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FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICA’S
RADICAL RIGHT-WING MOVEMENT
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[Paul Levy © 2019]
Introduction
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For 50 years a powerful Right-Wing Movement has transformed America, capturing the Republican Party and achieving many other notable victories such as Citizens United, popularizing school vouchers, and reversing a growing commitment to address climate change by promoting climate change denial.
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Recent exposés such as Jane Mayer’s Dark Money and Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains help reveal this often stealthy Movement, but it has actually been recognized for some time. An early description of it, for example, was a book by John Saloma III entitled Ominous Politics: The New Conservative Labyrinth. Saloma was a moderate Republican and a founder of its Ripon Society. Writing in 1984, he saw the movement as a major danger to the advancement of his Republican Party. Here is how he summarized it:
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Over a period … political conservatives have quietly built a vast coalition of think tanks, political action groups, religious broadcasters, corporate political organizations, senators and representatives, Republic Party officials, and other groups with budgets totaling hundreds of millions of dollars annually. I emphasize the “quietly” because this major development … has arrived almost unannounced.
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Although the Movement has grown enormously since 1984, many of its early benefactors and most of its original design such as think tanks, political action committees, and partnership with the Religious Right remain at its core today. We think of the Koch brothers as being pivotal to today’s Movement, but they were already key players in 1984 and their father was before them. In fact, the term Kochtopus, commonly used today to refer to the brothers’ broad influence, was coined in 1980.
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Progressive and Centrist activists need to confront this Movement – to shape an effective vision and set of strategies and launch a countermovement, if you will. But a prerequisite to doing this is to understand the Movement’s history, affluence, structure, strategies, institutions, entrenchment, victories, and core ideology.
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This document is an attempt to advance these understandings. It is a collection of relatively brief descriptions of key Movement elements. Each contains citations and often supplemental material as well as references and links to Related Essays that I have written.
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[1] Mayer and MacLean use the term “Kochtopus” to identify the reach of Koch activity and influence, so it seems recent. However, Saloma also uses the term, and it was originally coined by Edward Konkin III, a left-wing libertarian in 1980 (New Libertarian’s Manifesto).
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Paul Levy
FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICA’S
RADICAL RIGHT-WING MOVEMENT
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[Paul Levy © 2019]
Part 3: Movement Strategies -- A
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Introduction, Think Tanks, Academia
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Social movements have two overriding aims. They seek:
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• to alter the culture – to change certain prevailing ideas, beliefs, customs; and,
• to alter public policy – to change certain laws to be compatible with and to secure those cultural changes.
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The Civil Rights Movement sought to change prevailing cultural views having to do, for example, with stereotypes of African American intelligence or beauty, framing race issues as the “Negro” problem, and prevailing practices such as discrimination in public accommodations. And, it sought major law reforms such as securing voting rights, prohibiting school segregation, and obtaining equal employment opportunities.
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The Radical Right Movement also aims at changing prevailing culture and laws. From the start, its leaders viewed their struggle as a “war of ideas” as well as a war of politics and policy, and they shaped core approaches – I call them strategies -- for change. Most of these strategies were recommended by the Powell Manifesto (1971) and were in place by the time John Saloma published his exposé in 1984. The strategies continue to be the core Movement strategies today. I catalog them as follows and organize Part IV by looking at each in turn.
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Create Think Tanks – to establish national, right-wing, activist think tanks that will generate ideas, turn them into policy proposals, and promote them with lawmakers through consultation and lobbying.
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Infiltrate Academia – to infiltrate academia (with centers, faculty, textbooks, etc.) to assure that free market ideas and values compete with liberal ideas in colleges.
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Reform the Law – to infiltrate law schools, promote market-oriented legal theories and laws, denigrate government, lobby lawmakers, influence judicial thinking, create right-wing public interest litigation firms, and secure Movement-oriented lawmakers, judges, and bureaucrats. Perhaps today, campaign contributions as a way to reform the law could be treated as its own strategy.
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Develop a Media Presence – to disseminate right-wing ideas broadly through the media and other public avenues such as periodicals, books, and speeches.
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Establish a Grassroots Base – to establish a grassroots base by linking with existing groups, most particularly the Christian Right, and by organizing state networks of think tanks and advocacy groups.
