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More stories by Bill Berkowitz

PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'

Neil Bush of Saudi Arabia

Newt Gingrich's back door to the White House

American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against Iran

After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative

Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'

Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouse

Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihad

Tom Tancredo's mission

Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of Churches

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
January 4, 2006

The longest yarn: A history of pay to play at right wing think tanks

Revelations that Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bought op-ed pieces from fellows at right wing think tanks should unleash an investigation into two decades of so-called research paid for by conservative philanthropies

"Despite its centrality to political debate, economic research is a very low-budget affair. The entire annual economics budget at the National Science foundation is less than $20 million. What this means is that even a handful of wealthy cranks can support an impressive-looking array of think tanks, research institutes, foundations, and so on devoted to promoting an economic doctrine they like...The economists these institutions can attract are not exactly the best and the brightest...But who needs brilliant, or even competent, researchers when you already know all the answers?" -- Paul Krugman, Slate, August 15, 1996)

Several decades ago, when veteran radio news reporter Scoop Nisker closed out his broadcasts by telling his audience that if they didn't like the news they should "go out and make some of your own," little did he imagine that the Bush Administration, and a host of its surrogates, would become masters of that domain.

Earlier this year, the public was startled to discover that the Bush Administration had been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Black conservative columnist and radio and television talk show host Armstrong Williams to flak for the "No Child Left Behind Act." Those revelations not only called into question the columns and commentaries Williams had produced around Bush's education legislative centerpiece, it also rendered Williams' entire body of work suspect.

At the end of last month, the New York Times revealed that the Pentagon had been paying Iraqi newspapers to publish "good news" stories about the situation in country; stories that had been generated by the Pentagon itself.

Political analyst and former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan argued, during a session on MSNBC's Hardball, that "deception, misinformation, disinformation, deceit, [and] propaganda" in times of war was acceptable.

Buchanan pointed out that "the Pentagon and our guys over there have got every right to have good news put into the media and get to the people of Iraq, even if it's got to be planted or bought."

On Friday, December 16, another branch from the "pay to play" tree of journalism came crashing to earth.

Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the fiercely libertarian Cato Institute, resigned after BusinessWeek Online revealed that he had been paid ample chunks of change by indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff to produce columns in support of issues of interest to Abramoff and his clients. Many of these columns were related to Indian gambling, and "extol[ing] the virtues of the free-market system" particularly in the Northern Mariana Islands, the New York Times reported. .

After the Business Week story appeared, Bandow resigned from the Cato Institute, and the Copley News Service -- which syndicated his columns -- suspended him, pending further investigation.

(In a recent piece in the New York Times, Philip Shenon described Jack Abramoff as "a major Republican Party fundraiser" who is the "focus of a federal corruption investigation in Washington involving gifts to lawmakers." Abramoff, Shenon wrote, is known to be among the "most generous lobbyists" with an uncanny ability to direct "political contributions to lawmakers who could help his clients.")

Bandow apparently accepted as much as $2000 an article, for writing some 12 to 24 Abramoff-inspired pieces over a several year period beginning in the mid 1990s, BusinessWeek Online reported.

The story also named Peter Ferrara, of the Lewisville, Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation. Ferrara who admitted to receiving money from Abramoff, was at first quite cavalier about the situation: "I do it all the time," he said. "I've done that in the past and I'll do it in the future."

In its piece, BusinessWeek Online reported that Tom Giovanetti, the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), said that he saw nothing wrong with "pay for play" op eds.

Within days both Ferrara and Giovanetti backtracked. In a press release dated December 19, Giovanetti claimed that he had been quoted out of context, arguing that the Institute "has never engaged in what is being called 'pay for play' op/eds." Giovanetti added "to the best of our knowledge, no op/ed ever written on an IPI byline was written either directly or indirectly as a result of lobbyist influence or payment."

Ferrara also tried to clarify his position in an IPI official press release also dated December 19:

For many years, I have had the honor of having my writing widely published on a variety of public policy issues. My writing has always reflected my free market and socially conservative views and philosophy, without exception. I have not nor would I ever take financial support to write anything that I did not think was good public policy or that was against my economic or social philosophy.

I follow an unqualified policy of not taking money from lobbyists for op-eds, which I established on my own years ago. I rely solely on financing from my foundation employers for financial support.

I am glad to ask people to contribute to my work if they agree with what I have been writing for years now and want to support it. That is what I was referring to in the quote in this regard in the BusinessWeek Online article.

