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Money and political idea warfare in Pennsylvania
The left tries to catch up to the right's corporate-funded idea factory.
Money and political idea warfare in Pennsylvania
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Politicians and journalists, breathtaking egos notwithstanding, depend mightily on research undertaken by outsiders: organizations, think tanks, academics. This is probably true now more than ever as legislators spend much of their time raising money and reporters fight to survive in shrinking newsrooms. Information and ideas have serious political consequences. The American conservative movement understood this first, the resource-poor left much later.
The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center, a progressive research and advocacy group based in Harrisburg, is throwing its five-year anniversary celebration today in Philadelphia (details below). PBPC grew out of the Keystone Research Center, founded in 1996 to combat The Commonwealth Foundation, the Pennsylvania branch of a powerful conservative brain trust that stretches from coast to coast.
In the 1960s and '70s, conservatives became fixated by the perceived liberal dominance of universities and foundations. Corporations and wealthy donors began to pour money into the think tanks, academic departments and, of course, media to promote the agenda of reaction.
The modern conservative movement--fueled by white papers, journalists, pundits and "big ideas" about decimating the New Deal and rolling back civil rights--was born. In Washington, The Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation became ubiquitous in news clippings and throughout the corridors of power. Pittsburgh billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife (owner of the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review) and Richard DeVos (soft-focus profiled in this week's Inquirer for his donations to the Constitution Center: "A key Constitution Center backer has small-town Michigan roots," with the url "jay-van-andel-heart-transplant-private-jet"?) have signed some of the nation's fattest paychecks to the conservative idea mill. And then there are the Coors, Koch, Bradley and Kirby families. And the libertarian hedge fund managers, including Cato board member Jeffrey Yass, at Bala Cynwyd's Susquehanna International Group, who also funds pro-school voucher candidates and the pro-charter Philadelphia School Partnership.
By the 1980s and '90s state-level conservative think tanks were popping up nationwide, growing from just 12 state-based free-market think tanks in 1989 to 40 groups in 37 states in 2004. The Manhattan Institute opened in New York. Pennsylvania got Commonwealth.
"The fact that conservatives concentrate on policymaking at both the national and state levels signals a departure from most left-leaning and centrist foundations, which generally only focus on national issues," according to an article by progressive journalist Eric Alterman. The State Policy Network, of which Commonwealth is a member, "exists to encourage cooperation among free-market think tanks in the network." Today, according to SPN's website, "There is at least one state think tank in the SPN network in every state, working to advance market-friendly public policy at the state and local levels."
Indeed, conservatives have taken state-level policymaking to a level beyond progressive imagination: The now controversial American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) brings together conservative state legislators and corporations to fashion cookie-cutter bills that serve as templates to unfetter corporate power in statehouses nationwide.
For its part, The Commonwealth Foundation was thought up in 1987 Heritage Foundation meeting in Hershey, according to an organizational history. "Supporters of the national think tank movement and other conservative leaders began to realize that perhaps this model of policy research and advocacy on the national level could also be applied within the states," wrote co-founder T. William Boxx. They received help and funding from the conservative Latrobe-based Philip M. McKenna Foundation.
Beginning in the 1990s, progressives realized that they needed an intellectual infrastructure of their own.
"They really wanted to get control in the war of ideas," says PBPC Executive Director Sharon Ward. "KRC was started very directly in response to that, a recognition by a number of folks in the state that the right was winning the war of ideas and information."
Groups advocating against program cuts and for increased funding, ranging from children's advocates to legal aid, understood that they also needed to talk about taxes and revenue. In 2005, these organizations were particularly anxious about a conservative push to pass a so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). Passed in 1992, Colorado's TABOR law requires a popular vote to enact tax increases greater than a formula determined by inflation and population changes — making it very, very difficult to raise taxes.
"They all got to the point where they recognized they needed to be conversant on taxes and the revenue side of the budget and not just the spending side," says Ward.
That progressive effort was replicated on a nationwide level, and PBPC is now part of a national network of progressive state-level research centers organized by the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities. Many such groups, says Ward, were formed in the wake of John Kerry's 2004 presidential defeat.
CBPP is one of a few significant left-leaning D.C.-based think tanks, alongside outfits like the Economic Police Institute. Progressive think tanks have been playing catch-up to an older and well-funded conservative establishment: there are twice as many conservative think tanks as liberal ones, according to the (lefty) Center for Media and Democracy.
But they have, in recent years, doggedly made their way from e-mail blasts preaching to the faithful to the pages of The New York Times.
The cash disparity, however, has been severe. In 1996, Heritage Foundation president Edwin J. Feulner's $461,840 in salary and benefits added up to 70 percent of the progressive Institute for Policy Study's budget. Commonwealth won't reveal the identity of their funders.
"CF is proud to be funded by more than 1000 freedom-loving donors from across Pennsylvania who give of their own hard-earned money freely," says Commonwealth's Jay Ostrich. "It's an interesting contrast to forcing union dues for the right to work in Pennsylvania, a compulsion that funds many of the organizations that govern, direct and fuel PBPC/KRC."
While KRC, according to its website, receives some union money (9-percent), the bulk comes from foundations. The organization (take a look at the board) does have very close labor ties. Meanwhile, the right-wing industrialist Koch Brothers donated $84,532 to Commonwealth between 2005-'10, according to Greenpeace, which calls the organization a "Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group."
Commonwealth boasts a 15-person staff, KRC just seven.
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The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center’s 5th Anniversary Luncheon

Friday, November 30, 2012 | 12-1:30 pm

Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown, Horizons Rooftop Ballroom, 201 North 17th Street, Philadelphia, PA
Former Governor Ed Rendell will deliver the keynote, with honors to Republican state Reps. Gene DiGirolamo and Thomas Murt for "for their efforts on behalf of low-income working families" and to the legal team that challenged the state's voter ID law.
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