How Washington thinktanks transformed N.Z.'s poltical landscape cont:-

[janice]

> Right Thinking, Big Grants, and Long-term Strategy, continued-:

> Simon wrote: "Funds generated by
> business must rush by the multimillions to the aid of liberty ... to
> funnel desperately needed funds to scholars, social scientists,
> writers, and journalists who understand the relationship between
> political and economic liberty." He called on the business community
> to "cease the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities
> whose departments of economy, government, politics, and history are
> hostile to capitalism," and to move funds from "the media which
> serve as megaphones for anti-capitalist opinion" to those more
> "pro-freedom" and "pro-business." Since then, a variety of
> investigative reporters and scholars have documented the hundreds of
> millions of dollars that conservative donors have invested to
> reshape the nation's political conversation and policy priorities.
> One such report, published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the
> early 1980s, documented the millions of dollars that Richard Mellon
> Scaife, heir to the Mellon oil fortune and chair of the Sarah Scaife
> Foundation, alone has invested in right-wing policy institutions.
> Dubbed the "financier of the right," Scaife was found to have made
> substantial investments over the 1970s and early 1980s in more than
> 100 "ideological organizations." A more scholarly analysis of
> right-wing funding found that 10 conservative institutions received
> a total of $88 million between 1977 and 1986 to finance their policy
> activities. Sociologist Michael Patrick Allen found that the 12
> "sustaining" foundations increased their support of these ten policy
> institutions by over 330 percent during the 10-year period studied.
> These and other data demonstrate a long-term pattern of politically
> motivated investment by conservative donors. The role that
> conservative foundations have played in reinvigorating the
> intellectual, institutional and leadership base of US conservatism
> does not have a significant parallel in the philanthropic
> mainstream. While conservative donors see themselves as part of a
> larger movement to defeat "big government liberalism," and fund
> accordingly, mainstream foundations operate within a tradition of
> American pragmatism by adopting a problem-oriented, field-specific
> approach to social improvement. The ideological commitments of
> conservative foundations and the caution of mainstream ones have
> exacerbated, if not created, a gap in the resources available to
> multi-issue public policy institutions working on the right and left
> of the policy spectrum. Consider, for example, that the combined
> revenue base of such conservative multi-issue policy institutions as
> the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Free
> Congress Research and Education Foundation, the Cato Institute, and
> Citizens for a Sound Economy exceeded $77 million in 1995. In strong
> contrast, the roughly equivalent progressive (e.g., multi-issue,
> left-of-center groups whose work focuses on domestic policies at the
> national level) the Institute for Policy Studies, the Economic
> Policy Institute, Citizens for Tax Justice, and the Center for
> Budget and Policy Priorities had only $9 million at their collective
> disposal in 1995. Adding the Twentieth Century Fund, the Center for
> the Study of Social Policy, OMB Watch, and the Center for Community
> Change would push the combined 1995 budgets of these eight
> organizations to $18.6 million, still less than a quarter of the top
> five conservative groups. While revenue base may be only one factor
> underlying (or contributing to) organizational capacity and
> effectiveness, surely it is a critical one. RESHAPING THE
> INSTITUTIONAL LANDSCAPE The long-term investments that conservative
> foundations have made in building a "counter-establishment" of
> research, advocacy, media, legal, philanthropic, and religious
> sector organizations have paid off handsomely. These donors have
> altered the mix of organizations actively seeking to influence
> public policy in Washington, DC, and in state capitals. In doing so,
> they have reshaped the institutional landscape of US politics and
> policymaking profoundly. Their long-term support of policy
> institutions has occurred at a time of significant change in
> American politics change that has facilitated the emergence of
> groups like the Heritage Foundation as particularly influential
> policy actors. Among the most important of these changes are the
> long-term decline in electoral participation, the deepening class
> skew to US voting patterns, the transformation of political parties
> into top-down fundraising vehicles, the growing role of money in
> politics, the rising political importance of the media, and the
> decline of institutions (such as unions and political parties) that
> once played a stronger balancing role in setting national, state,
> and local priorities. Over time, these changes interacted in a way
> that reduced opportunities for low income people to exercise
> influence while enlarging such opportunities for upper-income
> constituencies. Philanthropic money thus converged with political
> opportunity in a way that has not only pushed the debate to the
> right but also exacerbated America's "participatory inequality."
