails show. The meetings and research culminated with a report released in February 2014 that reflected the industry’s priorities.
“I came out strongly in support of export,” Mr. Brannen, the lead author of the study, wrote in an email to Kenneth B. Handelman, the deputy assistant secretary of state for defense trade controls.
But the effort did not stop there.
Mr. Brannen initiated meetings with Defense Department officials and congressional staff to push for the recommendations, which also included setting up a new Pentagon office to give more focus to acquisition and deployment of drones. The center also stressed the need to ease export limits at a conference it hosted at its headquarters featuring top officials from the Navy, the Air Force and the Marine Corps.
Mr. Brannen, who has since left C.S.I.S., declined to comment. The think tank insisted that its efforts to influence administration policy were not lobbying.
“C.S.I.S. will not represent any donor before any government office or entity, including congressional lawmakers and executive branch officials,” Mr. Hamre, the chief executive, said in his statement to The Times. “We do not lobby.”
One thing is clear: The result was a victory for General Atomics.
Photo
A Predator drone manufactured by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. General Atomics helped fund a study that led the United States to ease restrictions on sales of drones to governments overseas. Credit Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times
In February 2015, almost one year after the C.S.I.S. report was issued, the State Department announced a clarification of its rules, easing final approval that month for General Atomics’s long-planned sale of unarmed Predator drones to the United Arab Emirates, the first such sale to a non-NATO nation. The think tank report was just one of many voices pushing for the change.
A State Department spokesman said that while the government officials involved in the review had received opinions from think tanks and industry officials, “at the end of the day, this is a considered U.S. government policy.”
Huntington Ingalls Industries had an equally clear objective: to create an elaborate public relations and lobbying campaign to convince Congress that the nation needed to confront an emerging threat from China by building more nuclear-powered aircraft carriers — at a cost of about $11 billion each. The clear beneficiary? Huntington, the lone builder of the ships.
As part of a broader communications effort, Huntington helped finance a think tank report that enhanced the company’s argument for more funding. Bryan McGrath, a former naval officer who had commanded a guided-missile destroyer, approached Huntington Ingalls and offered to write a study on a fee-for-service basis as a private industry expert. The company turned down his offer.
Later, after he had joined the Hudson Institute and helped create the Center for American Seapower, he approached Huntington officials again, and they were interested.
“A think tank has more prestige,” Mr. McGrath said.
Huntington Ingalls paid $100,000 to fund the work, a critical commitment for Mr. McGrath, who said he was paid by Hudson only if he could successfully solicit donations to support his research.
Mr. McGrath said he had always been a strong proponent of aircraft carriers, so the company was not buying his opinion.
“The Hudson Center makes no secret about being very pro-sea power,” he said. “If a company came that wanted us to write a piece that advocated for something other than that, the answer would be no.”
In exchange for Huntington Ingalls’s support, company officials were given regular briefings on the research and the opportunity to suggest revisions to early drafts, Mr. McGrath said.
Document: The Aircraft Carrier Industry’s Lobbying and Think Tank Plan
“We have an iterative process already laid out in which we will sit down with them and go through drafts and discuss where we are going,” Mr. McGrath said. He added that he had not accepted all of the company’s suggestions.
The report was released in October at the Rayburn House Office Building. Mr. McGrath received an introduction from one of the industry’s most important boosters, Representative J. Randy Forbes, Republican of Virginia, the chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee that oversees the Navy.
The report did not mention that Huntington Ingalls had helped pay for it. Asked about the failure to disclose the contribution, John P. Walters, Hudson’s chief operating officer, called it a mistake. The report was subsequently revised — months after it was released and the congressional event held — to disclose the donation.
A second industry-funded report, prepared by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, came out a month later with a similar urgent call for more money to build more ships and to base more ships abroad, although it did not mention that it had been funded by the Navy League of the United States, a nonprofit group whose large corporate donors include Huntington Ingalls.
“This report is yet another important tool for Navy Leaguers to use in the field when educating local leaders and lawmakers,” Skip Witunski, the Navy League president, wrote to the group’s members late last year.
The strategy — lining up think tank reports as lobbying tools that echoed each other — was backed up with a series of letters to the editor, dozens of posts on Twitter and Facebook, and op-ed pieces.
Mr. McGrath said he, too, wondered if this storm of industry-funded work might be threatening the integrity of the process.
“I see a lot of stuff that comes out in Washington,” Mr. McGrath said, “and I got to scratch my head and say, ‘That guy must be on the payroll."
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https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-august-28-2017/
mktplace of ideas meme/scam left ceded, bought the frame, "balance" but not to present a true alt but change our model to // Bookings hires GOP 1978, prove not left bias, not ~ corp
. My book Right Moves: The Conservative Think Tank in American Political Culture since 1945 (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) is the culmination of this particular research agenda.
Conservative think tanks, like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, have had enormous success in shaping political ideas and policy over the last forty years. But historian Jason Stahl argues that some of their greatest achievements have been in remaking the terrain on which historically liberal think tanks have operated on. He reflects on the ways that the Democratic Party moved to the right in the 1990s, influenced by the Democratic Leadership Council’s think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute. Stahl also discusses the power of ideas amongst white supremacists, as illustrated by the appeal of Richard Spencer, of the far right National Policy Institute think tank.
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http://www.cehd.umn.edu/OLPD/people/faculty/stahl.asp
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During the campaign and continuing into the early days of his administration, President Trump has leaned heavily on 4 conservative policy shops for personnel and strategies for rolling back Obama-era regulations and beefing up domestic energy production.
It isn't unusual for the executive branch to draw upon think tanks for staff and ideas, but political observers say the Trump team's reliance on them is without parallel.
"It's pretty unprecedented, really, at least for Republican administrations," said Stephen Moore, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation who was an economic adviser to Trump during the presidential campaign.
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Heritage staffers spread out across government to work on Trump's agency transition teams, and some have joined the administration.
"This is pretty amazing how many people are leaving here to go across to Pennsylvania Avenue," Moore said. "I haven't seen anything like it before."
And Heritage isn't alone. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Energy Research, the Texas Public Policy Foundationand others have offered staff and advice to the Trump team. The new administration's lobbying restrictions have likely played a role in some recruits coming from nonprofit idea shops, where hires don't face the same hurdles as K Street staffers.
To be sure, previous Republican and Democratic administrations have pulled people and ideas from think tanks. During the Obama administration, the liberal Center for American Progress served as both a training ground and a source of policy ideas for the White House.
Environmentalists and others on the left have watched warily as conservative policy shops' profiles have risen.
"The right-wing think tanks are having a huge impact in putting bull's-eyes on environmental safeguards that they don't like," said Dan Weiss, who was previously director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress.
Weiss said think tanks are having "much more influence" under Trump than they had under the George W. Bush or Reagan administrations.
Here's a look at some of the conservative think tanks and staffers who have played big parts in Trump's energy agenda so far and could help sway executive branch decisions throughout the administration.
Heritage Foundation
Stephen Moore
Stephen Moore. Photo courtesy of The Heritage Foundation.
Backstory: Washington-based think tank formed in 1973 and led by former South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint.
Key staff: Stephen Moore, a former Wall Street Journal columnist who pushed Trump to spend more time talking about natural gas and oil development on the campaign trail. Moore said he isn't planning to enter the administration but isn't ruling it out. "If Trump asked me to do it, I would certainly do it," he said.
David Kreutzer, former senior research fellow on energy and climate change. Kreutzer was on Trump's EPA transition team ahead of Inauguration Day and has since joined the EPA "beachhead" team of political appointees. He recently said he doesn't support any government regulations to limit carbon dioxide (Greenwire, Jan. 26).
Jack Spencer, vice president for the Heritage Foundation's Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity. He's a specialist on nuclear waste management and nuclear energy who served on the Trump transition team for the Energy Department.
Energy/environmental platform: One way Heritage could be most influential under Trump is in influencing budgets that are expected to soon see major cuts in domestic spending. The group's proposed budget blueprint calls for slashing a host of energy and environmental programs at U.S. EPA and DOE (Greenwire, Jan. 27).
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Myron Ebell
Backstory: Founded in 1984 by libertarian political writer Fred Smith. The limited-government advocates are proud of their reputation as a thorn in the side of environmentalists.
Key staff: Myron Ebell, director of CEI's Center for Energy and Environment, who led the EPA transition team until Trump's inauguration. He's not part of the administration but has called for drastic reductions in EPA's staff and rollbacks of the Obama administration's signature regulations.
