When will the Democratic Party address the think tank "problem"?

[SoCalDem]

As per usual, Washington Journal just finished its daily program, and as I changed the channel to c-span2, what do I find (again) but AEI having yet another of their "programs".

Cato...Heritage...AEI... and so many others seem to be always available and ON TV with their right wing agenda. C-span covers almost everything they do,and then re-runs it forever.

This is one of the places that so many of the wackos who call in . get their half-baked ideas.

I googled Liberal think tanks, and got mostly European entities.. This link has most of the think tanks in DC (and elsewhere in the US) listed, but even a brief glance at them proves that we are seriously at risk here.

The think tanks pretend that they are there to "counter" the liberal academic community, but that is ludicrous.. Academic liberals do teach kids, but there are not hoards of
liberally educated 21 year olds out there affecting policy.. The professors (the ones who are still liberal) write books that few people read.. they do research and present information for hearings and committees, but in a republican dominated congress, their ideas get the short shrift..

The right wing think tanks are busily planning for the future, and their version is not "kinder and gentler"..

Podesta has supposedly formed a think tank, but either they don't have many thinkers, or they are lacking some PR people to get their message out..

We need to write to c-span (I did) and let them know that we are TIRED of seeing only Cato..Heritage..AEI and the other right wing groups that they video.. We NEED to see both sides;now more than ever.

[central scrutinizer]

1. think tank is a misnomer

These are public relations firms, nothing else. They are trying to influence policy by coming up with doctored statistics, made up facts, and catchy phrases. They are really just a bunch of PR flacks and spin doctors, but it sounds so much more prestigious to call yourself a Senior Fellow of an "Institute"

[tom_paine]

7. You are still being too kind. They are Propaganda Mills

And you are correct about them gaining legitimacy from hype and "looking legitimate".

But they are the equivalent of the Nazi Brain Trust. They think up new and exciting ways to sell us The Gassing of Jews as a Good Thing.

Ok, ok, Heritage only sells us Bootlicking Empire and Overlord Aristicracy, but how will they serve George P. Caligula and what will they be selling when he is on the Throne of Amerika in 2030?

[ShaneGR]

2. SoCal, they are already starting/started

John Podesta has a great one that's been functioning for about 4 months. Check it out at:

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=8473


Sign up for the daily email, here's the text of the one they sent today (They're all RICH in detail)

CLAIM vs. FACT: The President on Meet the Press

by David Sirota, Christy Harvey and Judd Legum

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A permanent link to this Progress Report can be found in the archives.

February 8, 2004
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CLAIM vs. FACT
Pre-War Assertions
CLAIM vs. FACT
Pre-War Assertions
CLAIM vs. FACT
Investigative Commissions
CLAIM vs. FACT
Economy/Budgetary Priorities
CLAIM vs. FACT
Personal Military Records

Statement of John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress

"President Bush wouldn't have agreed to an hour long network interview without a good reason and today he had one: in the span of a week he's faced the dual challenges of a loss of credibility on the war in Iraq and his management of the economy.

"His statement this morning that he would cut the deficit in half is simply laughable. Analyses by independent organizations like Goldman Sachs, the Concord Coalition, the Committee for Economic Development, and Decision Economics all project deficits of about $5 trillion over the next decade, even assuming a return to strong growth.

"The President's statement that there is ‘good momentum' on the job creation front is dishonest: while we are averaging 72,000 new private sector jobs created per month, at that pace, it would not be until May 2007 that this President would have created his first net job. President Bush is well on his way to having the worst job creation record since the Great Depression. His bragging today only served to reinforce his lack of credibility on managing the nation's economy.

"And what the President referred to as a 'word contest' regarding the threat from Iraq is, in fact, his attempt to change the rationale for going to war and rewrite the history of what has occurred. His argument today that Iraq had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction and pass them into the hands of shadowy terrorist networks is inconsistent with the intelligence provided to him.

"President Bush sought to restore his credibility today and he clearly failed to do so."

CLAIM vs. FACT
Pre-War Assertions

PRE-WAR INTELLIGENCE HYPE

CLAIM: "I expected to find the weapons I based my decision on the best intelligence possible...The evidence I had was the best possible evidence that he had a weapon."