> Beyond the groups previously mentioned, the institutional actors
> receiving significant support over the 1992-1994 period include
> media groups, legal organizations, state-level advcates, and
> religious sector organizations. The following list represents a
> sampling of grantee institutions and activities. * American
> Spectator Educational Foundation received grants totaling $1.7
> million with more than $600,000 to expand editorial staff and
> reporting at The American Spectator, $515,000 in flexible general
> operating s upport, and $485,000 in special project funding. Its
> subscription base lunged from 38,000 in 1992 to 335,000 today. *
> National Affairs is the funding vehicle which handled grants for The
> Public Interest and The National Interest ($1.9 million), and the
> Foundation for Cultural Review * Commentary magazine got a tidy $1
> million. * American Studies Center. Grants worth $410,000 helped ASC
> spread "Radio America" to 2,000 radio stations across the country,
> produce conservative programming, and support two conservative daily
> radio shows the "Alan Keyes Show" and "Dateline Washington." *Firing
> Line (William F. Buckley), Think Tank (Ben Wattenberg), Peggy Noonan
> on Values, and other conservative public television public affairs
> programs, got $3.2 million. * Center for the Study of Popular
> Culture (cspc), Accuracy in Media, the Center for Media and Public
> Affairs, the Center for Science, Technology and Media, the Media
> Research Center, the Media Institute, and others were granted $5.2
> million "to perpetuate the myth of a liberal bias in mainstream
> media reportage," with particular criticism leveled against the The
> right-wing approach to social problems has boosted the already
> astronomical US prison population. * Public Broadcasting Service.
> With seed money from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, cspc launched the
> Media Integrity Project in 1987 to attack PBS for "left-wing bias."
> Other critics, including Laurence Jarvik, a former Bradley Research
> Scholar at the Heritage Foundation and a current fellow at the
> Capital Research Center, have called for cutting funds or
> privatizing PBS. Accuracy in Media criticized PBS for "blatantly
> pro-Communist propaganda." The efforts of these media grantees have
> made right-wing issues and views increasingly respectable and have
> pressured major media to become more responsive. Through
> scandalmongering and issue emphasis, conservative media outlets help
> to shape the news agenda for more established media while organized
> attacks on public television have pushed PBS to augment already
> substantial conservative public affairs programming. The result is
> an even further narrowing of viewpoint. As the former dean of the
> Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California,
> Berkeley, Ben Bagdikian observes, "what gets reported enters the
> public agenda. What is not reported may not be lost forever, but it
> may be lost at a time when it is most needed." * The Institute for
> Justice (IJ), the top grant recipient, received $2.9 million in 24
> separate grants to support litigation, training, and outreach
> activities focused on four areas: private property rights, economic
> liberty, school choice, and the First Amendment. The IJ's budget
> increased to more than $1 million less than a year after it was
> founded in 1991 and is presently $2.3 million. * The Center for
> Individual Rights and the Washington Legal Foundation were also
> heavily funded to reverse affirmative action programs of the federal
> government and in higher education. These foundations not only
> emphasized litigation, but worked to nurture and coordinate a
> growing network of like-minded law students, alumni, and attorneys.
> The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, founded by
> two Yale law school students in the early 1980s, received $1.6
> million in grants to support its efforts to transform the legal
> profession, which it sees as "currently dominated by a form of
> liberal orthodoxy [advocating] a centralized and uniform society."
> According to the Federalist Society_s 1995 annual report, its
> Student Division has more than 4,900 law student members in more
> than 140 law schools across the country, up from 2,137 members in
> 1989. Its Lawyers Division boasts more than 15,000 attorneys and
> legal professionals and more than 50 active chapters. The Society
> also publishes The Federalist (circulation 57,000), and other legal
> monographs and reports, and sponsors a Continuing Legal Education
> program. *The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, heavily funded
> since its inception by the Bradley Foundation, has pushed to shape
> state education and welfare policy in accordance with key
> conservative principles. * The Pacific Institute for Public Policy
> Research aggressively worked for California's Proposition 209, the
> ballot initiative to eliminate that state's affirmative action
> program. * The Heartland Institute publishes Intellectual
> Ammunition, a glossy, 25-page journal featuring condensed versions
> of policy statements and position papers of most of the think tanks
> and advocacy organizations to which the 12 foundations directed
> grants between 1992 and 1994. The May/June 1996 issue introduced
> PolicyFax, a regular insert described by Illinois state senator
> Chris Lauzen as: a revolutionary public policy fax-on-demand
> research service that enables you to receive, by fax, the full text
> of thousands of documents from more than one hundred of the nation's
> leading think tanks, publications, and trade associations. PolicyFax
> is easy to use, and it's free for elected officials and journalists.