If I were paid by a newspaper or a syndicator to write a regular column, I could not possibly take money from any outside party for that work, as that would betray the newspaper or syndicator employing me. As a freelance writer who submits individual articles to publications, I must honestly follow the disclosure policies of those publications. These are the rules I follow.

I have already acknowledged that, years ago, Jack Abramoff was among those who provided occasional financial support for my work. Any crimes or unethical practices of his do not make anyone he raised money for or contributed to in the past unethical. I have not dealt with or received any contributions in any form from Abramoff for years now.

With specific regard to the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a think tank with which I am affiliated, I have never written anything under an IPI byline that was financially supported or otherwise motivated by anyone other than IPI.

Since the 1980s, the political landscape has become thick with conservative and libertarian think tanks. For a time, it seemed that every other week or so, yet another press release announced the establishment of a new think tank or public policy institute. During this period, more than 100 such organizations were founded, staffed and funded. Some appeared to be fly-by-night operations run by one person or by a skeleton staff whose sole purpose was to issue canned press releases on the public policy issue of the day. Other organizations appeared to engage in original research and received a substantial amount of funding support from conservative philanthropies and foundations.

Special studies, op-ed pieces, and so-called "highly documented" studies, covering a broad swath of conservative/free market issues cascaded forth from these institutions. Similar to the Bush Administration's faith-based initiative, where little attention has been paid to discovering whether these groups actually serve the public better than government agencies, much of the information generated by these think tanks was accepted without much investigation into the substance of their assertions. It appeared that the sheer volume of the material that was generated -- especially when similar-conclusions came from different groups -- was enough for editorial writers, reporters, op-ed writers and radio talk show hosts to spread their findings as gospel.

"Paying to play" is not a new phenomenon, nor I suspect, limited to right wing think tanks. However, over the past two decades, conservative philanthropists and foundations have spent their money wisely.

In the introduction to its 1996 report titled Buying a Movement: Right Wing Foundations and American Politics, People for the American Way pointed out that

"Each year, conservative foundations channel millions of dollars into a broad range of conservative political organizations. Their recipients range from multimillion-dollar national think tanks to state policy centers, universities, conservative journals, magazines and student publications, right-wing television networks and radio programs, and community projects. The issue work funded by these conservative givers ranges from military and fiscal policy to education funding to health and welfare program analysis to environmental deregulation to libertarian workplace policy, and more."

"Conservative foundations have overt political and ideological agendas and invest comprehensively to promote a given issue on every front. In the words of the director of one foundation, the right understands that government policies are based on information from "a conveyer belt from thinkers, academics and activists," and provides funding accordingly."

"Indeed, the foundations are supporting the work at every station on the conveyer belt. They fund national conservative "think tanks" to package and repackage conservative issue positions; state think tanks to lend a local flair to these issues; national political groups to lobby in Washington and shape national media coverage; state-based groups to do the same in the states; grassroots organizations to stir up local activism; national and state media to report, interpret and amplify these activities; scholars to record the history of such activities and push the intellectual boundaries of the issues; graduate students to form the next wave of scholarship and movement leadership; and college newspapers to shape the milieu in which America's next generation of political leaders comes to their political awakening."

Uncovering the ties -- and the amounts of money involved--between researchers and op-eders at right wing think tanks and industry lobbying groups and /or their powerful political patrons is no easy task. As the New York Times' Philip Shenon recently noted, "Executives in the public relations and lobbying industries say that the hiring of outside commentators to promote special interests - typically by writing newspaper opinion articles or in radio and television interviews - does happen, although it is impossible to monitor since the payments do not have to be disclosed and can be disguised as speaking fees and other compensation."

Nevertheless, on Friday, December 23, Shenon reported that at least two other researchers at the Institute for Policy Innovation -- founded by former Texas Republican Congressman Dick Armey in 1987 -- "had relationships with industry trade groups.

On October 25, IPI's Susan Finston wrote an opinion piece for The Financial Times in which "she called for patent protection in poor countries for drugs and biotechnology products." Last month Finston also penned a column that appeared in the European edition of The Wall Street Journal which "called for efforts to block developing nations from violating patents on AIDS medicines and other drugs," Shenon reported.

In both cases she was identified as a "research associate" at IPI. However, according to Shenon, "Neither mentioned that, as recently as August [she] was registered as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry's trade group. Nor was there mention of her work this fall in creating the American Bioindustry Alliance, a group underwritten largely by drug companies."

