We Just Unveiled a Trove of Over 800 "Model" Bills
Secretly Voted on by Corporations
to Rewrite Your Rights
Learn More at ALECexposed

Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

From SourceWatch

Jump to: navigation, search


This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch funded from 2006 - 2009 by the American Legacy Foundation. Help expose the truth about the tobacco industry.

This article is part of the Center for Media & Democracy's spotlight on front groups and corporate spin.

Learn more about corporations VOTING to rewrite our laws.

The Manhattan Institute (MI) is a right-wing 501(c)(3) non-profit think tank founded in 1978 by William J. Casey, who later became President Ronald Reagan's CIA director.[1]

The Manhattan Institute is "focused on promoting free-market principles whose mission is to 'develop and disseminate new ideas that foster greater economic choice and individual responsibility.'"[2]

"The Manhattan Institute concerns itself with such things as 'welfare reform' (dismantling social programs), 'faith-based initiatives' (blurring the distinction between church and state), and 'education reform' (destroying public education)," Kurt Nimmo wrote October 10, 2002, in CounterPunch.[3]

Contents

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

The Manhattan Institute's Senior Fellow and Director of the its Center for Medical Progress, Paul Howard, spoke at the 2011 American Legislative Exchange Council Annual Conference in a Workshop titled "Rationing By Any Other Name: Medicare's Independent Payment Advisory Board." He co-lead the panel with the Pacific Research Institute's Director of Health Care Studies, John Graham.[4]

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) They fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door. Learn more at ALECexposed.org.

History

The Institute describes its policy agenda over its 25-year history as having spanned "taxes, welfare, crime, the legal system, urban life, race, education, and many other topics. We have won new respect for market-oriented policies and helped make reform a reality."[5]

In its publication Buying a Movement, People for the American Way describes the Manhattan Institute's agenda as "The Institute '...advocates privitization of sanitation services and infrastructure maintenance, deregulation in the area of environmental and consumer protection, school vouchers and cuts in governmental spending on social welfare programs; it is a preferred source of information'" for New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.[6]

They describe their communication strategy as being based around the strength of their "senior fellows". "Their provocative books, reviews, interviews, speeches, articles, and op-ed pieces have been the main vehicle for communicating our message," they state.

"Books are central to our approach. We make every effort to ensure that our authors are published by respected trade publishers and that their books receive as much review attention and publicity as possible. Nothing allows us to make a sustained, comprehensive argument more effectively," the website states.

Charles Murray was one author who was based at the Manhattan Institute while writing the book Losing Ground. Murray is "a far right ideologue who wrote The Bell Curve in 1984, a book that essentially argues black people are genetically and intellectually inferior to white people."[1]

Tobacco issues

Tobacco industry documents reveal relationships between the Manhattan Institute and tobacco companies. The Institute sought funding from tobacco companies, including Brown & Williamson.[1] The Institute has received funding from R.J. Reynolds.[2] In 1991, Lorillard, Inc. budgeted a $4,000 contribution of the Manhattan Institute[3] and the same amount in 1996.[4] Philip Morris budgeted $25,000 for the Instutite in 1995. [5]

A 1997 R.J. Reynolds memo reveals RJR's intent to use the Manhattan Institute as a third party to help the company reduce the public's perception of danger from exposure to secondhand smoke:

"Devise ways to educate the public about epidemiology and put risk in perspective. For example, work with Steven J. Milloy, Michael Fumento, CEI Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute and others to put together a 1/2-hour or 1-hour TV show explaining epi[demiology] and risk. Create an epi/risk website to educate the general public, maybe working with the Harvard School of Public Health. Do the same for journalists." [6]

War on terrorism: axis of evil

In 2001, David Frum left the Manhattan Institute "to join the Bush administration as a speechwriter. It was there that he coined the term 'axis of evil' to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. This became the signature phrase of President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech and shorthand for Bush's war on terrorism."[7]