> The 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week service features topics from
> crime to the economy to welfare, including South Carolinians Have
> Nothing to Worry about from Concealed Handguns; Four Steps to
> Reforming Superfund, Medical Savings Accounts: The Right Way to
> Reform Health Care: Benefits of the Flat Tax; and Effective
> Compassion. * The American Legislative Exchange Council (alec) and
> the newer State Policy Network. Provide technical assistance,
> develop model legislation, and report about communications
> activities and conferences. Alec, well-funded by private family
> foundations and corporate contributors, is a powerful and growing
> membership organization, with almost 26,000 state legislators more
> than one-third of the nation's total. The organization, which has a
> staff of 30, responds to 700 information requests each month, and
> has developed more than 150 pieces of model legislation ranging from
> education to tax policy. It maintains legislative task forces on
> every important state policy issue, including education, health
> care, tax and fiscal policy, and criminal justice. The Institute on
> Religion and Democracy (IRD), founded in 1982, believes that "the
> National and World Councils of churches are theologically and
> politically flawed." Its early focus was international, supporting
> US foreign policy in Central America during the Reagan years. Today,
> IRD publishes Faith and Freedom and monitors "mainliners and other
> Christian groups that often claim to speak for millions but really
> represent only an extreme few." * The Institute on Religion and
> Public Life and the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and
> Liberty both seek to influence the religious community through
> seminars, colloquia, sponsored research, book projects, newsletters,
> and journals. They work to instill a stronger appreciation of the
> morality of capitalism in the US and around the world. To counter
> "the clergy's disturbing bias against the business community and
> free enterprise," the Acton Institute runs three-day conferences for
> seminarians and divinity students to "introduce them to the moral
> and ethical basis of free market economies." In 1995, it also
> launched a national welfare reform initiative to help shape national
> policy debates, believing that "churches and private individuals and
> organizations, not the government, can best help change people's
> lives." Other national think tanks, both large and small, have
> decried the national moral decay and blamed teenage pregnancy,
> single-parent families, crime, and drugs on ceaseless expansion of
> the Leviathan state. This linkage between morality, poverty, and
> government spending consistently propagated by a wide range of
> conservative grantees has contributed to the movement's overall
> political coherence, helping unite religious right activists and the
> often more secular fiscal conservatives. When moral failure is
> invoked to explain the plight of the poor, both can unite around a
> policy agenda stressing market discipline and the replacement of
> government social programs with personal responsibility. As James
> Morone noted, "Once the lines are drawn [between a righteous us and
> a malevolent them], one can forget about social justice, progressive
> thinking, or universal programs. Instead the overarching policy
> question becomes, "How do we protect ourselves and our children?
> Never mind health care build more jails." Conservative foundations
> bring to their grant making programs a clear vision and strong
> political intention, funding to promote a social and public policy
> agenda fundamentally based on unregulated markets and limited
> government. They have created and anchored key institutions,
> concentrating their resources to sustain and expand a critical mass
> of advocacy, litigation and public policy groups working on the
> right of US politics and culture. The results have been cumulative
> and impressive. Scholars develop the intellectual basis for
> conservative social perspectives and policy views. Conservative
> think tanks and advocacy organizations produce hundreds of policy
> reports, briefings, action alerts, monographs and analyses on
> matters both broad and specific, from national fiscal policy to
> regulatory reform. Business-sponsored law firms pursue strategic
> litigation to advance conservative legal principles. Conservative
> media outlets profile policy approaches and proposals to inform and
> mobilize opinion while attacking the political and journalistic
> mainstream. And fellowships, internships, and leadership training
> programs create an effective pipeline for moving young conservatives
> into the fields of law, economics, government and journalism.
> Further leveraging their investments, the 12 foundations have
> targeted their grants to support activities and projects intended to
> bring conservative scholars, policy analysts, grassroots leaders,
> and public officials into frequent contact with each other. Think
> tank leaders attend meetings to learn how to use new information and
> communication technologies for greater public opinion and policy
> impact. Grassroots activists are linked by satellite to training
> conferences focusing on how best to frame issues for public
> consumption. Students are subsidized to participate in public policy
> programs that teach them the essentials of free market economics and
> place them in think tanks, advocacy organizations, law firms and
> media outlets for further training. And organizations and projects
> are supported to build linkages and communication between grant
> making institutions and grant recipients. In funding a policy
> movement rather than specific program areas, these 12 foundations
> distinguish themselves from the philanthropic mainstream, which has
> long maintained a pragmatic, non-ideological and field-specific
> approach to the grant making enterprise. The success of conservative
> foundation grantees in developing and marketing both general
> principles and specific policy proposals has also been enhanced by
> the institutional weaknesses of those who would place alternative
> policies on the table for political debate. The political
> implications and policy consequences of this imbalance have been
> profound. First, the heavy investments that conservative foundations
> have made in New Right policy and advocacy institutions have helped
> to create a supply-side version of American politics in which
> certain policy ideas find their way into the political marketplace
> regardless of existing citizen demand. Second, the multiplication of
> institutional voices marketing conservative policies and policy
> approaches has resulted in policy decisions with disastrous and
> disproportionate consequences for low income constituencies. The
> strategic grant making of the 12 foundations offers valuable lessons
> for those grant makers and others interested in national and state
> public policy matters. Seven stand out in particular. They include:
> * Understanding the importance of ideology and overarching
> frameworks; * Building strong institutions by providing ample
> general operating support and awarding large, multi-year grants; *
> Maintaining a national policy focus; * Recognizing the importance of
> marketing, media, and persuasive communications; * Creating and
> cultivating public intellectuals and policy leaders; * Funding
> comprehensively for social transformation and policy change by
> awarding grants across sectors, blending research and advocacy,
> supporting litigation, and encouraging the public participation of
> core constituencies; and * Taking a long-haul approach. While each
> of these lessons alone has funding power and significance, it is the
> combination that has given conservative philanthropy its vast clout.
> http://MediaFilter.org/MFF/CAQ_Contents.html Covert Action
> Quarterly, Winter 1998.