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The remainder of Part IV looks at each key strategy and at examples of a few initiatives within it. There are literally thousands of significant programs and projects within each strategy, so my choice of examples is largely random, but each highlights some special attribute of the Movement.
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A. Create Think Tanks
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The Right-Wing Movement was seen by leaders as a “war of ideas,” so it is no surprise that its lead weapon would be think tanks (TTs). TTs explore big ideas such as the beliefs of our Founding Fathers, the challenges of democracy, or the values and detriments of a free enterprise system. And, they explore smaller ideas such as the sustainability of Social Security, the ways students learn, or public opinion about Obamacare.
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The Advocacy TT Model
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America’s first TTs, such as the Russell Sage Foundation (1907), the Rockefeller Foundation (1913), and Brookings institute (1916), were created in the belief that social science research could provide objective information to improve public policy. Those TTs were non-ideological and non-partisan with boards usually composed of democrats and republicans. Their mission was to conduct objective research and to develop public proposals based on it. For decades, these traits formed the model for TTs, and for many they still do.
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Soon after the Movement was launched, the Heritage Foundation (1975) was created. It adopted a new TT model, an activist model. All new conservative TTs adopted it and all existing conservative TTs such as the American Enterprise Institute (1938) and the Hudson Institute (1961) shifted to it. Activist TTs are:
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 avowedly ideological rather than objective
 highly partisan (Right-Wing Republican)
 primarily advocates, seeking to mobilize arguments and evidence that support their conservative beliefs, policies, and causes and/or oppose liberal ones
 as interested in marketing their ideas and proposals as in developing them
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Early in the Movement, the Koch Brothers’ chief strategist Richie Fink laid out a simple umbrella strategy for the Kochs which was essentially adopted by the Movement: to shape ideas, turn them into policy proposals, and advocate for those proposals.[1] In the Heritage model, TTs undertake all three tasks. See Appendix below for more detail on the contrasts of traditional and Heritage-style advocacy TTs.
TT Proliferation and Coordination
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Immediately after the creation of the Heritage Foundation, many other national, conservative TTs were created, for example, the Cato Institute (1977), the Manhattan Institute (1977), and the Claremont Institute (1979). In subsequent decades, the resources of the leading national TTs have grown immensely. Between 2001 and 2016, for example, the annual budget of The Heritage Foundation grew from $26 million to $82 million, of the American Enterprise Institute from $22 million to $75 million, and of The Cato Institute from $16 million to $37 million. Professional staff at these TTs are numerous and well-paid.
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Beginning in the 1990s, the success of national TTs led Movement donors to develop state TTs with missions, objectives, and activities similar to the nationals but aimed at influencing state policy and politics. The State Policy Network (SPN), created in 1992 to help start, maintain, and coordinate state TTs, stated its mission this way: “to catalyze thriving, durable freedom movements in every state anchored with high-performing, independent think tanks.” Most state TTs were created during the next 20 years. Today SPN has a membership of 64 state TTs [2] and a collective annual budget of about $83 million. It also has 90 associate partners including all of the leading national TTs as well as many university institutes that function essentially as TTs (these institutes are discussed in Infiltrate Academia, below). An Appendix below describes a typical state think tank, the Show Me Institute in Missouri.
SPN provides a major vehicle for communication and coordination among TTs. It provides financial and technical support for its member tanks but also coordinates some of their activity around selected Movement agendas such as staunchly opposing Obamacare, promoting school choice and vouchers, advancing climate change denial, and claiming voter fraud. The state TTs link closely with the Movement’s special grassroots advocacy network called Americans for Prosperity (AFP) founded by the Koch brothers. AFP (discussed below in Create a Grassroots, has chapters in 38 states and a budget of $64 million (2016). Its affiliate, the Americans for Progress Foundation, spent an additional $27 million that year.
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Also, state TTs work closely with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a $10 million operation composed of conservative state legislators from the various states. ALEC produces and promotes model state legislation for introduction in these states, and state TTs help advance ALEC’s agenda.
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It is important to recognize that both national and state TTs have staff and board members who are very active and often are prominent in Republican Party politics. All tanks are highly political.