FACT - WHITE HOUSE REPEATEDY WARNED BY INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY: The Washington Post reported this weekend, "President Bush and his top advisers ignored many of the caveats and qualifiers included in the classified report on Saddam Hussein's weapons." Specifically, the President made unequivocal statements that Iraq "has got chemical weapons" two months after the DIA concluded that there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons." He said, "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production" three months after the White House received an intelligence report that clearly indicated Department of Energy experts concluded the tubes were not intended to produce uranium enrichment centrifuges. He said, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," three months after "the CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about" the claim.

IGNORING INTELLIGENCE

CLAIM: "We looked at the intelligence."

FACT – WHITE HOUSE IGNORED INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS: Knight Ridder reported that CIA officers "said President Bush ignored warnings" that his WMD case was weak. And Greg Thielmann, the Bush State Department's top intelligence official, "said suspicions were presented as fact, and contrary arguments ignored." Knight Ridder later reported, "Senior diplomatic, intelligence and military officials have charged that Bush and his top aides made assertions about Iraq's banned weapons programs and alleged links to al-Qaeda that weren't supported by credible intelligence, and that they ignored intelligence that didn't support their policies."

IGNORING INTERNATIONAL INTELLIGENCE WARNINGS

CLAIM: "The international community thought he had weapons."

FACT – INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TOLD WHITE HOUSE THE OPPOSITE: The IAEA and U.N. both repeatedly told the Administration it had no evidence that Iraq possessed WMD. On 2/15/03, the IAEA said that, "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." On 3/7/03 IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge enrichment of uranium. At the same time, AP reported that "U.N. weapons inspectors have not found any 'smoking guns' in Iraq during their search for weapons WMD." AP also reported, "U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said his teams have not uncovered any WMD."

INFORMING CONGRESS OF INTELLIGENCE CAVEATS

CLAIM: "I went to Congress with the same intelligence. Congress saw the same intelligence I had, and they looked at exactly what I looked at."

FACT – CONGRESS WAS OUTRAGED AT PRESENTATION BY THE WHITE HOUSE: The New Republic reported, "Senators were outraged to find that intelligence info given to them omitted the qualifications and countervailing evidence that had characterized the classified version and played up the claims that strengthened the administration's case for war." According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA), many House members were only convinced to support the war after the Administration "showed them a photograph of a small, unmanned airplane spraying a liquid in what appeared to be a test for delivering chemical and biological agents," despite the U.S. Air Force telling the Administration it "sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons."

CLAIM vs. FACT
Pre-War Assertions

PRE-WAR "IMMINENT THREAT" ASSERTION

CLAIM: "I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It's too late if they become imminent."

FACT – ADMINISTRATION REPEATEDLY CLAIMED IRAQ WAS AN "IMMINENT THREAT": The Bush Administration repeatedly claimed that Iraq was an imminent threat before the war – not that it would "become imminent." Specifically, White House communications director Dan Bartlett was asked on CNN: "Is an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?" Bartlett replied, "Well, of course he is." Similarly, when White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether America went to war in Iraq because of an imminent threat, he replied, "Absolutely." And White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the reason NATO allies – including the U.S. - should support the defense of one of its members from Iraq was because "this is about an imminent threat." Additionally, the Administration used "immediate," "urgent" and "mortal" to describe the Iraq threat to the United States.

BUSH'S THREAT RHETORIC BEFORE THE WAR

CLAIM: "I think, if I might remind you that in my language I called it a grave and gathering threat, but I don't want to get into word contests."

FACT – BUSH MADE FAR MORE DIRE STATEMENTS BEFORE THE WAR: While the President did call Iraq a "grave and gathering" threat, that was not all he said. On 11/23/02, he said Iraq posed a "unique and urgent threat." On 1/3/03 he said "Iraq is a threat to any American." On 10/28/02 he said Iraq was "a real and dangerous threat" to America. On 10/2/02 he said, "The Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency" and that Iraq posed "a grave threat" to America.

SADDAM-AL QAEDA-WMD CONNECTION

CLAIM: "Iraq had the capacity to make a weapon and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network."

FACT – ASSERTION BELIES PREVIOUS INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS: This assertion belies the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate which told the White House that Iraq would most likely only coordinate with Al Qaeda if the U.S. invaded Iraq. As the NYT reported, " CIA assessment said last October: 'Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks' in the United States." The CIA added that Saddam might order attacks with WMD as 'his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.'" Previously, the CIA had told the White House that Iraq "has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups." And David Kay himself said, " I found no real connection between WMD and terrorists" in Iraq.

