Think Tanks

Right-Wing Washington PR Team Retires

"This month marks the end of one of the most successful and respected conservative PR teams in Washington, as Herb Berkowitz and Hugh Newton retire from the Heritage Foundation," PR Week writes. "Heritage, a conservative think tank founded 25 years ago, became one of the foremost purveyors of right-wing public policy in Washington with Berkowitz and Newton at the PR helm. The two are credited with helping win credibility for conservative ideals among often-hostile liberal journalists in Washington."

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Bashing The Traitorous, Peacenik News Media

Does it seem that the corporate news media is filled with traitorous peaceniks who are coddling Saddam, bashing Bush, and opposing a first-strike attack on Iraq? No? Well, maybe you just aren't paying attention like target="_blank"> Brent Bozell III and his Media Research Center. The Center sends

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Privatization, Before and After

Thanks to the internet archives, we can see what the Cato Institute's "Project on Social Security Privatization" looked like last year and compare that with its new look, now that the stock market crash has reminded the public about the reality of privatization. In the Orwellian new version, all references to "privatization" have been airbrushed out of history and replaced with the word "choice."

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Bush's "Blueprint for US Global Domination"

"A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001. The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff).

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US Think Tanks Make Foreign Policy

Brian Whitaker profiles the "cosy and cleverly-constructed network of Middle East 'experts'" who "pop up as talking heads on US television, in newspapers, books, testimonies to congressional committees, and at lunchtime gatherings in Washington." Players include the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute and the Middle East Forum.

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The Rah-Rah Boys

Dot-com CEOs, day traders and other leading icons of the roaring 1990s are passing from the scene along with the economic bubble that created them, but Baffler editor Tom Frank notes that "one group remains untouched: the public intellectuals of the bull market. The writers of Dow-worshipping books and commentators who handed down daring pronunciamentos from the silicon heights are still cruising from one posh gig to the next.

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Selective MEMRI

"For some time now, I have been receiving small gifts from a generous institute in the United States. The gifts are high-quality translations of articles from Arabic newspapers which the institute sends to me by email every few days, entirely free-of-charge," the Guardian's Brian Whitaker writes. The emails come from the Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

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Rethinking the Think Tanks

Curtis Moore looks at corporate-funded think tanks like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy whose anti-environmental messages permeate the news. "Fashioning themselves after the very university research centers they deplore (or old-style "think tanks" that are only a step removed from universities), these groups have neither the neutrality nor the expertise of their academic counterparts," Moore writes.

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$70 Million For Your Thoughts

"You get huge leverage for your dollars," Roger Hertog told fellow wealthy donors at a recent national conference for right-wing think tanks including the Heritage Foundation and the Cato, Manhattan, and American Enterprise institutes. Hertog pointed out that a mere $70 million in donations has helped conservatives reframe the national debate on topics including antitrust law, Social Security privatization, welfare and affirmative action. Robert Kuttner, who attended the event as a "token liberal," was impressed by the right's realization that ideas matter in politics.

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Did Microsoft Pay for Open-Source Scare?

The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (ADTI), a libertarian think tank that gets part of its funding from Microsoft, has issued a new white paper that seems calculated to tell computer buyers, "If you are not with Microsoft, you are with the terrorists." Some government agencies, including the U.S.

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