Let me start with a disclaimer. I work for Cato, as many of you know. So read what follows with that in mind. Also keep in mind that what follows is in no way the official position of Cato on this story, so it shouldn’t be reprinted, paraphrased or otherwise construed as such. It’s merely the opinion of one slightly-biased blogger who happens to have a bit of knowledge on the subject.

So here’s the story:

Steven C. Clemons, executive vice president of the New America Foundation just released a “study” claiming that conservative think tanks have become money launderers for the political contributions of big business. Clemons — whom Washington Post “Ideas Industry” columnist Richard Morin flatters with the label “whistleblower” — claims that Cato, AEI and Heritage throw annual gala dinners that have in recent years become “hot tickets” in the Washington area. True. Sort of. AEI and Heritage do throw annual “gala dinners.” Cato has thrown exactly one such dinner in the last five years — in celebration of the organization’s 25th anniversary.

Clemons also claims that Congressmen and Bush administration officials get to attend these dinners gratis. Also true. Sort of. At Cato’s 25th, I think we had three Congressmen in attendance. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao attended very, very briefly. And, as the article notes, one mid-level White House staffer attended to deliver a message from President Bush. I can’t speak for who attends AEI and Heritage dinners.

Finally, Clemons claims that big corporations tend to buy tables at these events. That’s certainly true for the Cato event. Again, I can’t speak for AEI or Heritage.

Here’s where Clemons’ story gets bizarre. He says that corporations buy these tables at gala dinners, then instruct the think tanks on which Representatives and Senators they want the each respective think tank to extend a complementary invitation to. This, he says, is a way for corporations to get around lobbying restrictions and gift bans to lawmakers.

Once again, I can only speak from my experience at Cato. But at our 25th anniversary dinner, every single member of Congress was given a complementary invitation. All of them. Sort of defeats the argument that we invite only those members our benevolent corporate donors deem worthy, doesn’t it?

What’s more, I’m not really sure what’s so malevolent about all of this. We’re talking about a dinner at events with 2,500 or so other people — a dinner that at most costs about $100 or so, and — again — a dinner that most any Congressman could easily get a ticket to anyway — for free. It’s not as if Corporations are funneling huge wads of cash through think tanks so think tanks can throw condo parties in Cancun with hot tubs and hookers.

The most obvious reason Clemons’ conspiracy theory fails is because, contrary to what you might read in the Washington Post and elsewhere, corporations and their sponsored foundations give a pittance of their non-profit money to the conservative and libertarian think tanks who favor policies most in line with their interests. I’m not happy about this. And it’s certainly counterintuitive. But it happens to be true. Less than 5% of Cato’s annual budget comes from corporate donations.

In fact, the Capital Research Center has been pointing out for years that corporations actually give more several times more money to leftist interests than they do to the right.

There are several reasons for this.

First, lefties tend to flock to non-profit and philanthropic careers more than market lovers, who tend to pursue careers in business (Thomas Sowell often makes this point — leftists enjoy careers where their philosophy is never subjected to real-world tests — philanthropy, academia, the arts, etc.). This means that leftists have taken over the philanthropy wings of corporate America. They’ve now risen to positions where they’re signing the checks distributed by, for example, the Ford Foundation.

Second, leftist groups are great at arm-twisting for donations. Jesse Jackson and his Wall Street shakedowns are a notorious example. But the NAACP, NOW and the green groups are good at it, too. “Give to us or you hate women.” “Give to us or you hate black people.” “Give to us or you hate the environment.”

Take a look at this table. These are the top 40 recipients of corporate philanthropy for 2001. You have to drop all the way to #11 to find a friend of free markets — in this case, AEI. Don’t be fooled by apparent innocuousness of top recipients like the American Lung Association and the American Cancer Society, either. These groups lobby heavily for tobacco regulation, for example, or for higher clean air standards. They’re just as effective as the more blatantly leftists groups — probably more so, because they don’t appear to have an obvious agenda.

My point: it’s easy press for “whistle-blowers” like Clemons to decry how the likes of Heritage, AEI and Cato are mere mouthpieces for corporate America. But had Clemons done the slightest bit of research — as a scholar ought to — he’d have found that Brookings, for example, gets four times the corporate money Cato does. He’d find that the ultra left-wing Urban Institute gets eight times the money. He’d also have found that his own organization, the New America Foundation, lists the Pew Charitable Trust as one of its largest donors. Pew’s assets are heavily invested in tobacco, oil, and coal interests. Is New America on the take, too? Is Clemons?

I found all of this information over the course of my lunch hour. Perhaps if Clemons had invested as much as one lunch hour in researching possible refutations of his “study,” he would have discovered that his thesis is as patently flawed as it is. But given that he didn’t (i.e. “reckless disregard for the truth), and that he’s basically accusing three prominent think tanks of money laundering, he’s put himself awfully damn close to libel.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 19th, 2002 at 11:04 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.