DAVID KAY'S REPORT

CLAIM: "And when David Kay goes in and says we haven't found stockpiles yet, and there's theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. Saddam and his henchmen could have destroyed them as we entered into Iraq. They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we'll find out."

FACT – KAY ACTUALLY SAID WMD HAD BEEN DESTROYED AFTER 1991: David Kay didn't say we haven't found the stockpiles of chemical weapons because they are destroyed, hidden or transported to another country. Kay said that they were never produced and hadn't been produced since 1991. As he said, "Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991. Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was reduced - if not entirely destroyed - during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of U.N. sanctions and U.N. inspections."

CLAIM vs. FACT
Investigative Commissions

WMD COMMISSION

CLAIM: "The reason why we gave it time is because we didn't want it to be hurried... it's important that this investigation take its time."

FACT – OTHER COMMISSIONS SHOW THAT THE REPORT IS BEING DELAYED FOR POLITICS: Regardless of upcoming Parliamentary elections, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has set up a similar commission to investigate intelligence that will report by July. Additionally, in 1983 after the terrorist attack on U.S. troops in Beirut, a commission was appointed and completed its report within 2 months.

9/11 COMMISSION

CLAIM: "We have given extraordinary cooperation with Chairmen Kean and Hamilton."

FACT – WHITE HOUSE HAS STONEWALLED THE 9/11 COMMISSION: According to the Baltimore Sun, President Bush "opposed the outside inquiry" into September 11th. When Congress forced him to relent, Time Magazine reported he tried to choke its funding, noting, "the White House brushed off a request quietly made by 9-11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean" for adequate funding. Then, the NY Times reported, "President Bush declined to commit the White House to turning over highly classified intelligence reports to the independent federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite public threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan panel." And as the Akron Beacon Journal reported last week, "the 9/11 panel did not receive the speedy cooperation it expected. In a preliminary report last summer, the panel's co-chairmen, Thomas Kean, a Republican and former governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, a Democrat and former congressman from Indiana, complained about lengthy delays in gaining access to critical documents, federal employees and administration officials. They warned the lack of cooperation would prove damaging, ensuring that a full investigation would take that much longer to complete, if at all."

CLAIM vs. FACT
Economy/Budgetary Priorities

UNEMPLOYMENT

CLAIM: "How about the fact that we are now increasing jobs or the fact that unemployment is now down to 5.6 percent? There was a winter recession and unemployment went up, and now it's heading in the right direction."

FACT – THE JOB MARKET CONTINUES TO STAGNATE: Since President Bush's first tax cut in March 2001, the economy has shed more than 2 million jobs. He will be the first president since Herbert Hoover to end his term with a net job loss record. Additionally, the White House Counsel of Economic Advisors pledged that the President's "jobs and growth" package would create 1,836,000 new jobs by the end of 2003 as part of its pledge to create 5.5 million new jobs by 2004. But the economy added 221,000 jobs since the last tax cut went into effect, meaning the White House has fallen 1,615,000 jobs short of their mark.

JOB CREATION

CLAIM: "There is good momentum when it comes to the creation of new jobs."

FACT – STATISTICS SHOW THERE IS NOT GOOD JOB MOMENTUM: In the last two months we've seen an average of 73,000 private sector jobs created. At this pace, we wouldn't see a new net job created until May 2007. Even beyond the recession and 9/11, just looking at the recovery since November 2001, the current pace of job growth puts us on track to have the worst jobs recovery since the Great Depression.

TAXES

CLAIM: "But what the people must understand is that instead of wondering what to do, I acted, and I acted by cutting the taxes on individuals and small businesses, primarily. And that, itself, has led to this recovery."

FACT – BUSH TAX CUTS HAD LITTLE EFFECT ON SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS The Bush tax cuts had little effect on small business owners. Under the first tax cut, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports, small business owners "would be far more likely to receive no tax reduction whatsoever from the Administration's tax package than to benefit" because only 3.7% of small business owners are affected by the top tax rate cuts that were the bulk of the plan. Under the 2003 tax cut, the Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates "nearly four out of every five tax filers (79%) with small business income would receive less than the amount" while "52% of people with small business returns would get $500 or less."

DEFICIT

CLAIM: "The budget I just proposed to the Congress cuts the deficit in half in five years."