Chris Horner, a CEI senior fellow, who worked alongside Ebell on the Trump EPA transition team. He's known for hounding the Obama EPA for years over emails, text messages and other documents. He's also the author of books like "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud and Deception to Keep You Misinformed" and "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism" (Greenwire, Dec. 12, 2016).
Energy/environmental platform: CEI, according to its website, "questions global warming alarmism, makes the case for access to affordable energy, and opposes energy-rationing policies, including the Kyoto Protocol, cap-and-trade legislation, and EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. CEI also opposes all government mandates and subsidies for conventional and alternative energy technologies."
Institute for Energy Research
Tom Pyle
Backstory: Nonprofit energy think tank founded in Houston in 1989 by Robert Bradley Jr. that advocates "free-market" energy and environmental policy. The group, which is now based in Washington, launched a political arm — the American Energy Alliance — in 2008.
Key staff: Tom Pyle, the president of IER, who was the leader of the Trump transition team at DOE. He was previously an energy lobbyist whose clients included Koch Industries and a Republican congressional aide.
Travis Fisher, a former IER economist and a former employee at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who worked on the Trump transition teams for both DOE and FERC. He joined the beachhead team of political staffers working at DOE after the inauguration.
Daniel Simmons, IER's former vice president for policy and former director of the natural resources task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, who was also on the transition team and joined the beachhead team at DOE.
Energy/environmental platform: IER was sharply critical of the Obama administration's energy policies and has been supportive of Trump's early moves, including efforts to advance the construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines.
Texas Public Policy Foundation
Doug Domenech
Backstory: The Austin, Texas-based conservative think tank was founded in 1989 by James Leininger, a physician and investor. Leininger is a devout Christian conservative with close ties to Energy secretary nominee Rick Perry, according to The Texas Tribune.
Key staff: Doug Domenech, who led the Trump administration's transition team for the Interior Department and is now a political aide at that agency, hails from TPPF. He was director of the think tank's Fueling Freedom Project before joining the Trump team. He was also secretary of natural resources in Virginia under then-Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and an Interior official during the Bush administration.
Kathleen Hartnett White of TPPF's Armstrong Center for Energy and the Environment, who was rumored to be in the mix for Trump's EPA administrator and is considered a possible pick to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality. White, a former Texas regulator, was a Trump adviser on the campaign trail. She has argued that treating carbon dioxide like a pollutant is damaging to the U.S. energy sector (Greenwire, Nov. 28, 2016).
Energy/environmental platform: The group advocates for a pivot toward state autonomy and "less burdensome" regulations. Views pushed by TPPF's personalities — like support for fossil fuels, questions about climate change and calls for regulatory changes — have spurred attacks from critics including environmental and consumer groups (Energywire, Dec. 6, 2016).
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looks at CTT and buffer front trade groups?
Email: justin.farrell@yale.edu.
http://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change-tipping-point-2170296371.html?page=2
Work from Yale, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, continues a trend of defining the culpability of the so-called Climate Change Counter Movement (CCCM) in obfuscating climate science. This work looked at 164 organizations identified in other academic literature as being involved in the CCCM between 1993-2013 and included 40,785 pieces of textual content and more than 39 million words. Two main findings emerged: Organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have distributed content meant to polarize the climate change issue; and corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these polarization efforts, confirming previous work showing the CCCM to be at the root of climate change politics and discourse.
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Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change
Justin Farrell1 School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511 Edited by Theda Skocpol, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved October 12, 2015 (received for review May 13, 2015)
Drawing on large-scale computational data and methods, this research demonstrates how polarization efforts are influenced by a patterned network of political and financial actors. These dynamics, which have been notoriously difficult to quantify, are illustrated here with a computational analysis of climate change politics in the United States. The comprehensive data include all individual and organizational actors in the climate change countermovement (164 organizations), as well as all written and verbal texts produced by this network between 1993–2013 (40,785 texts, more than 39 million words).Two main findings emerge. First, that organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant to polarize the climate change issue. Second, and more importantly, that corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these polarization efforts,and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content over time. These findings provide new, and comprehensive, confirmation of dynamics long thought to be at the root of climate change politics and discourse. Beyond the specifics of climate change, this paper has important implications for understanding ideological polarization more generally, and theincreasing role of private funding in determining why certain polarizing themes are created and amplified.Lastly, the paper suggests that future studies build on the novel approach taken here that integrates largescale textual analysis with social networks. tags: funding | polarization...
...Ideological polarization presents increasingly important challenges for sustainability science and solutions for climate change. Much attention has been given to the outcomes of polarization by demonstrating its effect on individual choices about energy-efficient behavior (1), individual attitudes about climate change (2–6), and variation in individuals’ trust in science as a whole, especially among Americans who self-identify as politically conservative (7).
Climate change is not the first issue with scientific consensus to become so highly polarized (8, 9), but the magnitude of its ecological and human-health effects—and the socio-political roadblocks for mitigating emissions—have led to a wide body of attitudinal research documenting the current sociopolitical environment of polarization that exists. Despite this fruitful body of individual-level research, we have considerably less data and understanding about the underlying organizational and financial factors that made polarization possible in the first place.
Qualitative and historical research has suggested that well-funded and well-organized “contrarian” campaigns are especially important for spreading skepticism or denial where scientific consensus exist—such as in the present case of global warming, or in historical contrarian efforts to create doubt about the link between smoking and cancer(8–15).The primary way that contrarian campaigns create skepticism and ideological polarization is through the production of an alternative contrarian discourse(To be clear, the term discourse here refers to communication in an authoritative fashion about a particular topic or debate), which necessarily takes the form of written text and speech from organizations and individuals (11, 14).
Indeed, many scholars have examined climate change discourse in media coverage of climate change (16–21), but because of data constraints and the difficulty of gathering such complex and furtive data, we still lack a comprehensive data-driven understanding about the actual content and source of contrarian messages, as well as the complex organizational and financial networks within which they are produced. This study presents such an approach, and examines how the production of an alternative discourse is embedded within a particular social structure and how the content itself is influenced by particular funding sources. Important to this approach is the fact that in the United States, there are a growing number of grassroots lobbying firms who work on behalf of corporations, industry groups, and associations (22, 23). Along with this growth in corporate lobbying, other social and political opportunities have opened the door for movements like climate change contrarianism to flourish, such as weakening restrictions on political finance (24) and the concentration of corporate wealth more generally (25, 26).
With these factors in mind, and building on prior climate change research, this study asks three specific—and closely related—empirical research questions: (i) Of all of the organizations in the climate contrarian movement, which ones produced discourse? (ii) What are the specific themes contained in this contrarian discourse? (iii) Does the reception of corporate funding influence the thematic content and ideological language of this discourse? And, how do all of these factors change over time? These important questions have not been adequately addressed because of the difficulty of collecting and analyzing such large amounts of longitudinal textual content and funding data.
Given the breadth of actors in this movement and the sheer volume of texts produced, scholars have either focused on smaller samples of text (11–13), or on rigorously identifying the organizations
Significance Ideological polarization around environmental issues—especially climate change—have increased in the last 20 years. This polarization has led to public uncertainty, and in some cases, policy stalemate. Much attention has been given to understanding individual attitudes, but much less to the larger organizational and financial roots of polarization. This gap is due to prior difficulties in gathering and analyzing quantitative data about these complex and furtive processes. This paper uses comprehensive text and network data to show how corporate funding influences the production and actual thematic content of polarization efforts. It highlights the important influence of private funding in public knowledge and politics, and provides researchers a methodological model for future studies that blend large-scale textual discourse with social networks.
...who participate in the counter movement (14, 15). This study combines—and significantly extends—these important approaches with the use of novel computational data-collection methods. The first half of the data include a new social network of all known individuals and organizations who have participated in the climate contrarian movement between 1993 and 2013. As described in much more detail in SI Appendix, contrarian organizations are those identified by prior peer-reviewed research as overtly producing and promoting skepticism and doubt about scientific consensus on climate change. This large bipartite network includes 4,556 individuals (e.g., board members, employees, politicians, researchers) with ties to 164 organizations (e.g., think tanks, foundations, trade associations, grassroots
...
lobby firms). This population of organizations was built-up primarily from a published census of organizations and funding (12, 14, 15), and supplemented with lists from reputable nonprofit organizations (27, 28). The second half of the data include a new dataset of every text about climate change produced by every organization between 1993 and 2013 (n = 40,785 texts with more than 39 million words).