He also pointed out that Merrill Matthews Jr.writes for major newspapers under the IPI banner, advocating policies promoted by the insurance industry, even though he is a registered lobbyist for a separate group backed by the insurance giants.

Given his previous comments on the matter, it was not surprising to read that the president of IPI told Shenon "Lobbying is not a four-letter word."

Both Finston and Matthews deny any wrongdoing.

While the reputations of Doug Bandow and Peter Ferrara have been severely damaged by the BusinessWeek Online revelations, investigations into the buying and selling of columnists probably will not end with these two cases

Just as the incompetence of former FEMA head Michael Brown led enterprising reporters to look into a host of Bush Administration appointments whose qualifications are suspect, "pay to play" revelations could shed some needed light on a much larger question; the honesty and ethics of the "research" that has been produced by right wing think tanks over the past two decades.

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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
March 16, 2007

PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'

Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism'

On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.

In a story written just before Anderson's northern California appearance, Truckee Today's Karen Sloan described PERC as an organization that "contends that private property rights encourage good stewardship of natural resources." The story, headlined "'Enviroprenuer' scholar to speak at Resort at Squaw Creek," pointed out that "PERC scholars argue that government subsidies often degrade the environment, that market incentives can spur individuals to conserve and protect the environment and that polluters should be liable for the harm they cause others."

On its website, PERC -- a non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1980 -- calls itself "the nation's oldest and largest institute dedicated to original research that brings market principles to resolving environmental problems." PERC maintains that it "pioneered the approach known as free market environmentalism."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
March 10, 2007

Neil Bush of Saudi Arabia

During recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy'

In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."

Neil Mallon Bush, the son of President George H. W. Bush and the brother of President George W. Bush, attended the forum to renew old family friendships and to drum up a little business for his educational software company. "The Jeddah Economic Forum has been very productive," Bush told Arab News. "I have been to this conference four times since 2002. I have seen it develop from the very beginning. There was less participation in the past, now there is more international participation."

These days, Neil Bush is the chairman and CEO of Ignite Learning, a company devoted to developing technology-assisted curriculum. Ignite calls it COW: "Curriculum on Wheels." In an interview with Arab News' Siraj Wahab, Bush talked enthusiastically about his company's mission: "We are building a model in the United States for developing curriculum that is engaging to grade-school kids, and our model is to deploy this engaging content through a device. So it is easy for any teacher to use our device through projectors and speakers. The curriculum is loaded on the device. We use animation and video and those kinds of things to light up learning in classrooms for kids. It helps teachers connect with their kids. We are planning to develop an Arabic version of that model."

A video on Ignite!'s website makes clear the enervating, rote approach to learning taken by the Bush family. While this may not be an advance in actual education, it does serve to enrich Neil Bush and commodify teachers. In concept it is much like Channel One, whereby Chris Whittle enriched himself forcing millions of primary school students to watch repackaged TV News sandwiched between corporate advertising.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
March 2, 2007

Newt Gingrich's back door to the White House

American Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances

Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.

These days, Gingrich, who is simultaneously a "Senior Fellow" at the American Enterprise Institute and a "Distinguished Visiting Fellow" at the Hoover Institution, is making like your favorite uncle, fronting a YouTube video contest offering "prizes" to whoever creates the best two-minute video on why taxes suck. Although the prizes may not be particularly attractive to the typical YouTuber, nevertheless Gingrich recently launched the "Winning the Future, Goose that laid the Golden Egg, You Tube Contest." According to Newt.org, participants are to "Create a 120 second video explaining why tax increases will hurt the American economy, leading to less revenue for the government, not more. Or in other words, explain why we shouldn't cook the goose that laid the golden eggs (the American economy) by raising taxes."

Although he hasn't formerly announced his candidacy -- and he probably won't anytime soon -- Gingrich definitely has his eyes on the White House. He's just still figuring out how he will get there. Over the past several months Gingrich has been ubiquitous on the media and political scenes.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 25, 2007

American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against Iran

Despite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran

After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.

Long before the Bush Administration began escalating its rhetoric and upping the ante about the supposed "threat" posed to the US by Iran, well-paid inside-the-beltway think tankers were agitating for some kind of action against that country. Some have argued for ratcheting up sanctions and freezing bank accounts, others have advocated increasing financial aid to opposition groups, and still others have argued that a military strike at Iran's nuclear facilities is absolutely essential. For all, the desired end result is regime change in Iran.