What Do Think Tanks Do?
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TTs generate ideas and produce and promote policy proposals. Large TTs like the Cato Institute -- the leading Libertarian Think Tank with a budget of nearly $40 million per year – adopt an array of activities to pursue these ends. Here are activities identified in Cato’s 2015 Annual Report (it happened to include a particularly helpful list):[3]
• Students: 4900 students in Cato Outreach Programs, 86 Interns, 189 Cato University Participants
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• Events: 47 Policy Forums, 25 Capitol Hill briefings, 19 City Seminars, and 16 Conferences.
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• Online: 11,790,572 Website visits, 8,649,800 PDF Downloads, 548,275 Facebook Interactions, 135,161 Twitter interactions [in addition to other social media engagements on LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, and Instagram.]
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• News and Print Media: 1,727 TV and radio hits; 1,487 Blog posts; 944 Op-Eds
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• Publications: 61 Regulation Magazine Articles, 47 Cato Unbound essays, 18 policy analysis studies, 14 books, and many others.
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• Court Briefs: About 60 Amicus briefs including 37 in the Supreme Court (up from 8 in 2005).
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This is an impressive list of accomplishments. It reflects that TTs serve as MASSIVE MEGAPHONES, repeating their Right-Wing messages over and over to a large audience of students, congressmen, blog followers, downloaders, and others.
Impressive as this scope and array of activities is, Cato does much more. For example, it does an extensive amount of lobbying and education of Congress beyond Capitol Hill briefings. It has additional ways to spread its messages, for example, through YouTube presentations and speeches. It holds special events, invites speakers to Cato and provides speakers to schools and organizations. It makes grants to some organizations and provides advice and materials to many other TTs, particularly those in the State Policy Network.
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Cato has multiple centers that each conducts a variety of activities. It partners with other TTs to do such things as produce The Human Freedom Index. Cato University participants take 3-day courses in special areas. Its curriculum included, for example, a 3-day College of Economics which “is based on the conviction that economics is a way of thinking, a tool for decision-making, and a basis for action. It’s the necessary foundation for understanding government, business, and society.”[4] The notion that economics – an unfettered free market economy – is at the heart of all societal components, is pervasive in the Movement.
B. Infiltrate Academia
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In 1978, William Simon, Nixon’s Secretary of the Treasury and then director of the Olin Foundation, urged Movement donors to:
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cease the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities whose departments of economy, government, politics and history are hostile to capitalism, (and to send) multimillions to the aid of liberty … (to fund) scholars, social scientists, writers and journalists who understand the relationship between political and economic liberty. [5]
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His advice followed the earlier warning in the Powell Manifesto that depicted Academia (higher education) as a liberal bastion that needed a strong dose of conservatism. Donors heeded the advice. For decades now, all major Movement donors to colleges are very selective in their grants.
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There are many techniques for advancing the cause in academia. Some techniques are aimed at selecting and preparing the next generation of Movement leaders; others at adding conservative courses, programs, and faculty to schools or at supporting conservative faculty; others at establishing independent institutes at universities that function much like think tanks but convey the aura of academia and objectivity. More recently, efforts are being made to influence primary and secondary education. Here are a few examples of these techniques.
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Prepare the Next Generation
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Almost from its start, the Movement has focused on selecting talented young people and preparing them as future leaders. The most common practice seems to identify young people who are committed to conservatism and provide them with scholarships, summer internships, mentoring, networks with other students, and jobs upon graduation.
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• Institute for Educational Affairs (IEA). “In 1978, former Treasury Secretary William Simon and neoconservative ideologue Irving Kristol founded IEA. Its purpose is to seek out promising Ph.D. candidates and undergraduate leaders, help them establish themselves through grants and fellowships, and then help them get jobs with activist organizations, research projects, student publications, federal agencies, or leading periodicals.” [6] Appendix below expands upon this example.