This massive corpus was constructed with the assistance of automated Python scraping scripts, which gathered, cleaned, digitized, and prepared for analysis the entirety of current and archival press releases, website articles, policy statements, conference transcripts, published papers, and blog articles. Any PDFs were converted to plain text with optical character recognition. (See SI Appendix for specific information about how these text and network data were collected and cleaned.) These data provide a comprehensive analytical framework for examining the influence of corporate funding on the discursive efforts of organizations to create ideological polarization around climate change.
The collection of organization ties and their total population of texts is the product of a real-life countermovement and do not suffer from the methodological drawbacks that hamper survey research or social laboratory experiments. Furthermore, it links the organizations involved in the movement directly with the texts that they produce, enabling analysis about how organizational features might influence the actual thematic content of the texts. With this approach in mind, the data also include several important organizational covariates, such as the year the organization was founded, its total assets, its mission focus, the organization type, and an organization’s influence on the transfer of information within the network (i.e., betweenness centrality) (29). Most importantly for the purposes of this study, the data also include a measure of corporate funding from entities that prior literature on contrarian movements have identified as especially influential (8, 9, 14, 15): ExxonMobil (EM) and the Koch family foundations (KFF). Relying on this past research, along with Internal Revenue Service data (see SI Appendix for important details), this measure records whether or not an organization in the network received funding from either of these entities between 1993 and 2013. Donations from these corporate benefactors signals entry into a powerful network of influence.
Analytical Approach...
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Results
To begin, Fig. 1 provides a broader bird’s-eye-view context with which to interpret the main text analysis findings below. The graph describes which organizations (nodes) produced texts and whether the organization received corporate funding. For example, a dark green circle node is an advocacy or think-tank organization that produced texts about climate change and received corporate funding. It is a one-mode network constructed from the original bipartite social network data, where ties between organizations are a function of a tie they share with individuals (see SI Appendix for details). To give a sense of change over time, the graph includes cross-sections from each decade that restricts the nodes and ties to organizations founded before that year. This approach means that 2013 is the final graph that includes all nodes and ties in the data. There are two related findings that emerge from this network analysis and serve to inform the main text analysis below. First, organizations who produce climate contrarian texts (versus those who did not) are significantly (P < 0.006) more likely to have higher betweenness centrality scores, which is a reliable indicator that they exert more organizational influence in the network (29).
One can spot this trend in the figure by recognizing that these nodes tend to cluster toward the center of the network. Second, organizations who produced texts and received corporate funds were also significantly more likely (P < 0.002) to have higher betweenness centrality scores. Taken together, these results suggest that organizations within the movement who made an effort to produce textual discourse about climate change are the most central to the movement itself, providing them more influence over the transfer of information. This finding aligns with prior knowledge about resource mobilization (33), discursive influence (34), and corporate mobilization (22). The fact that the production of discourse was more likely to be corporately funded organizations at the core of the network provides an important
backdrop for the novel analytic focus of this article—namely, assessing via computational text analysis the influence of corporate funding on the actual thematic content and ideological polarization of the discourse itself.
Turning to the results of the computational text analysis, Fig. 2 summarizes the results of the structural topic model. This corpus level visualization displays all of the topics along with the top 15 words associated with each topic. This figure also includes the proportion of the corpus that belongs to each topic. It is important to note that these topics and the words should be interpreted in light of the purpose of the texts and the larger goals of climate change contrarianism described above (8–15).
Broadly, one can see that these organizations focused their climate change discourse on people’s knowledge of the issue, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change science, debates over temperature trends, international politics such as the Kyoto Treaty, and related energy issues such as fuel, oil, and cap and trade bills. How are all of these topics related to one another, and do they cluster together in meaningful ways? Fig. 3 plots the layout of all topic correlations using the Fruchterman–Reingold algorithm. A tie between two topics indicates a positive topic correlation, meaning that both topics were more likely to be discussed together within a document. Node sizes correspond to the topic proportions from Fig. 2. The dashed ellipses were overlaid after graphing to draw attention to four thematic clusters: First, toward the bottom left (in green) is a cluster of topics relating to questions about scientific evidence and disputes over the real causes and effects of CO2, long-term temperature cycles, global cooling, and who has scientific authority.
Adjacent (in yellow) is a second cluster pertaining to public knowledge and the role ofnews media and Al Gore’s film.Just above this (in blue) is a cluster of topics pertaining to federal and state-level bureaucratic politics related to climate change. Lastly, toward the top (in black) is a cluster of topics related to energy industry concerns, and alarm about the economic and political costs of enacting climate change policy. These four broad clusters provide a comprehensive profile of all discourse produced by climate contrarian organizations from 1993 to 2013.
Lastly, Fig. 4 examines how the actual prevalence of these topics might be influenced by corporate funding. It focuses on four topics that have been particularly salient to the recent history of climate contrarianism (for all topic plots, see SI Appendix, Fig. S1). These interaction plots allow the prevalence of the topics to vary by time (by year, 1993–2013) and whether an organization received corporate funding during this same timespan (Red Line = Yes, Black line = No). For example, the plot in the top left demonstrates that temperature trends became much more salient between 2007 and 2013 for organizations who received funding, whereas they became less salient for organizations who did not.
Similarly, the issue of energy production (top right), the positive benefits of CO2 (bottom left), and climate change being a long-term cycle (bottom right) all showed distinctly positive trends over time for organizations who received corporate funding, whereas those who did not receive corporate funding remained more constant over the same time period. On the whole, these findings show that despite being part of the same contrarian network, the organizations who received corporate funding actually produced discourse that was qualitatively different from organizations that did not receive such funding, and these differences tended to revolve around energy
production, debates about the effects of CO2, and questions about the scientific veracity of long-term climate change.
Discussion The main empi....
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...
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http://news.muckety.com/2016/12/15/the-conservative-think-tanks-surrounding-the-trump-camp/48601
With every new administration comes a shift in influence among the country’s major think tanks.
During President Obama’s watch, one of the organizations with the most clout was the liberal Center for American Progress. Had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 president race, CAP would certainly have enjoyed continued prominence, since its founder, John Podesta, was both a counselor to Obama and chairman of the Clinton campaign.
Donald Trump hasn’t much of history with or donations to major think tanks, but many of his cabinet nominees and transition team members do.
The Heritage Foundation, a major critic of Obama energy policy and a recipient of funding from both Charles Koch and the DeVos family, has four current and former ties to people nominated or screening nominations. Vice President-elect Mike Pence was keynote speaker at an annual Heritage gathering last week.
The Hoover Institution has three connections to top Trump people, as does the more middle-of-the-road Council on Foreign Relations.
Elaine Chao, Trump’s pick for Transportation secretary, has links to four think tanks. Wilbur Ross, the designee for Commerce, is a trustee of the Brookings Institution.
Betsy DeVos, Trump’s controversial choice for Education, has a board seat at the American Enterprise Institute, where fellow trustees include Dick Cheney and Peter Coors.
Trump’s choice for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is on the board of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The center’s board includes both big-name Democrats (William Daley, Leon Panetta, Zbigniew Brzezinski) and Republicans (William Cohen, Kenneth Langone, Henry Kissinger).
But as the interactive Muckety map above shows, most of the think tanks circling the president-to-be lean heavily toward the right.
