It turns out that running a think tank is a good career move: Mitch Pearlstein's salary:

Year 2000:
$125,000 in "compensation";
$41,875 in benefits;
$20,576 in expenses
...for a total of:
$187,000!

PERSON PROFILE

Mitch B. Pearlstein

Mitchell B. Pearlstein is the president and founder of the Center of the American Experiment, a Republican think tank based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pearlstein came to Minnesota as an assistant to former University of Minnesota President C. Peter Magrath. He earned a Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Minnesota in 1980. Mitch Pearlstein Mitchell B. Pearlstein is the president and founder of the Center of the American Experiment, a Republican think tank based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pearlstein came to Minnesota as an assistant to former University of Minnesota President C. Peter Magrath. He earned a Ph.D. in educational administration from the University of Minnesota in 1980.

Mitch Pearlstein was paid a total of $190,000 by the CAE in 2003, according to the organization's IRS 990

He subsequently worked as a researcher for a former Republican governor (Al Quie), and worked as an editorial writer as the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch from 1983 to 1987. Pearlstein then spent 2.5 years in the U.S. Department of Education, during the Reagan and Bush administrations, where he worked with others who led and lead the voucher and school commercialization movements, including William Bennett, Chester Finn, and Lamar Alexander.

In 1990, Pearlstein, with the help of the Bradley Foundation, a welcoming editorial in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and other support, launched the Center of the American Experiment, which he at the time called a "conservative think tank," and was self-styled as a knock off of the Heritage Foundation. The Center was one of many such conservative, regional or state "think tanks" created in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In fact, Pearlstein had first chosen the name "Heartland Institute" for his new think tank, when he was informed that that name had already been taken by one of his sister institutions, the Chicago-based Heartland Institute.

Is The Center of the American Experiment for Republicans Only?

What some call a tax-exempt think tank others call a partisan research arm

Read the full report >

Rob Levine
Mpls Star Tribune / Op-Ed
August 9, 2000

'American Experiment' gets free ride from uncritical media

Read the full report >

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