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• Liberty Fund. “[About 1978, James Buchanan, a George Mason University professor, Nobel Prize winner, and Charles Koch’s favorite economist] was hired by yet another Koch-backed organization, the Liberty Fund, to run what became annual summer conferences for the recruitment and training of young talent [defined as under age thirty-five, later raised to forty] in the social sciences. In essence, he was being asked to identify and begin preparing the intellectual cadre that Koch now believed was so critical to the cause’s success.” [7]
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• Law Scholarships. In 2016, the Libertarian-oriented Law School at George Mason University received $30 million, $10 million from the Koch Foundation and $20 from a single anonymous source that turned out to be Leonard Leo, executive vice-president of the Federalist Society. The money, which led to renaming the GMU law school the Antonin Scalia Law School, will be used entirely for law school scholarships. Emails between Leo and the Law School revealed the extent of influence Leo had on the use of the money; e.g. the faculty to be hired and the students to receive scholarships. [8]
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• UNCF/Koch Scholars. In conjunction with the United Negro College Fund, the Charles Koch Foundation has established 200 UNCF/Koch Scholarships for minority students. “The program will support students interested in innovation, entrepreneurship, or economics…. The competitive program offers a general scholarship as well as access to networking and mentoring opportunities.” (UNCF website)” [9]
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Create Institutes
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A key approach to universities is to establish independent institutes. This allows donors or the institute directors they select to hire staff without having to go through university faculty selection processes and to determine institute policies without interference from the university.
• The Olin Foundation gave over $6 million to Harvard between 1993 and 1997 to establish conservative programs in law, business, economics, and strategic studies.
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• The Koch Brothers supported several independent institutes – the Mercatus Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Center for Law and Economics -- that were eventually consolidated at George Mason University in 1997 through a $10 million Koch grant.
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• The Hoover Institution. The Hoover Institution, originally was a library founded at Stanford University by Herbert Hoover before he became president. Today it is a conservative think tank and independent unit (with its own board of directors) within Stanford University. Its 2018 budget was $70 million. [10]
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Concerns have been raised about conditions that accompany grants to colleges that undermine academic freedom and politicize universities. Recent concerns about Koch gifts have led to a resistance movement (“Un-Koch My Campus”) and to many universities rejecting Koch funds. The Charles Koch Foundation, however, claims that the publicity from this resistance has led to an increase in applications for Koch funding and, in turn, an increase in it grants to higher education from $34 million in 2015 to $50 million in 2016.[11]
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Here is an example of conditions being placed on donations to colleges:
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• BB&T Moral Foundations Grants. BB&T, a foundation associated with BB&T Bank headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, gave “Moral Foundations” grants averaging $1 million to at least 63 colleges between 2002 and 2012. Most recipients were very small colleges and 39 were in North Carolina.
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Wake Forest professor, Douglas Beets studied the grants and found: “grants typically stipulate that the institution [for a period of 10 years] will offer a course featuring Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged… and provide even unenrolled students with a free copy of the book; in some cases, Atlas Shrugged is the only book on the course syllabus.” Many grants require the creation of an Ayn Rand reading room. Some grants “funded faculty chairs or other professorships, such as the “BB&T Distinguished Professor of Capitalism” created in a 2011 grant to Western Carolina University. Most recipients had also received Koch grants, and both Koch and BB&T support the Ayn Rand Institute.”
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Provide Supportive Networks
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Movement funds support an array of networks that connect and support conservative faculty and students. Here are several examples:
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• Early Movement Donors. Early donors identified by Saloma were instrumental in the creation and maintenance of networks such as: The National Association of Scholars, a network of conservative professors to combat liberal bias; The Institute for Educational Affairs (IEA), established to help conservative PhD candidates get established through grants and fellowships; and The Madison Center for Educational Affairs which financed and otherwise assisted conservative student newspapers and created a network of them (in 1990, IEA merged with the Madison Center)
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• The Leadership Institute (LI). LI is a training center for activists with a major emphasis in training college youth. Formed in 1979, its budget has ballooned since 2000 to $15 million in expenditures and has a large staff of nearly 100. It claims to have trained over 200,000 conservatives since its inception (Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, and many congressmen among them); and it claims to have over 1800 campus groups with a regional field staff prepared to provide campus speakers, training, seminars, etc. as well as a website devoted to being a watchdog of the nation’s higher education system (watching for liberal activity and abuses). It is an affiliate of the State Policy Network.