FACT – WHITE HOUSE ESTIMATES OMIT INEVITABLE COSTS: The President's proposal to cut the deficit in half deliberately "omits a number of likely costs" such as the continued cost of Iraq and its own defense spending plans. All told, he is proposing roughly $3 trillion in new tax cuts and spending, including $1 trillion to make his tax cuts permanent, $70 billion for the Alternative Minimum Tax, and $50 billion more for war in Iraq. The result is that the deficit is predicted to be "in the range of $500 billion in 2009" – not even near half of what it currently is.

STIMULUS

CLAIM: "The economic stimulus plan that I passed is making a big difference."

FACT – STUDY SHOWS TAX CUTS BARELY MADE A DENT: A study by Economy.com attributes only 0.9 percent out of the total 7.2 percent annualized growth in the third quarter to the 2003 tax cut. In other words, the Economy.com analysis suggests that the strength of the economy in the third quarter was not due primarily to the tax cut: Without the tax cut, growth would have still been an impressive 6.3 percent.

CLAIM vs. FACT
Personal Military Records

RELEASE OF RECORDS

CLAIM: Russert – "Would you authorize the release of everything to settle this?" Bush – "Yes, absolutely. We did so in 2000 by the way."

FACT – RECORDS OFF-LIMITS: "s Bush has risen in public life over the last several years, Texas military officials have put many of his records off-limits and heavily redacted many other pages."

REPORTING FOR DUTY

CLAIM: "I did show up in Alabama."

FACT – UNIT COMMANDER DOESN'T BELIEVE HE SHOWED UP FOR DUTY: The Boston Globe reports that Bush's assigned unit commander, William Turnipseed, and his administrative officer, Kenneth K. Lott, do not believe that Bush reported. In an interview Turnipseed said, "Had he reported in, I would have had some recall, and I do not. I had been in Texas, done my flight training there. If we had had a first lieutenant from Texas, I would have remembered."

[SoCalDem]

3. I mentioned his think tank.....BUT.... why are they not on c-span too?

A daily e-mail is fine, BUT they need to be as aggressive at getting out our philosophy as the others are..

[ShaneGR]

5. They send out 3000 press releases a day, and are quoted in WP and NYT

All the time, they just started four months ago. And if I may add, since they started Bush's poll numbers have plummeted. It's not necesarilly about being on CSPAN (Which no one watches). It's about influencing media coverage, which they do.

[NewJeffCT]

4. wow, great work

And, no Scaife to fund them - by the way, how do you pronounce "scaife"?

[supernova]

8. A good start, but we got a ways to go

to catch up with the daily output of AEI, HF, etc.

SoCal is right. We're not nearly visible enough on TV, Radio, and on the talking head circuit.

We've got Brookings but, wonderful as they are, they're not enough.

And refuting RW talking points is only 1/2 of the equation. We need to be actively promoting our own ideas. Providing progressive policy solutions to situations today.

Is this the same group that's forming in Berkley? I dodn't know Podesta was attached to them.

[SoCalDem]

9. And. a lot of "our" organizations claim to be "non-partisan"

Dammit.. It is TIME for partisanship..

Does the CATO give equal deference to the "oppostion"?? HELL NO..

The gloves have got to come off.. It's time to choose sides.. Either we oppose "them" or we ARE them :(

[zanana]

11. I love that website

Since I stumbled upon it accidentally about a week ago, I've been reading it every day.

[rman]

6. "...they've put billions of dollars into it." (the RW that is)

...Over the last 30 years their think tanks have made a heavy investment in ideas and in language. In 1970, Lewis Powell wrote a fateful memo to the National Chamber of Commerce saying that all of our best students are becoming anti-business because of the Vietnam War, and that we needed to do something about it. Powell's agenda included getting wealthy conservatives to set up professorships, setting up institutes on and off campus where intellectuals would write books from a conservative business perspective, and setting up think tanks. He outlined the whole thing in 1970. They set up the Heritage Foundation in 1973, and the Manhattan Institute after that.

And now, as the New York Times Magazine quoted Paul Weyrich, who started the Heritage Foundation, they have 1,500 conservative radio talk show hosts. They have a huge, very good operation, and they understand their own moral system. They understand what unites conservatives, and they understand how to talk about it, and they are constantly updating their research on how best to express their ideas.