Related news: Center for American Progress focuses on anti-Trump efforts - Politico
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OP EDs
Fossil Fuel Front Groups
Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce: Five Op-Eds. During the time period examined in this study, Robert Bryce, who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, authored three op-eds in The Wall Street Journal, one in USA Today, and one in The New York Times. The Manhattan Institute has received at least $800,000 from ExxonMobil and millions from Koch-affiliated organizations. In one Journalop-ed, Bryce presented a false choice between acting on climate change or protecting wildlife, and in another, he falsely claimed the people of Vermont oppose wind energy. *Media Matters*, [Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet; 7/31/15, 2/8/16, 5/16/16, Manhattan Institute, accessed 9/1/16]
Heartland Institute: Four Op-Eds. USA Today and The Wall Street Journalpublished three op-eds and one op-ed, respectively, written by people affiliated with the climate denial organization Heartland Institute, which has received over $700,000 from Exxon and significant funding from organizations tied to the oil billionaire Koch brothers. Three of the Heartland Institute op-eds peddled climate science denial, and the fourth also contained climate-related misinformation. Heartland Institute’s Marc Morano asserted in a November 30 USA Todayop-ed: “The U.N. summit's goal of limiting the Earth's temperature to a rise of no more than 2 degrees Celsius is also not based on science. … The notion that a U.N. agreement to limit emissions will somehow alter the Earth's temperature or storminess is bordering on belief in witchcraft.” In an April 22 USA Todayop-ed, Heartland’s John Coleman described himself as a “skeptic of man-made global warming” and wrote that "the hard cold truth is that the basic theory has failed. Many notable scientists reject man-made global warming fears.” Heartland’s Patrick Moore wrote in a September 3, 2015, Journalop-ed that “the real threat” is not global warming but a coming “cooling of the climate.” And in a June 18, 2015, USA Todayop-ed, Heartland president Joseph Bast criticized Pope Francis’ climate encyclical by pushing the myth that climate action harms “the poor and the elderly, the sick, and vulnerable populations in all countries, but especially in Third World countries.” *Media Matters*, [Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet; Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet, 7/31/15, 7/6/15; Heartland Institute, accessed 9/1/16, 9/1/16, 9/1/16]
Cato Institute: Three Op-Eds. The Wall Street Journal published three climate- or energy-related op-eds by members of the Cato Institute, which was co-founded by the oil billionaire Koch brothers and has received millions of dollars from the Koch family. One of the op-eds falsely attacked attorneys general investigations of Exxon, and the other two op-eds promoted climate science denial. In an August 21 op-ed, Cato's Elizabeth Price Foley wrongly claimed that a group of attorneys general, who have committed to holding fossil fuel companies -- including Exxon -- accountable if they obfuscated climate change research in order to protect their financial interests, had pledged to take action against "climate wrongthink." A March 4, 2015, op-ed by Cato's Richard Lindzen questioned “the popular alarm over allegedly man-made global warming,” and criticized world leaders for “demonizing carbon dioxide.” And a January 24 piece by Cato's Patrick Michaels, titled “The Climate Snow Job,” was critiqued by Climate Feedback, an organization that publishes scientists’ assessments of the accuracy of news articles and opinion pieces. Ten scientists analyzed the op-ed and in their summary wrote, “Most of the article is devoted to casting doubt over the accuracy of the global temperature record. The author uses detailed technical descriptions to distract readers from the inaccuracies of the article, which involve cherry-picking data to support multiple unsubstantiated and discredited claims.” They rated its scientific credibility to be “low" to "very low.” *Media Matters*, [Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet,Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet, 7/31/15; Florida International University Law School, accessed9/1/16; InsideClimate News, 3/30/16; Climate Feedback, 1/24/16]
Competitive Enterprise Institute: Two Op-Eds. Representatives of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), which has recently received attention for having peddled climate science denial while receiving funding from Exxon, authored two op-eds during the time period examined in this study, both of which falsely claimed that the Exxon investigations are an attempt to criminalize free speech. In The Washington Post, CEI general counsel Sam Kazman and president Kent Lassman co-authored an op-ed describing the attorneys general investigations of Exxon as an attempt to criminalize “dissent” and “run roughshod” over First Amendment protections. And David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew Grossman -- the lawyers that represented CEI in its response to an Exxon-related subpoena from the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands -- wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal alleging that the attorneys general investigations of Exxon are part of a strategy of “punishing dissent from an asserted ‘consensus’ view” on climate change. *Media Matters*, [Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet, 4/11/16, 6/27/16; CEI.org, 4/20/16]
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thacker:
A recent working paper by two Harvard Law students finds that Al Gore and his documentary remain a favorite target of climate skeptics, and that the matter is one of many themes that comprise the “contrarian corpus” of climate skepticism. But why a think tank that seeks to advance solutions to climate change engages in such shoddy scholarship and a campaign of disinformation remains unclear.
http://www.boussalis.com/docs/skepticism_bc2013.pdf stat analysis (gore?) som of mc & dunlap et al}]
Organization Name
Number of Documents
American Enterprise Institute (AEI) 642
Cato Institute (CEI) 301
Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)
937 Fraser Institute 63
Global Warming Policy Foundation 7,892
Heartland Institute 272
Heritage Foundation 220
Hoover Institution 24
International Climate and Environmental ChangeAssessment Project (ICECAP) 1,784
George C. Marshall Institute 139
National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) 43
National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) 386
Pacific Institute 226
Reason Foundation 159
Total 13,114
Table 1: The number of documents currently in the corpus for 15 well-known conservative t
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hmmn
http://www.thinktankwatch.com/2013_02_01_archive.html
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http://cpr.unu.edu/what-are-think-tanks-good-for.html
In a thought-provoking conversation at the United Nations University in Tokyo with Rohinton Medhora, the President of the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), I asked the question,
His answer was to the point, “influence peddling,in the best sense of the term.” He went on to stress that while one could question the tactics and motivations behind how and who Think Tanks influence, the bottom line was that they are in the business of pushing for change through ideas and networks. The litmus test of a good Think Tank, according to Medhora, was not whether it was “right, left, liberal or not, but whether it was proposing evidence-based discussion.”
Medhora’s view is widely held. The dominant understanding is that Think Tanks exist to mobilize expertise and ideas to influence the policy making process. The raison d’être for most Think Tanks is to serve as important catalysts for ideas and action. In a world facing many pressing problems that include extreme poverty, inequality, climate change, rapid urbanization, the spread of infectious disease, armed conflict, international terrorism, organized crime, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, good ideas that can be acted upon are essential. At their best, Think Tanks possess the ability to capture the political imagination by brokering ideas, stimulating public debate, and offering creative yet practical solutions to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
Think Tanks have made these kinds of contributions in the past. For example, Leo Pasvolsky, a Brookings Institution expert, was instrumental in helping to rebuild Europe after World War II by putting forward concrete recommendations that helped shape the Marshall Plan. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, led by its then president Raphael Lemkin, played a pivotal role in promoting the passage of the UN **anti-Genocide**Convention by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948, spurred on by the need to prevent another Holocaust. In the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, CIGI’s proposals for innovation in the G8 system helped lead to the creation of the G20 leaders group. This development helped to establish the G20 as the premier forum for international economic cooperation in troubled economic times. Another example of a breakthrough spearheaded by a Think Tank was the idea of Advanced Market Commitments for **Vaccineschampioned by a Center for Global Development Working Group. The result was a mechanism that provided guarantees to increase private investment in R&D for vaccine development for diseases that primarily affected developing countries. In 2005, the G-7 Finance Ministers endorsed this idea and six donors committed US $1.5 billion to the initiative. These ideas were often not developed in isolation but were part of an iterative process of discovery, learning, and adaptation – sometimes through failure. In each case, timing proved to be critical.
Serving as a catalyst for ideas is only one aspect of the role that the best Think Tanks play. Another essential role is in helping to set the policy agenda. Yet, getting on the policy agenda is a complicated task. Even the best Think Tanks miss key opportunities to translate a persuasive idea into reality. John Kingdon’s work on this subject is instructive because it underscores the inherent unpredictability of the policy process. According to Kingdon, getting an idea on the governmental agenda requires persistence, expertise, cultivating the right connections, and above all, good timing. As he put it in his book Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, “being heard in the policy process is often more a matter of being positioned to take advantage of opportunities when they arise, than it is doing a set of things fully under one’s control.”
Successful Think Tanks keep their proposals at the ready and when a problem emerges to which their proposals can be the solution, they jump into action. Having good ideas is not enough. As Kingdon stressed, “ideas do not drive policy changes by themselves, they must be coupled with more conventional political forces.” To be successful, Think Tanks need to have sufficient resources and persistence to continuously cultivate an idea as they wait for the right moment to mobilize an alliance of supporters around it.
There is a flip-side to the inherent unpredictability of the policy process, which is that good ideas do not always win out. Unfortunately, there have been instances when ideologically driven Think Tanks supported misguided ideas that shaped how governments understood the world, assessed their options, and acted to great detriment. We saw this in the run up to the 2003 Iraq War when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 gave proponents of regime change in Iraq (among them the Project for the New American Century – PNAC) the cover to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein in the name of spreading democracy and winning the war on terror. PNAC and other proponents of regime change were so effective at shaping the policy preferences of George W. Bush and his administration that persuasive evidence to the contrary was ignored and discounted, leading to a costly war.
As former Canadian Senator Hugh Segal has suggested, Think Tanks are at their worst when they are narrowly ideological and consistently generate predictable findings on any question despite evidence to the contrary. Think Tanks that demonstrate such behavior should be discounted. However, as the seminal study by Robert Jervis on Perception and Misperception in International Politics demonstrated, experts and policy makers can be susceptible to actively avoiding and ignoring information that contradicts their beliefs. More recently, the 2015 World Development Report on *Mind, Society and Behavior* from the World Bank explained how policy makers and evenexperts can be prone to “thinking automatically.” As the WDR 2015 underscored, discussions among people who share similar views can lead them to become more extreme in their positions.In fact, the report clearly demonstrated how a failure to confront the concerns of individuals with differing views can lead to “consistently biased decision making.” Research has shown that it is critical for policy makers to become aware of their own biases in order to avoid selecting and filtering evidence in a way that confirms their views.