• Institute for Educational Affairs. Starting in 1980, the IEA gave money to start conservative student publications at 15 major universities (Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford, and others). Some of these publications like the Harvard Salient and Dartmouth Review continue to this day.
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• Turning Point USA (TPUSA). TPUSA (founded in 2012 and with a budget of about $7 million) is a national organization for college students. It claims a “presence” at 1300 colleges -- a “more organized presence than all of the left-wing campus groups combined.” Its founder was Foster Friess, a billionaire from Wyoming who supports conservative and evangelical causes.
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• Young America’s Foundation (YAF). YAF is a national organization with both high school and college chapters that supports conservative students in a variety of ways. The longstanding William F. Buckley organization, Young Americans for Freedom (the original YAF), became a program within the Foundation in 2011. The National Journalism Center is another of its programs. Founded in 1969, YAF now has an annual budget of about $20 million (2016).
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Expand into Primary-Secondary Schools
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Numbers of major Movement funders such as the DeVos Foundation and the Bradley Foundation support multiple private and religious secondary schools. Their contributions likely have some influence on course content. There are various other efforts that either assist secondary (and sometimes primary) schools or try to alter curriculum in public schools. Among these efforts are projects to assess the liberal content of textbooks; to produce and disseminate conservative textbooks; and to provide curricula or online courses for public, private, and home schools on subjects like government, civics, economics, American history, and the history of Western civilization.
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A number of college programs are initiating projects that reach out to high schoolers. Here are two examples.
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• The Bradley Foundation. In 2018, the Bradley Foundation gave $275,000 to Lakeland University in Wisconsin to move its Office for the Advancement of Free Enterprise Education (OAFEE) to the University’s Milwaukee Campus and to expand its programs. As reported by the BizTimes (the Milwaukee Business News), there will be four new programs including three that focus on high school:
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 Economics for Heroes: A series of two-day, face-to-face, web-supported seminars on personal finance and free-market economics for military veterans, police officers, firefighters and their spouses.
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 Economics for Opinion Leaders: A series of two-day, face-to-face, web-supported seminars on free-market economics for Wisconsin opinion leaders, including teachers, clergy, managers of nonprofits, elected officials and media professionals, to increase their understanding of free enterprise.
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 Entrepreneurship Economics Community Partnership: A five-day, face-to-face, on-campus education program for high school juniors and seniors to increase their understanding of free enterprise and stimulate their interest in starting a business and working in the private sector.
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 Economic Episodes in American History: Workshops for Wisconsin high school U.S. History teachers on integrating economics into their history curriculum.[13]
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The director of this American History component is Mark Schug, a retired professor at Lakeland University selected by the Bradley Foundation to direct this project. He is an example of focused grantor giving, having received 14 grants from Bradley between 2000 and 2007 while he was a Lakeland professor. The grants ranged from $10,000 to $300,000. [14]
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• Turning Point’s Leadership Summit. One activity of Turning Point USA (above) is a 4-day high school leadership summit. Among scheduled presenters in 2018 were Betsy DeVos, Mark Cuban, Donald Trump, Jr., Jeff Sessions, Nikki Haley, and Rand Paul. Apparently 700 young people attended the four-day event.
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• Bradley High School Scholarships. The Caroline D. Bradley Scholarship Program gives 4-year high school scholarships to about 30 gifted students per year.
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• BB& T Economic Literacy Outreach. After ending its Moral Foundations program (see above), BB&T has focused its charitable work on “economic literacy” and claims, as of 2016, to have “empowered 300,000 students with economic literacy” and to be involved in at least 1000 high schools in the country. [15]
Appendix
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Comparison of Activist and Conventional Think Tanks
All think tanks (TTs) on the right have adopted the Activist Model of the Heritage Foundation and used it for decades. In contrast, most non-Movement TTs – Ford, Rockefeller, etc. -- retain the old model, so it is important to sharply identify the differences. In 2005, researcher Andrew Rich specified key contrasts between activist and conventional TTs, and I borrow much of what follows from him.[16]
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• Activist TTs are ideological and partisan rather than non-partisan. They pursue a political ideology, and align closely with the Right Wing of the Republican Party or with Libertarians.