If President Bush plunges the U.S. into some kind of military conflict with Iran, you can thank the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a key player in the current debate over Iran.

President Bush acknowledged as much when he recently appeared at the AEI for a much-publicized speech on his War on Terror, which focused on the front in Afghanistan.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 18, 2007

After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative

Unmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups

With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The other item that didn't get any State of the Union play is a project that was once envisioned to be the centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda: his faith-based initiative. As Joseph Bottum, editor of the conservative publication First Things -- "The Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life" -- pointed out, Bush "didn't mention faith-based initiatives, which...[he] once claimed would be his great legacy."

The president's faith-based initiative is facing several tough court battles.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 10, 2007

Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'

On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California

He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."

In a 10-page addendum to his new book ""Words that Work -- It's Not What You Say Its What People Hear," Luntz, formerly a top political pollster for the Republican Party, may have written so critically of the party's recent efforts that he has become persona non grata. Luntz used to be one of the party's go-to-guys for political guidance and strategy, a counselor to such GOP stalwarts as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York City Major Rudy Giuliani and Trent Lott.

"The Republican Party that lost those historic elections was a tired, cranky shell of the articulate reformist, forward-thinking movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change," Luntz wrote. According to syndicated columnist Robert Novak, Luntz went on to say that the Republicans of 2006 "were an ethical morass, more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting the people they served. The 1994 Republicans came to 'revolutionize' Washington. Washington won."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
February 4, 2007

Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouse

Fueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director

As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Flash forward some 30-plus years and an Internet entrepreneur believes that it is time for a new conservative movement. He too has seen an entity on the left he admires enough to want to emulate: MoveOn.org.

"The left has been brilliant at leveraging technology," said Rod Martin, founder of TheVanguard.org, "and so have we to a point: our bloggers and news sites are amazing, and the RNC's get-out-the-vote software is unparalleled. But no one on our side has even begun to create anything like MoveOn. And after 2006, if we want to survive, much less build a long-term conservative majority, we better start, and fast."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 29, 2007

Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihad

Founder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives

Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."

During a mid-December conference call Connerly allowed that he had scheduled visits to Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah during the upcoming months to get a handle on how many campaigns he might launch.

"Twenty-three states have systems for putting laws directly before voters in the form of ballot initiatives," the Chronicle pointed out. "Three down and 20 to go," Connerly boasted. "We don't need to do them all, but if we do a significant number, we will have demonstrated that race preferences are antithetical to the popular will of the American people."

"The people of California, Washington and Michigan have shown that institutions that implement these [affirmative action] programs are living on borrowed time," Connerly said.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 25, 2007

Tom Tancredo's mission

The Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics

These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.

Now, Tancredo, who has represented the state's Sixth District since 1999, has joined the long list of candidates contending for the GOP's 2008 presidential nomination. In mid-January Tancredo announced the formation of an exploratory committee -- Tom Tancredo for a Secure America -- the first step to formally declaring his candidacy. While his announcement didn't cause quite the stir as the announcement by Illinois Democratic Senator Barak Obama that he too was forming an exploratory committee, nevertheless Tancredo's move did not go completely unnoticed.

While voters' concerns over the war in Iraq and the GOP's "culture of corruption" predominated in the 2006 midterms, Tancredo will be doing his best to make immigration an issue for the presidential campaign of 2008.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
January 18, 2007

Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of Churches

New report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations

If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.

For those who remember a similar IRD-led attack on the World Council of Churches two decades ago the IRD's latest blast appears to be -- to borrow a phrase from New York Yankee great Yogi Berra -- "déjà vu all over again."

The IRD excoriated the World Council of Churches (WCC) for allegedly being tools of the anti-American left over its support of the Nelson Mandela-led African National Congress in South Africa, and its opposition to President Ronald Reagan's contra wars in Central America; wars that destabilized governments and were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. And now it is doing a similar job on the NCC.

"The institute, a Washington-based think tank, is allied with conservative groups on issues such as same-sex marriage. From its founding in 1981, its primary effort has been to challenge what it calls the 'leftist' political positions of mainline Protestant denominations, such as the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)," the Washington Post recently reported.

Author and longtime right wing watcher Frederick Clarkson recently described the IRD as an "inside the beltway, neoconservative agency [that] has waged a war of attrition against the historic mainline protestant churches in the U.S."

Read the full report >

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