One of the best ways to avoid confirmation bias, according to the WDR 2015, is to expose people to opposing views and invite them to defend their own. The best Think Tanks do just that. They create social and intellectual settings that force people to argue and become aware of their own biases. They provide a platform to introduce new ideas and provoke public debate on the critical issues of the day and in so doing expand the scope of the debate.
In developing country contexts with relatively recent democratic traditions, Think Tanks are increasingly taking on this function. For example, the Institute of Economic Affairs in Ghana played a pivotal role in helping to strengthen democracy in a context of political instability by organizing workshops, voter education forums, and presidential and vice-presidential debates. The Think Tank Initiative (funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, UK Aid, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation), is just one example of a program that is helping to strengthen the role of Think Tanks in the Global South to provoke public debate on important public policy issues of the day.
2015 will be a pivotal year for the world. With a large number of very important policy processes underway, the UN Secretary General has declared that “2015 can and must be a time for global action”. These policy processes will culminate with important decisions that will shape the course of action on issues ranging from international peace and security, to climate change, and global development and Think Tanks need to play a constructive role.
In terms of international peace and security, the United Nations is currently undertaking two important independent reviews. The first is on peace operations, where the Secretary General has appointed a High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations to assess how UN-led peace operations need to change in order to remain effective in a world confronting increasingly complex and volatile security environments. Another important policy process that will have an impact on war-torn societies is the expert review panel on the UN’s Peacebuilding Architecture.
Negotiations leading up to the Special Summit on Sustainable Development (15-28 September), also represent a critical policy process. At this Summit, UN Member States will debate and ultimately approve the Sustainable Development Goals that will set the global development agenda for the next fifteen years. The challenge, as UNU Rector David M. Malone put it in a recent article, is to craft a sharp and compelling post-2015 framework that could stand the test of time and relevancy over a 15-year period. The complex negotiation process involving many diverging national interests, however, will make this outcome difficult to achieve. Yet, as I stressed in a recent article, it is imperative that the world sets realistic goals that build on success to date and commit to promoting human dignity, equality, and equity.
Finally, another critical period will be between 30 November and 11 December when Paris will play host to the 21^st Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change. At this conference, 190 parties will try to arrive at an agreement on greenhouse gas emission targets to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
To put it bluntly, policy makers are struggling to develop effective responses to many of the key issues that will be debated in these policy processes and Think Tanks can play a constructive role by bringing practical and feasible options that tackle these issues to the negotiating table. Think Tanks, including the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research, are already playing an important role in contributing evidence based assessments (see for instance UNU-CPR’s paper for the High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations). Yet, more ideas are needed so that these processes generate effective recommendations and solutions.
This ultimately, brings me back to. To succeed, Think Tanks need at least four elements. They need good ideas, a coalition of actors to support those ideas, the institutional capacity (including resources) to nurture and shepherd those ideas in a dynamic context, and the ability to seize the moment when the timing is right. What they need is the means to champion good ideas when the world needs them most. In other words, Think Tanks need to do what they are good at, influence peddling in the best sense of the term.
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Study Finds The 'Era of Climate Science Denial Is Not Over'
By Graham Readfearn • Thursday, January 7, 2016 - 16:05
Conservative think tanks in the United States are a sort of “ground zero” for the production of doubt about the links between fossil fuel burning and dangerous climate change.
These think tanks produce reports, hold conferences, write books, go on television, produce columns and blogs and generally and liberally splatter the public discourse with talking points.
You’ll have heard their manufactured doubt everywhere. “CO2 is great for the planet… fossil fuels are good… climate scientists are wrong… the world has been hotter in the past… cutting emissions will kill the economy.” That sort of thing.
But there has been speculation that as the world continues to break heat records, and as oceans rise and the science sends ever more clear and urgent signals, that the focus of these think tanks will shift away from attacking the science to discussing policy.
Now a new study published in the journal Global Environmental Change has declared unambiguously “the era of climate science denial is not over”.
Dr Travis Coan, of the University of Exeter, and Dr Constantine Boussalis, of Trinity College Dublin, analysed 16,000 articles, reports, transcripts, letters, reviews and press releases from the websites of 19 conservative think tanks, mainly based in the U.S, who work on climate change.
In the study, Boussalis and Coan discuss how commentators had been speculating about an end of climate science denial for more than a decade.
Analysing documents from 1998 until mid-2013, Boussalis and Coan found that think tanks had in recent years been focusing less on policy and more on attacking the science.
In a blog post for The Guardian, Coan told me:
In our view, meeting the challenges posed by organized climate skepticism requires accurate and systematic information on what these organizations are saying. Regarding the particular case of science vs. policy, our worry was that if enough people believed that the “era of science denial is over,” then they would – incorrectly - believe we are one step closer to achieving comprehensive climate policy.
Thinks tanks including the American Enterprise Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the Cato Institute,Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute were among those analysed.
Some of the more popular science issues attacked by the think tanks included underplaying the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide, claiming that concern over emissions was just ‘alarmism’ and claiming there was no consensus among scientists that humans were causing global warming.
The new study comes after research published in late 2015 found that those think tanks who had received funding from fossil fuel interests, including oil giant Exxon and groups linked to the Koch brothers, were more likely to produce material designed to polarize the climate change issue.
Coan said it was “possible” that attacks on the science had dropped away since the period where the study ended.
But he added they were in the early stages of a follow-up study which would include analyses of climate denialist blogs, which he said tended to mirror the output from think tanks. Preliminary findings suggested that the rise in climate science denial continued through 2015. Coan said:
Again these results are preliminary, but suggest that the ‘end of science denial’ - at least among these actors - might be wishful thinking.
Also commenting on the study, Dr Aaron McCright, of Michigan State University, said the “denial machine” had been expanding beyond the think tanks to include bloggers and “astroturf” groups.
He said when it came to tackling the misinformation from the groups, it was important to “drag them from the shadows and into the bright light of day, vigilantly document their activities, and regularly call them out over what they are doing.”
Dr Riley Dunlap, of Oklahoma State University, who together with McCright has published several influential studies on the climate science denial movement, suggested the election of Barack Obama to US President in late 2008 had been an important factor in the rise of attacks on science.
Deniers were now on the outside looking in, as they could no longer count on [George W.] Bush doing nothing on climate change. So we saw denial ‘on steroids’.
Main image: Chart showing how conservative think tanks increase their attacks on science compared to policy discussions between 1998 and 2013. Image credit: Global Environmental Change.