Why haven't progressives done the same thing?

There's a systematic reason for that. You can see it in the way that conservative foundations and progressive foundations work. Conservative foundations give large block grants year after year to their think tanks. They say, 'Here's several million dollars, do what you need to do.' And basically, they build infrastructure, they build TV studios, hire intellectuals, set aside money to buy a lot of books to get them on the best-seller lists, hire research assistants for their intellectuals so they do well on TV, and hire agents to put them on TV. They do all of that. Why? Because the conservative moral system, which I analyzed in "Moral Politics," has as its highest value preserving and defending the "strict father" system itself. And that means building infrastructure. As businessmen, they know how to do this very well.

Meanwhile, liberals' conceptual system of the "nurturant parent" has as its highest value helping individuals who need help. The progressive foundations and donors give their money to a variety of grassroots organizations. They say, 'We're giving you $25,000, but don't waste a penny of it. Make sure it all goes to the cause, don't use it for administration, communication, infrastructure, or career development.' So there's actually a structural reason built into the worldviews that explains why conservatives have done better."

from "Framing the Issues: UC Berkeley professor George Lakoff tells how conservatives use language to dominate politics"
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff_p2.shtml

[pmbryant]

10. This is really a media problem, not a think tank problem

Free speech gives these "think tanks" (really just PR firms as someone eloquently noted above) the right to promote their message.

But the problem is that the media gives these guys so much attention without calling them out for who they really are.

So this "think tank problem" is just another symptom of the monolithic corporate media we have been saddled with in recent years.

:-(

--Peter

[supernova]

12. Missing the point

It doesn't matter that these "think tanks" (really just PR firms as someone eloquently noted above) the right to promote their message

Whether you call them "think tanks" or PR firms dressed up as think tanks, the fact is they are out there every day selling their message.

The fact is there is a dearth of progressive thought in the public square to balance out the conservative drone. If you are a progressive or progressive sympathetic, where do you go for information? You have to go looking for it. You have to put in time to do your research as much as any grad student. You might wind up here at DU or Buzzflash, or Indymedia.org. This is not easy for the average, workaday person who only has a slight interest in politics, but who nonetheless given some solid information would probably vote Democratic.

The question is what are we progressives prepared to do about it?

We have to reach them somehow and we have to step up our efforts. Not just let our elected officials do all the talking.

[pmbryant]

15. I got the point :-)

Unfortunately us progressives do not have the billions of dollars necessary to counter this tactic with our own plethora of "think tanks". We can pressure the media all we want, but their owners are still corporate and will still suck up to the party in power in return for government concessions.

Grassroots efforts like word-of-mouth, like DU, Buzzflash, Indymedia, etc, are our best options at this time.

Unless we can get one of the few progressive billionaires (Soros?) to fund large, blatantly liberal media outlets. But we shouldn't count on that.

You're exactly right that we shouldn't just let our elected officials do all the talking. I never suggested that. :-)

--Peter

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

13. There have been several started recently

Carville had his hands in two:

This one is the left answer to the Federalist Society

http://www.americanconstitutionsociety.org/Leadership.htm

And this one is to organize for working class citizens:

http://www.americanfamilyvoices.org/states/

Then there's Lakoff's group, and of course, PFAW is still going strong.

The point is the right was able to USE their groups as charities, think tanks, lobbying arms and they funnelled these resources from the national to the state to the community level.

For these groups to have any clout, they must follow the road map and the results won't be immediate.

[StopThief]

14. The reason your search. . . . .

did not retreive results, is that "liberal" think tanks are rarely identified as such in news stories.

[SoCalDem]

16. ..or even in their own literature..

our "think tanks" are in love with the "non-partisan" angle.. as if ANY rightwinger would ever turn to a group other than one of "their own"..

They love to call us "Librul".. I say it's time to embrace the moniker and tell everyone WHY liberalism works, instead of pretending to "see all sides" of every issue.. (I am sure that we DO see all sides, but we need to PROMOTE the side that is liberal)

[opihimoimoi]

17. We are playing catchup with the Pubs who are 20+ years ahead.

They have been doing this for a long time and only now we are addressi8ng the situation. Too little too late?? I think not. We can do it . we can find a better Visine formula, brew stronger coffee for those out there whose myopia is not over the hill/top.

The Movement Dean speaks of has started and will play a central part in blowing the Pub House of Cards down.