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Fink Tanks
How do lobbyists differ from think tanks?
Corporations pay for lobbyists, whereas the people who own and run corporations
finance think tanks. There is one other major difference: donations to think
tanks are tax deductible. The four most sited think tanks — the
Brookings Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Institute, the American
Enterprise Institute — are all paid for by the same people and organizations.
Large, rabidly conservative foundations like the Olin Foundation and the
Bradley Foundation and America’s richest private citizens pour millions of
dollars into them annually and get back ideologically appropriate analysis. Think tanks are an unknown entity to the
vast majority of the population. We read references to them in the newspapers
and no TV roundtable would be complete without at least one talking head from a
major think tank coming via satellite from DC, yet they remain rather elusive
institutions. The only information we get is in the brief tag line, which
disingenuously informs us whether the tank is conservative, liberal or
centrist. Even label ‘think tank’ is meant to
conjure images of objective intellectuals analyzing statistics in soundproof
rooms far from the din of partisan politics. We are supposed to believe that
they are simply analyzing the hard facts, rather than telling us which issues
to analyze. But the real twisted thing is they don’t
just define the issues Americans think about, they brag about it! Michael
Joyce, the president of the Bradley Foundation (a generous contributor to all
of the think tanks mentioned above) said, “It’s true that many people do not
know where certain ideas come from, but the important thing is that they agree
with them.” In keeping with this statement, think tanks’ main goal is to define
which issues get discussed, thereby controlling what is thought about them. In its mission statement, the aggressively
conservative Heritage Foundation openly admits its purpose is to “formulate and
promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free
enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American
values, and a strong national defense. Heritage’s staff and departments pursue
this mission by performing timely, accurate research on key policy issues and
effectively marketing these findings to our primary audiences: members of
Congress, key congressional staff members, policymakers in the executive
branch, the nation’s news media, and the academic and policy communities.” To paraphrase, they exist to market their
agenda to Congress and then convert it into law. Heritage often drafts bills
that then are sponsored by conservative legislators. However, Heritage (and all
think tanks) includes at the bottom of every press release that they are a
“non-partisan, tax-exempt organization.” This asterisk is extremely important.
Because of it, newspapers can quote them with a clean conscience. Thus, think
tanks’ talking heads provide reporters with convenient statistics and expert
quotes on everything from welfare reform to NATO expansion, qualified only with
the meaningless tag liberal or conservative. Think tanks provide the journalistic
equivalent of one stop shopping — whatever the issue is, a think tank is
guaranteed to have a qualified expert. Other think tanks are only slightly less
blatant about who they are trying to influence. The Brookings Institute
statement of purpose claims “it serves as a bridge between scholarship and
public policy, bringing new knowledge to the attention of decision makers.”
Incidentally, Brookings is the most frequently referred to “liberal” think
tank, in spite of the fact that its current president Michael Armacost was an
underling in the Reagan administration and several of it’s most prominent
analysts, including Richard Hass and Stephen Hess, hearken from Republican
administrations. Neither that, nor the fact that Brookings refers to its ranks
as “fanatic moderates,” keeps the news media from labeling it liberal. We also never hear about the corporate
ties that dominate each Institute, both in financing and management. Rupert
Murdoch and John Malone, CEO of cable media giant Tele-Communications Inc. sit
on the board of the avowedly libertarian Cato Institute. Cato boasts that it
“actively promoted the deregulation of the television and telephone
industries.” The logic behind it is dizzyingly cyclical — moguls give money
because they agree with the tank’s findings, only to get elected to the board
and further influence the direction of the tank’s research. Also important is the funding trump card
that contributors hold over think tanks. While the research is supposedly
objective, the threat of withholding funding is often enough to bring a tank
back into line ideologically. The one example of the extent foundations can
influence research orientation is AEI’s crisis in the mid-80’s. In 1986, the
Olin and Smith-Richardson foundations withdrew funding over objections about
the centrist tendencies of AEI’s president William Baroody. Subsequently,
Baroody was forced from the presidency, funding was restored and AEI is perhaps
the most conservative major think tank around. Current staff includes Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Dan Quail’s former Chief of Staff William Kristol and Charles
Murray, author of the Bell Curve. The National Committee for Responsive
Philanthropy estimated in a 1999 report that spending by the top 20
conservative think tanks in the U.S. would reach $1 billion between 1990 to
2000. In the election year 1996, according to NCRP, conservative think tanks
(which doesn’t include the Brookings Institute) spent $158 million. The
Republican Party, by comparison, spent $138 million in soft money contributions
in 1996, or $20 million less than the conservative policy groups surveyed. The investment pays. According to a FAIR
survey of print media in 1999, only three of the twenty most sited think tanks
had progressive politics. Those three placed 11th, 13th and 20th in the survey,
with less combined citations than AEI, which placed 4th on FAIR’s list. To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