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http://powerbase.info/index.php/Category:Think_Tanks
200 links
==
GP 2013
Source: http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/
DCF Acton Institute $2,365,609
DCF Alabama Institute $800,000
DCF Alaska Policy Forum $197,000
DCF American Conservative Union Foundation $10,000
DCF American Council on Science and Health $89,500
DCF American Enterprise Institute $19,645,204
DCF American Legislative Exchange Council $20,000
DCF Americans for Limited Govt Res. Fdn $3,450,000
DCF Americans for Prosperity Foundation $1,328,000
DCF America’s Future Foundation $218,000
DCF America’s Majority Foundation $50,000
DCF Atlas Economic Research Foundation $333,000
DCF Ayn Rand Institute $75,000
DCF Beacon Center of Tennessee $305,000
DCF Beacon Hill Institute $82,000
DCF Capital Research Center $26,000
DCF Cascade Policy Institute $1,253,600
DCF Cato Institute $1,186,034
DCF Center for Independent Thought $600,000
DCF Center for Study of CO2
and Global Change $154,400
DCF Claremont Institute $33,911
DCF Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow $325,000
DCF Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternative $1,292,800
DCF Competitive Enterprise Institute $695,279
DCF Donors Trust $1,078,500
DCF Drexel University* $14,250
DCF Ethan Allen Institute $298,500
DCF Federalist Society $8,820,963
DCF Focus on the Family $200
DCF Free to Choose Network, Inc. $1,188,328
DCF Freedom Foundation $871,818
DCF Freedom Foundation (Evergreen Freedom Fdn) $1,183,984
DCF Freedom Works Foundation $12,000
DCF Frontiers of Freedom $50,000
DCF Georgia Public Policy Foundation $531,500
DCF GMU Foundation Law and Econ Center $1,170,000
DCF Goldwater Institute $303,000
DCF Grassroots Institute of Hawaii $777,500
DCF Heartland Institute $13,965,247
DCF Heritage Foundation $59,000
DCF Hudson Institute $5,010,000
DCF Illinois Policy Institute $1,394,500
DCF Independence Institute $1,525,000
DCF Institute for Humane Studies $2,743,262
DCF Institute for Justice $572,000
DCF Institute for Religion and Democracy $2,340,000
DCF International Policy Network US, Inc. $181,500
DCF James Madison Institute for Public Policy $180,000
DCF John Locke Foundation $840,600
DCF Judicial Watch $25,000
DCF Landmark Legal Foundation $5,000
DCF Leadership Institute $278,000
DCF Mackinac Center for Public Policy $398,000
DCF Maine Heritage Policy Center $346,400
DCF Manhattan Institute $841,770
DCF Maryland Public Policy Institute $611,000
DCF Media Research Center $436,520
DCF Mercatus Center at George Mason University $909,000
DCF Montana Policy Institute $1,001,933
DCF Mountain States Legal Foundation $26,500
DCF National Center for Policy Analysis $490,000
DCF National Center for Public Policy Research, Inc. $6,000
DCF National Legal & Policy Center $1,500
DCF National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc. $16,000
DCF National Taxpayers Union $715,500
DCF Nevada Policy Research Institute $1,262,432
DCF NFIB Legal Foundation $53,500
DCF North Dakota Policy Foundation $375,000
DCF Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs $730,617
DCF Oregon Better Government Project $195,000
DCF Pacific Legal Foundation $23,000
DCF Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy $1,058,001
DCF Palmer R Chitester Fund $0
DCF Philanthropy Roundtable $1,731,660
DCF Platte Institute for Economic Research $565,531
DCF Public Interest Institute $198,459
DCF Reason Foundation $413,693
DCF Rio Grande Foundation $749,500
DCF State Policy Network $9,386,601
DCF Students for Liberty $125,412
DCF Sutherland Institute $556,000
DCF Tennessee Center for Policy Research $165,000
DCF Texas Public Policy Foundation $2,492,008
DCF Thomas Jefferson Institute $214,450
DCF Virginia Institute for Public Policy $403,500
DCF Washington Legal Foundation $51,000
DCF Washington Policy Center $543,275
DCF Wyoming Liberty Group $485,000
DCF Young America’s Foundation $355,500
---
Appendix I: Climate denial’s “continental army”
“There’s really only about 25 of us doing this. A core group of skeptics. It’s a ragtag bunch, very
Continental Army.” — Steve Milloy talking to Popular Science, June, 2012.
Steve The Junkman Milloy, arguably one of the very first global warming deniers, first shot to fame
through his challenges to the links between tobacco science and health problems when he was paid by
Phillip Morris to direct the front group it set up in 1997 to defend the science of second hand smoke: The
Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). He then turned to denial of climate change, and has
been at the heart of that campaign ever since.
Milloy has claimed the campaign is driven by a small group of about 25 people. So who might this
“Continental Army” of about 25 people be? We’ve found 31. Of course there are more who have come and
gone, but this gives a fairly comprehensive picture.
Individuals associated with think tanks
The Echo Chamber
Along with the think tanks pushing climate denial, there’s a large “echo chamber” in the blogosphere, largely
led by a small band of bloggers. They have a larger echo chamber in the form of conservative media such
as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh et al.
Anthony Watts: Wattsupwiththat.com
Marc Morano climatedepot.com
Steve McIntyre ClimateAudit
James Delingpole, The Daily Telegraph (UK)
Steve Milloy JunkScience.com
Andrew Bolt Australian Murdoch columnist
The “Scientists”
S Fred Singer (SEPP)
Richard S Lindzen
Patrick Michaels (Cato)
Willie Soon (and Sallie Baliunas) Smithsonian Institute for Astrophysics
David Legates State Climatologist for Delaware
John Christy
Craig Idso – Center for the Studey of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change
Roy Spencer
Bob Carter (former JCU, Australia, now ex JCU)
Ian Plimer
Tim Ball
Special category:non scientists who pretend to have expertise
Lord Christopher Monckton
---
Atlantic Monthly
January 1986
"Ideas Move Nations"
How conservative think tanks have helped to transform the terms of political debate
by Gregg Easterbrook hhmn
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. 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.
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 its trustees 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 the American 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 66-80).
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Atlantic Monthly Sidebar
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. 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.
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 its trustees 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 the American 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 66-80).
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Is Malcolm Gladwell America's Most Successful Propagandist and Corporate Shill?
By Yasha Levine, eXiled Online
Posted on June 6, 2012, Printed on June 9, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/155770/is_malcolm_gladwell_america%27s_most_successful_propagandist_and_corporate_shill
"I'm necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I'm still a parasite." -- Malcolm Gladwell
In the vast ecosystem of corporate shills, which one is the most effective? Propaganda works best when it is not perceived as propaganda: nuance, obfuscation, distraction, suggestion, the subtle introduction of doubt—these are more effective in the long run than shotgun blasts of lies. The master of this approach is Malcolm Gladwell.
Malcolm Gladwell is the New Yorker’s leading essayist and bestselling author. Time magazine named Gladwell one of the world’s 100 most influential people. His books sell copies in the millions, and he is in hot demand as one of the nation’s top public intellectual and pop gurus. Gladwell plays his role as a disinterested public intellectual like few others, right down to the frizzy hairdo and smock-y getups. His political aloofness, high-brow contrarianism and constant challenges to "popular wisdom" are all part of his shtick.
But beneath Malcolm Gladwell’s cleverly-crafted ambiguity, beneath the branded facade, one finds, with surprising ease, a common huckster on the take. I say “surprising ease” because it’s all out there on the public record.
As this article will demonstrate, Gladwell has shilled for Big Tobacco, Pharma and defended Enron-style financial fraud, all while earning hundreds of thousands of dollars as a corporate speaker, sometimes from the same companies and industries that he covers as a journalist.
Malcolm Gladwell is a one-man branding and distribution pipeline for valuable corporate messages, constructed on the public’s gullibility in trusting his probity and intellectual honesty in the pages of America’s most important weekly magazine, The New Yorker, and other highly prominent media outlets.
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Atlantic Monthly Sidebar
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. 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.
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 its trustees 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 the American 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 66-80).
Gladwell's shilling for the tobacco industry is shocking, but it makes more sense given his background. The National Journalism Center, which helped launch Gladwell's journalistic career, received generous support from the tobacco industry, on the explicit understanding that the Journalism Center would train up pro-tobacco cub journalists who would later become reliable mouthpieces for tobacco-lobby interests.
This relationship is laid out explicitly in a number of internal tobacco-industry documents, including a 1994 Philip Morris strategy report. It described the company's relationship with the National Journalism Center, and gloated about the success of their strategy:
This group was developed to train budding journalists . . . As a direct result of our support we have been able to work with alumni of this program . . . about 15 years worth of journalists at print and visual media throughout the country . . . to get across our side of the story . . .which has resulted in numerous pieces consistent with our point of view.
The document also revealed that Philip Morris regularly held briefings for the National Journalism Center's "Alumni Council"—yep, that's people like Malcolm Gladwell—in order to keep their assets up to date with the company's newest policy objectives, which in 1994 included defeating President Clinton's healthcare reform initiative:
Because Gladwell largely escaped suspicion, he turned out to be one of the tobacco industry’s most successful investments. Even after leaving the Washington Post, Gladwell continued pumping out pro-tobacco propaganda, and kneecapping or muddying the industry’s critics.
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In one of the more shameless examples—a 1996 book review published in the New Republic—Gladwell attacked journalist Philip J. Hilts for comparing tobacco industry executives to Nazis. But Gladwell didn’t stop with attacking Hilts; instead, he used the example of Hilts’ analogy to smear all tobacco critics, arguing, "At the moment of its greatest victory, the anti-tobacco movement has begun to acquire a noxious odor of its own." Shortly afterwards, a Philip Morris PR executive used Gladwell’s article in a letter to the New York Times in an attempt to get Hilts barred from the paper, so righteously indignant was he over the crime of Hilts’ Nazi analogy. Why was he so indignant? Maybe because the Nazi comparison was right on the mark: In 2011, an estimated 6 million people around the globe died from tobacco—the same as the number of Jews murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust. But while it took the Nazis years to murder 6 million men, women and children, tobacco companies churn through that same number of victims every 12 months.