• Researchers at Activist TTs are purposely biased rather than objective. They seek and shape evidence that supports positions consistent with their ideology. In contrast, conventional TT researchers are committed to objective processes that seek a more complete and objective reality.
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• Activist TTs often focus on multiple issues rather than a single issue. Movement TTs often focus on multiple issues and therefore are able to shift resources quickly to address policy issues and proposals as they become politically ripe.[17] In contrast, many nonpartisan and progressive TTs focus on a single issue such as health care, women’s rights, or poverty, and are flexible only within their specialization.
• Activist TTs fervently market their research and policy proposals. Conservative TTs see policy research, analysis, and proposal development as only half of their mission. The other half is marketing their findings and proposals, and they allocate large portions of their budgets to advertising and lobbying to accomplish this. Rich’s research showed, for example, that in 2004 Brookings (a major nonpartisan TT) spent 3% of its budget on policy promotion while the Heritage Foundation (the leading conservative TT) spent 20% on it.
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• Funders of activist TTs fund operations, not just projects. Most funders of nonprofits prefer to fund projects rather than general operating expenses. Their grantees often struggle to cover basic administration costs. Conservative funders tend to support organizations, not just projects. An example from Rich is that, iIn 2000, the “generally progressive Mott Foundation” gave TTs $7.45 million while the rightwing Bradley Foundation gave TTs $6.53 million. However, only about 10% of the Mott grant went to TT operating expenses while nearly 60% of the Bradley grant did.
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Rich noted that foundations that fund traditional TTs are generally much richer than those funding conservative ones, however he also found that:
• Think tanks are a top priority of all conservative funders but not of nonpartisan funders. Among the top 12 conservative funders, Rich found that TTs were the top or second priority for all while among the 15 top nonpartisan funders, only two included TTs among their top five priorities, and the two largest, the Gates Foundation and Lilly Endowment, had TTs as their 25th and 19th priorities, respectively.
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• Activist TTs primarily promote Movement ideology and advocacy while most conventional TTs primarily seek and fund solutions to social problems. The Gates Foundation, for example, addresses world health and women’s empowerment. Grants go to categories such as “Infectious Disease control,” “Malaria Control,” and “Basic Sanitation” and its favorite recipients are entities such as The World Health Organization, Medicines for Malaria Venture, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Contrast these with the categories and examples of favorite recipients of the Bradley Foundation referred to above.
Appendix
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Example of A Typical State Think Tank:
The Show Me Institute (SMI) [18]
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SMI, a Missouri-based TT, was founded in 2005 by billionaire right-wing political donor and Missourian, Rex Sinquefield. In 2017 it had expenditures of $2.0 million, a staff of 21 (most with impeccable conservative credentials). Its IRS 990 (2016) reported that CEO Brenda Talent was paid about $190,000 for a 25-hour work week.
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According to its website:
The Show-Me Institute is the only think tank in Missouri dedicated to promoting free markets and individual liberty. Our vision is for Missouri to be a place where entrepreneurs are free to pursue their dreams, where parents are free to direct the education and upbringing of their children, where the principles that guide state policy are those which enhance freedom, and where all Missourians are free from dependence on government. Our mission is to advance liberty with individual responsibility by promoting market solutions for Missouri public policy.
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SMI’s motto -- “Where liberty comes first” – encapsulates its ideology. Among many indicators of its politics is its 2017 Annual Report entitled, “Socialism: A failed idea that refuses to die,” in which it ties modern American progressives to Leninist Communism and provides a series of articles that describe Socialism’s failures. The Report demonstrates the socialist hold on America by quoting Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, Mark Zuckerberg, New York City Mayor deBlasio, and Malcolm X as socialists in contrast with Ronald Reagan,
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In explaining the reason for choosing socialism as its Report topic, SMI-CEO Brenda Talent said: “… at both the high school and university levels, the true history of socialism simply isn’t being taught. Meanwhile, the socialist critique of free-market capitalism as the alleged source of income inequality and social injustice continues to be aired as if it were the unquestioned truth. But it isn’t the truth.”
