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RELATED LINKSInternal Links
Profiles: External LinksCato's Social Security Privatization Project
MORE LINKSJoe Conason's Journal The libertarian Cato Institute claims that Human Rights Watch has never criticized Iraq. It's lying.Long before American conservatives grew indignant about the villainy of Saddam Hussein -- back in the days when upstanding citizens like Donald Rumsfeld and Henry Kissinger were still coddling the dictator -- Human Rights Watch was exposing his regime's mass murders and repression. I know because I've been reading the group's reports on Iraq since 1989, when it presented some of the most compelling evidence of Saddam's genocidal gassing of the Kurds.
Norman Solomon The Cato Institute: "Libertarian"In A Corporate WayNormon Solomon analyzes the Cato Institute
Extra! Media Moguls on BoardMurdoch, Malone and the Cato Institute Last fall, when News Corporation owner Rupert Murdoch joined the board of directors at the Cato Institute, the announcement went unreported in major media. Perhaps it seemed routine for one of the world's most powerful media moguls to take a leadership post at one of the most influential think tanks in Washington.
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RECIPIENT PROFILEEIN: 23-7432162 Cato InstituteWashington, DC 20001 [From The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations, NCRP] Founded in 1977 by libertarian activists Charles Koch and Edward H. Crane, the Cato Institute moved to Washington, D.C. in 1981 in a bid to become an influential player in Washington policy circles. Today (1997), Cato is a multi-million dollar, multi-issue research and advocacy organization with a staff of 40-plus senior managers, policy analysts, and communications specialists. It is also assisted by the work of over 75 adjunct Cato scholars, including ultra-conservative law professors Richard Epstein (University of Chicago) and Henry G. Manne. Cato's mission is to "increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace. The Institute will use the most effective means to originate, advocate, promote, and disseminate applicable policy proposals that create free, open, and civil societies in the United States and throughout the world." Toward that end, the Institute publishes books and policy analyses, works extensively through the media, organizes conferences and policy briefings, and testifies regularly before Congress and other policymaking bodies on a wide range issues. Following the November 1994 elections, the Institute published and delivered to every member of Congress The Cato Handbook, a 358-page, 39 chapter volume containing policy reforms and proposals in every vital public policy area, including budget and tax reduction, social security, Medicare, education, environmental reform, and foreign and defense policy. One year later, the Institute launched its Project on Social Security Privatization, co-chaired by Jose Pinera, Chile's former minister of labor and welfare, and William Shipman, of State Street Global Advisors, which has been actively promoting private alternatives to social security, both financially and via an extensive public relations campaign. Assisted by a powerful advisory board of business leaders, conservative economists and other conservative political leaders, the Project plans to spend $2 million in a public relations campaign to depict social security as crisis-ridden and in need of significant reform. Cato has also "helped establish the House caucus on public pension reform, offering information, discussion topics, speakers, even identifying potential members." A voice that for years has encouraged the privatization of social security, Cato has also promoted the idea of medical savings accounts. Other, on-going projects include the Cato Center for Constitutional Government, which seeks to apply the doctrine of enumerated powers, or the belief that the federal government should be limited to those powers enumerated in the Constitution, to such areas as property rights, federalism, tort reform, and economic liberty. -NCRP, The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations From Buying a Movement Cato receives a lot of its funding from the Koch foundations, and the Bradley Foundation. Cato is the leading Libertarian think tank; it has close ties to House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), who has frequently given speeches at Cato in the past several years... Cato president Edward Crane asserts that the Kochs "are very large contributors...[but] it would not be a devastating blow if they stopped supporting us." Nevertheless, $1.75 million of Cato's 1990 budget -- or over 50 percent -- came from the Kochs.
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OTHER LINKSCato's Social Security Privatization Project
Dana Milbank At Conservative Forum on Bush, Everybody's a Critic...the first speaker [at a Cato forum], [was] former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett. Author of the new book "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," Bartlett called the administration "unconscionable," "irresponsible," "vindictive" and "inept."
Eamon Javers Op-Eds for SaleA columnist from a libertarian think tank (Cato) admits accepting payments to promote an indicted lobbyist's clients. Will more examples follow? A senior fellow at the Cato Institute resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s.
MediaMatters.org Special Report hosted author of debunked radiation study to discuss Yucca MountainIn an appearance on Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Cato Institute adjunct scholar Steven Milloy cited his study of radiation levels at the U.S. Capitol Building to argue that the health safety standards recently imposed on the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada, nuclear waste repository are unduly stringent. But Milloy's findings -- that the radiation exposure at the Capitol is far higher than it would be at the Yucca Mountain facility under Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits -- were debunked shortly after he published them in 2001.
MediaCitizen Why does Cato oppose public broadband? Of course! They're funded by Verizon, Comcast and Time WarnerTelecom and cable companies are pushing laws across the country that would restrict local competition and cut off consumer choice...the Cato Institute is funded by Verizon, SBC Communications, Time Warner, Comcast and Freedom Communications -- all companies seeking to put a stake through the heart of homegrown broadband systems.
Paul Krugman Spearing the Beast..."Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state," declares Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth and the Cato Institute. "If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."
Max Sawicky PACK OF LIES[The] Leadership of the Social Security Administration has been captured by enemies of the program... It's bad enough [when] you get political commercials in their voice mail system...[but now] they have a full-blown slide show of Bushist propaganda being distributed [on their website][apparently created by the Cato Institute's Social Security Privatization Project].
Washington Post VOUCHING FOR SCHOOL CHOICESchool vouchers [are] still a smoking hot topic in Washington with the Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments in the Cleveland voucher case next month. With this timing in mind, the Cato Institute announced the launch of the Center for Education Freedom, to be run..on an annual budget of $450,000 and start with a staff of four. "We'll be looking at proposals..including tuition tax credits, scholarship tax credits...for-profit and nonprofit educational entrepreneurs...and educating kids outside the government."
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