Even as tobacco was preparing to settle with the Clinton Administration, Gladwell kept up the barrage of friendly propaganda. His first book, The Tipping Point, published in 2000, has a section on tobacco that, again, reads like something from industry PR. In one passage, Gladwell analyzed various studies into teen smoking and came to the conclusion that kids start smoking at a young age not in any way because of the millions of advertising dollars big tobacco spends targeting kids—but rather because kids just want to be cool and so it was practically "inevitable that they would also be drawn to the ultimate expression of adolescent rebellion, risk-taking, impulsivity, indifference to others, and precocity: the cigarette."
"Who me? I'm not cool. Smoking Camel Lights, now that's cool!"
This was whitewashing of the rankest, most cynical sort: In the 1990s, the average starting age of smokers was calculated to be 12. To the tobacco industry, getting kids hooked that young was a central business strategy. Gladwell could obfuscate all he wanted, but his old friends in the business bragged as far back as this 1975 internal document from Philip Morris, boasting, "Marlboro's phenomenal growth rate in the past has been attributable in large part to our high market penetration among young smokers . . .15 to 19 years old." Six years later it was the same old story. A Philip Morris study from 1981 called "Young Smokers -- Prevalence, Trends, Implications, and Related Demographic Trends" laid it out clearly: "Today's teenager is tomorrow's potential regular customer, and the overwhelming majority of smokers first begin to smoke while still in their teens . . . The smoking patterns of teenagers are particularly important to Philip Morris."
Guess Gladwell was never a big Flinstones fan...
By the time Gladwell’s The Tipping Point was published, this was the sort of message tobacco didn’t want the public to know about, or believe. Not surprisingly, Gladwell writes in his book:
Over the past decade, the anti-smoking movement has railed against the tobacco companies for making smoking cool and has spent untold millions of dollars of public money trying to convince teenagers that smoking isn't cool. But that's not the point. Smoking was never cool. Smokers are cool. [Notice the false antithesis to make Gladwell sound smart and outside-the-box, when he’s actually not saying anything new at all—SHAME.] Smoking epidemics begin in precisely the same way that the suicide epidemic in Micronesia began or word-of- mouth epidemics begin or the AIDS epidemic began . . . In this epidemic, as in all others, a very small group -- a select few -- are responsible for driving the epidemic forward.
In other words, it’s all the fault of cool people, and of natural forces and human behavior. Gladwell ignored the reams of documented evidence on the manipulative power of advertising and marketing; instead, like a classic corporate shill, he blames smokers for smoking. Blame the victims for being victimized—it is as offensive and fallacious as if Gladwell were to argue that crack cocaine dealers and drug cartel kingpins were totally blameless in the drug epidemics, and that it’s all the fault of the users, period.
Among The Tipping Point’s biggest fans were Big Tobacco’s moguls. Gladwell’s book became required reading for industry people. An email sent by Philip Morris exec Michael Fitzgibbon to the company's resident behavioral scientist, Carolyn J. Levy, said: "I recommend you read (or have one of your minions submit a book report on) The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell . . . Beyond the piece on teen smoking, there is some interesting, possibly useful, information."
Even as Gladwell slowly started to rebrand himself as something of a “liberal” during the Bush years, his support for the tobacco industry remained constant. In 2006, Malcolm Gladwell told the New York Times that although he believes the tobacco industry should be regulated, he also "thinks that filing product liability lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers is absurd."
Put in simpler terms: Gladwell thinks people should not sue suing tobacco companies for knowingly and purposefully misleading customers about the dangers of cigarette smoke. By this time, no one could maintain credibility while arguing against regulation of tobacco; however, the industry’s biggest problems lay in the ongoing lawsuits that Gladwell forcefully opposed. Across the US juries were handing out massive awards against tobacco companies—like the $37.5 million a Miami jury awarded in 2002 to John Lukacs, a 76-year-old former three-packs-a-day smoker who lost his tongue and lower palate, in his lawsuit against Philip Morris for false advertising and consumer fraud.
While Gladwell went around blasting such lawsuits as "absurd," the industry, led by Philip Morris, was funding a major effort for "Tort Reform” to drastically limit and curtail Big Tobacco’s liability exposure to ongoing and future lawsuits.
The tobacco industry that Gladwell defends has plenty of reason to fear lawsuits: arguably, the tobacco industry is responsible for the largest, focused mass murder in human history. According to the CDC, "More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined." Tobacco kills about 500,000 people every year in the US, and is expected to annually kill 8 million people worldwide by year 2030.
Multiply these grizzly numbers by decades, and you will have death tolls that make the Holocaust, Stalin’s crimes and America’s aggregate war dead pale by comparison—all that murder and death for the profit of tobacco industry shareholders and executives. You can see why they would consider Malcolm Gladwell such a valuable asset.
Big Pharma
You can’t get much worse and more amoral than shilling for tobacco while posing as a mainstream journalist. Once you’ve gone there, there’s nothing holding you back from propagandizing for highly-profitable merchants of death from any industry—and by “you,” we mean “Malcolm Gladwell." Along with big tobacco, he took up the cause of the pharmaceutical industry, defending the industry's right to reap mega-profits on the backs of schoolchildren who were being turned en masse into highly profitable amphetamine addicts.
In 1999, the New Yorker published a Gladwell article in which he all but promoted the powerful stimulant drug Ritalin as a safe, non-addictive way to treat childhood A.D.H.D. "Obviously, taking Ritalin doesn't have the same consequences as snorting cocaine . . . It's not addictive," he wrote.
The article was titled "Running From Ritalin" and came just in the nick of time for Big Pharma—amidst a fierce national debate about the alarming rise in prescriptions for powerful stimulants like Ritalin to treat childhood hyperactivity.
"Mommy, can you up my Ritalin dose today? Mr. Gladwell says it's good for me . . ."
The 1990s decade saw a sevenfold increase in the production of ADHD stimulants, causing a growing number of medical professionals to complain that the drug was being over-prescribed, and wrongfully prescribed to treat what often would have been considered normal childhood behavior.
In 1998, the year before Gladwell's article came out, Time magazine put Ritalin on its cover and ran a negative story that questioned the skyrocketing use of Ritalin and other powerful psychotropic drugs among American children. Even Hillary Clinton got into the fray, announcing a campaign to combat the growing problem of overmedicating children.
Among other things, drug companies were accused of using aggressive marketing techniques and industry-funded front groups to promote childhood A.D.H.D., frighten and confuse parents, and seduce doctors into treating hyperactive children with prescription speed. The adverse effects of this highly-profitable enterprise were evident: a study showed that up to one in ten children who were on Ritalin suffered psychotic episodes, including intense hallucinations. The FDA itself came out with a report that compiled story after story of children, some less than 10 years old, suffering from a range of "hallucinations, both visual and tactile...involving insects, snakes and worms."
And what was Gladwell's reaction? He dismissed it all as bunk, and took the side of the pharmaceutical industry. In his article, which relied heavily on quotes and information provided by A.D.H.D. researchers who later were found to have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry*, Gladwell, ever the master of suggestion and nuance, posed the problem this way: "even with that dramatic increase, the number of American children taking Ritalin is estimated to be one or two per cent. Given that most estimates put the incidence of A.D.H.D. at between three and five per cent, are too many children taking the drug--or too few?"
In other words, if there’s any problem here, it’s that the kids aren’t being medicated enough!
In 2004, Gladwell came to Pharma's rescue again, just when the industry was taking a lot of heat for the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs. True to form, Gladwell published a piece in the New Yorker challenging the "conventional wisdom" about drug prices, arguing that the poor persecuted pharmaceutical industry was being scapegoated, blamed for problems that were beyond their control. Citing a pharma-funded study, Gladwell, ever the contrarian, located what he argued was the real reason drug costs were soaring: the victims were to blame, because Americans loved their pills so much they couldn’t buy enough of them, leaving poor drug industry manufacturers struggling to keep up with demand:
... drug expenditures are rising rapidly in the United States not so much because we're being charged more for prescription drugs but because more people are taking more medications in more expensive combinations. It's not price that matters; it's volume.
The drug companies were merely responding to consumer demand—it was the consumer who was in charge, he argued, pushing one of the oldest PR tricks in the corporate playbook. Once again, it’s the victim’s fault: In Gladwell's view, medical patients who can't afford prescription medications have only themselves to blame and should accept personal responsibility rather than shifting the blame onto the innocent party—i.e., the pharmaceutical industry. This is the same "blame the victim" argument that Gladwell used to defend tobacco companies against well-founded accusations that they had targeted juveniles in marketing campaigns to turn them into addicts.
Gladwell's prescription drug argument hinged on a study of drug prices in different countries by two University of Pennsylvania economists that had been published in Health Affairs.Gladwell didn't mention that the study was funded by pharma giant Merck, nor did he inform his readers that the study's leading author, economist Patricia M. Danzon, worked as a paid consultant for the pharmaceutical industry. Danzon's CV contains a list of "selected consulting experience" that includes clients such as Merck, Pfizer and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, the industry lobby juggernaut commonly known as PhRMA.