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Sourcewatch (an entity that tracks the activities of right-wing TTs) states that SMI “describes itself as a nonpartisan ‘research and educational institute dedicated to improving the quality of life for all citizens of Missouri.’ However, it is led by wealthy conservatives and Republican campaign staffers.” In a special report, Progress Missouri (a liberal group that keeps an eye on right-wing, state activity) noted that “SMI is not (a) non-partisan think tank … but rather a ‘belief tank’ pushing a right-wing agenda in line with [ALEC and AFP]…. (I)ts output intentionally supports Sinquefield's larger goals of enacting regressive tax policy in Missouri and other states, privatizing public education and removing local control of local schools with statewide evaluation and hiring practices."
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SMI has a total of 46 Staff, Board, and Fellows-Scholars (one-quarter women and all white except for 2 African American men). Its major activities include the production of over 1000 articles by over 200 authors which are disseminated in SMI and external publications and blogs. All articles seem to promote the wonders of free markets or to denigrate government. SMI produces Show-Me Minutes (currently 9 radio ads on topics such as liberty, education reform, and free markets), a monthly newsletter, frequent legislative testimony, and educational events.
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Endnotes
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[1] Sally Covington (1997). Moving a Public Policy Agenda: The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations (National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy), at: http://files.pfaw.org/pfaw_files/buyingamovement.pdf and https://www.ncrp.org/publication/moving-public-policy-agenda.
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[2] The Josiah Bartlett Center is the SPN affiliate in New Hampshire.
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[3] From Cato Foundation website at: https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/annual_report-2015.pdf, p. 7.
[4] From Cato Foundation website at: https://www.cato.org/cato-university
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[5] William E. Simon (1978), A time for truth, pages 230-231.
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[6] Sally Covington, 1997. Supra.
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[7] Nancy MacLean (2017). Democracy in Chains, at page 145.
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[8] Alex Kotch (for Truthout) (2018). Right-Wing federalist society shaped hiring and admissions at George Mason University, emails show, at: https://truthout.org/articles/right-wing-federalist-society-shaped-hiring-and-admissions-at-george-mason-university-emails-show/
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[9] Koch Foundation Website, at: https://www.charleskochfoundation.org/news/uncfkoch-scholars-program-applications-open/
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[10] Hoover Institution, Annual Report (2018), page 58, at: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/2018ar_hoover_small_web.pdf
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[11] Matthew Barakat (2018). Amid skepticism, Koch Foundation increases higher ed giving. Associate Press at: https://www.apnews.com/8d949388e60a44cfbe5cb7bf29c30161
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[12] See: Colleen Flaherty (2015). Banking on the Curriculum, Inside Higher Ed, At: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/16/new-paper-details-extent-bbt-banks-ayn-rand-inspired-grant-program
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[13] Lauren Anderson (2018). Lakeland University’s Milwaukee center to house free enterprise education office at: https://www.biztimes.com/2018/ideas/educationworkforce-development/lakeland-universitys-milwaukee-center-to-house-free-enterprise-education-office/.
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[14] Mark Schug Curriculum Vitae at: http://www.markschug.com/uploads/1/1/2/4/11249861/mark-schug-vita.pdf (accessed 1-16-19)
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[15] BB&T Financial Foundations: at: file:///C:/Users/Paul/Downloads/BBT%20Inforgraphic__National_Aug%202016%20FINAL%20(1).pdf
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[16] Andrew Rich. 2005. War of Ideas: Why mainstream and liberal foundations and the think tanks they support are losing in the war of ideas in American politics. In Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring, 2005. At: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/war_of_ideas. Full article is at: https://ssir.org/images/articles/2005SP_feature_rich.pdf.
[17] Many public policy analysts have noted that a major policy change tends to occur only during a brief period when a window of opportunity arises – a moment when a problem moves to the front burners, one or more “solutions” are available, and the politics are right. Such windows open and shut quickly.
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[18] SMI information is from: the SMI website at: https://showmeinstitute.org/; SMI’s 2016 Form 990; Sourcewatch at: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Show-Me_Institute; and,
Progress Missouri, What Missourians Need to Know About the Show-Me Institute, at: https://www.scribd.com/document/183669532/What-Missourians-Need-to-Know-About-the-Show-Me-Institute#
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