Views are those of the authors, funding for those views provided by Merck
Gladwell's article on the explosion of drug prices and costs also didn't say much of anything about pharmaceutical companies’ profits—by that time, Pharma’s profit margins were among the highest of any industry. Nor did Gladwell include the numerous documented cases in which drug companies have been busted engaging in criminal conspiracies to inflate and manipulate prices, leading to billions in fines and lawsuits. Neither did he address the various ways the industry pressures, manipulates and cajoles doctors to overmedicate patients, including bribes and kickbacks to doctors that are now routine practice in the medical industry.
There were plenty of examples for Gladwell to choose from, like the 2001 case against TAP Pharmaceutical Products involving both bribery and price manipulation, for which the company settled for nearly $1 billion. Or a lawsuit filed by 29 states against Bristol-Myers Squibb Co in 2002 that accused the giant pharmaceutical company of conspiring to delay the release of a generic cancer drug commonly used to treat ovarian and breast cancer by almost three years in order to keep the price of its own cancer drug, Taxol, inflated by as much as 30 percent.
Not surprisingly, Gladwell's defense of Big Pharma's pricing schemes won Gladwell high praise from various public relation flaks, including John Moore, a veteran corporate food marketer:
I can't help myself when it comes to pimpin' Malcolm Gladwell. You see, I value people who can make the complicated uncomplicated and can forgo conventional thought for intellectual thought. And Gladwell does both.
Case in point ... his take on the high prices of prescription drugs.
In a recent New Yorker article, High Prices -- How to Think about Prescription Drugs, Gladwell expertly dispels the myth that it's the fault of the pharmaceutical drug companies for rising drug costs.
And in case anyone had any doubts over whether or not he was on the take, Malcolm Gladwell was finally forced to confess that he did indeed take money on the sly from the pharmaceutical industry, including under-the-table cash from companies he specifically mentioned and defended in his 2004 New Yorker article that blamed high drug prices on American consumers.
Speaking Fees
At the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell developed another branch of his branded Malcolm Gladwell, Inc. business: as a highly-paid corporate speaker. Indeed, Gladwell is ranked as one of the highest-paid speakers in America today, commanding anywhere from $40,000 to $80,000 for a single talk to corporations and industry groups eager to pay for his soothing wisdom. In 2007, Fast Company estimated Gladwell does "roughly 25 speaking gigs a year, his current going rate some $40,000 per appearance."
That would translate into roughly $1 million that year in speaking fees alone—four times what he made at the New Yorker in 2005. It’s a huge amount of money, as far as speaker’s salaries go. For comparison: Mitt Romney only made $500,000 in speaking fees in 2010.
Despite posing as a credible journalist at one of America’s premiere media outlets, Gladwell has yet to disclose which companies and lobby groups pay him to speak, or how much they pay him. Although he makes more money as a corporate speaker than he does as a journalist for the New Yorker, Gladwell claims that the speaking fees do not affect his reporting—in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
His New Yorker article about high drug prices was so gratuitously biased and so obviously skewed in favor of the pharmaceutical industry that it touched off a minor controversy about his speaking fees and, for the first time, raised serious questions about Gladwell’s potential financial conflict of interest and his credibility as a reporter. Even some of his own colleagues wondered whether Gladwell went too far this time.
Slate's Jack Shafer raised the question, but quickly backed off after New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick went to the mat for Gladwell, assuring Shafer that there was nothing to worry about because Gladwell "is extremely eclectic in his interests and independent in his thinking. He is just about the least political or ideological writer on the staff—and wonderfully unpredictable."
I contacted The New Yorker asking if the magazine had a policy on undisclosed conflicts-of-interest for their writers. The publication would not comment on the record for this story.
Strangely enough, Brandweek, the trade journal of the marketing industry, was much harsher in its criticism, noting that Gladwell's pro-pharma article distinguished the New Yorker as one of the few news outlets not critical of industry’s role in skyrocketing drug prices—and they wondered, correctly, if Gladwell’s paid speaking gigs had anything to do with it:
One of the more sympathetic articles, published last October by The New Yorker, was penned by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point. ... The piece did not mention, however, that Gladwell has been paid by pharmaceutical companies on numerous occasions in recent years to give speeches on his marketing theories.
The criticism was not very loud or sustained. But it was enough to make Gladwell uncomfortable, forcing him to publish an equivocating, message-confusing, rambling “disclosure statement” on his personal website that clocked in at over 6,000 words.
It was published on December 2004, and it began:
As a writer I wear two hats. I am a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, where I have been under contract more or less continuously since 1996. I also do public speaking, based on my second career as the author of two books--The Tipping Point and Blink. Over the past four or five years, I have given talks to corporations, trade associations, conventions of one sort or another, colleges, think tanks, charitable groups, public lecture series and, on one occasion (arranged by my mother) my old high school. For some of those engagements, I have been paid. For those given to academic and charitable organizations, I generally have not...
Seems straightforward enough, right? Wrong: it took Gladwell 5,000 words before he finally addressed the reason he posted this Bible-length disclosure in the first place:
Have I given paid speeches to companies or industries mentioned or affected by that article? Yes I have. As I stated earlier, I have given my Tipping Point talk to groups of doctors, hospitals, insurers, as well as Pharmacy Benefit Managers and groups funded by the National Institutes of Health. More specifically, I have on several occasions over the past four years given paid speeches on the Tipping Point to pharmaceutical companies. So did that create a bias in favor of the pharmaceutical industry?
Leave it to the master propagandist to pose an admission of guilt as a question.
Most news organization have specific rules and guidelines about speaking fees, and some—including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post—ban their journalists from taking fees for speeches. But the issue is far from settled, and regularly comes up in debates about journalistic ethics. Jonathan Salant, former president of the Society of Professional Journalists Washington chapter, considers corporate speaking fees to be outright bribes. He's not the only one.
In a March 2012 article in the Columbia Journalism Review, Paul Starobin wondered if speaking fees are a “dark and an indelible stain on journalism" and noted that most journalists would not talk openly about the details of their corporate speaker side-gigs on the record and that some tried to prevent their names from being mentioned at all.
The reason for their secrecy should be obvious to anyone: If you are paid tens of thousands of dollars by a company or lobby group for merely speaking at one of their conferences, wouldn’t you be more favorably inclined to see things their way, and less eager to air their critics, than if you hadn’t been paid by them, and didn’t expect future payments as well?
The fact is, corporations and industries that Gladwell defends and promotes in print have paid him tens of thousands of dollars—more than what most Americans make in a year—for just a few hours of his time. And yet Gladwell feigns ignorance of the financial side of his speaking business—he even pretends he doesn’t know who or what pays him how much. As he toldNew York Magazine in 2008, "I never deal with any of the money-negotiation part . . . It just goes into my account, so it's like I'm not even aware."
A million dollars a year goes into his account, and he's not even sure what happens to it . . .
In Defense of Financial Deregulation
About six months before world financial markets froze up in the summer of 2007, Malcolm Gladwell wrote another one of his “contrarian” articles for the New Yorker, this time defending the actions of Enron executives. Gladwell was most concerned for Enron President Jeffery Skilling, who was convicted of 19 felony counts, including securities fraud, conspiracy and insider trading, and sentenced to 24 years in prison—after having dished out $40 million on his defense.
According to Gladwell, the prosecution and jury were wrong; Skilling didn't necessarily break any laws when he cooked books and conspired to defraud investors, prettying up Enron's financial statements while looting the company, leaving investors and employees fleeced and in some cases ruined. Gladwell implied, as is his wont, that the real culprits were the victims—investors who didn't do their due diligence and properly sniff out Enron's financial fraud, which Skilling and others did everything in their power to conceal. Gladwell argued essentially that corporations should be expected to lie, cheat and steal—the pursuit of profit was always blameless—it’s up to investors to ferret out fraud, and if they don’t, relying on the law and juries to punish the crimes was tantamount to rewarding investor failures. It was the same old Gladwell technique: blame victims for allowing themselves to be ripped off and robbed.
READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE ON THE EXILED.COM.
This profile is part of the new S.H.A.M.E. Media Transparency Project. Learn more about it here.
Yasha Levine, President of S.H.A.M.E., is an investigative journalist and a founding editor of The eXiled. His work has been published by Wired, The Nation, Slate, The New York Observer and many others. He has made several guest appearances on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show.