Immigration: covering all the bases

"In the think-tank world, a leading advocate of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants is Tamar Jacoby..., an expert at the conservative Manhattan Institute. One of the most implacable voices against any such 'amnesty' is Heather Mac Donald - also of the Manhattan Institute."[8]

Manhattan Institute Board of Trustees

The following are members of the Board of Trustees:[9]

Financiers of neo-conservatism

The "financing of neoconservatism doesn't come from D.C.", Mark Gerson is quoted as saying in the April 27, 2003, New York Observer.[11]

"Instead, said Mr. Gerson, it comes from New York moneymen like Bruce Kovner, chairman of the Caxton Corporation, and Roger Hertog, the vice chairman of Alliance Capital Management. Last year, both financiers helped fund a new newspaper, The New York Sun, now fighting its anti-liberal battle with its New York Times –counterprogrammed slogan, 'A Different Point of View.' Both Mr. Kovner and Mr. Hertog also chipped in to join neoliberal Martin Peretz as co-owners of The New Republic. Mr. Kovner and Mr. Hertog, as enlightened neoconservative businessmen-intellectuals, are also on the board [of trustees] of the Manhattan Institute, where Mr. Gerson and William Kristol are also trustees, as well as the Washington, D.C.–based American Enterprise Institute."[11]

Funding

Between 1985 and 2005, the Institute received $20,629,883 (unadjusted for inflation) in a total of 296 grants from only nine foundations:[12]

Other affiliations

Manhattan Institute senior scholars

Manhattan Institute staff

Contact information

Manhattan Institute
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 212 599-7000
FAX: 212 599-3494
E-mail: mi AT manhattan-institute.org
URL: http://www.manhattan-institute.org

Websites

Resources and articles

Related SourceWatch articles

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Spectrum Policy: Property or Commons?" Sponsors: Manhattan Institute, Stanford University, undated; accessed August 16, 2007.
  2. ↑ "Right Wing Organizations: Manhattan Institute, People for the American Way.
  3. ↑ Kurt Nimmo, "What She Really Said. Condoleezza Rice at the Waldorf Astoria," CounterPunch, October 10, 2002.
  4. ↑ [American Legislative Exchange Council, 2011 Conference Workshops, conference brochure on file with CMD, August 11, 2011]
  5. ↑ About, Manhattan Institute.
  6. ↑ Recipient Profile: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Inc., Media Transparency, last accessed August 16, 2007.
  7. ↑ Joshua Brustein, "Think Tanks," Gotham Gazette, March 29, 2003.
  8. ↑ Jeff Jacoby, "The fight is on the right," Boston Globe (International Herald Tribune), June 20, 2007.
  9. ↑ Trustees, Manhattan Institute, accessed August 16, 2007. Profile links can be accessed on page.
  10. ↑ Manhattan Institute - Profile. Right Web (2006-11-12). Retrieved on 2011-07-17.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Joe Hagan, "President Bush's Neoconservatives Were Spawned Right Here in N.Y.C., New Home of the Right-Wing Gloat," The New York Observer, April 27, 2003.
  12. ↑ Recipient Grants: Manhattan Institute, Media Transparency. Data updated August 16, 2007.
  13. ↑ Research and Evaluation - Grant: Manhattan Institute, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, August 5, 2004.
  14. ↑ Grant Recipients: Manhattan Institute from the Randolph Foundation, Media Transparency: $128,375 - 6 grants between 1999 and 2005.
  15. ↑ Grant Recipients: Manhattan Institute from the Carthage Foundation, Media Transparency: $693,000 - 15 grants between 1985 and 2002.
  16. ↑ Independent Task Force on Immigration and America's Future website.
  17. ↑ Directory: Manhattan Institute, State Policy Network.
  18. ↑ Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel), "Judy Finally Gets Her Wingnut Welfare!!" The Next Hurrah Blog, July 22, 2007: Miller is "a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal".

External articles

1990s

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

External resources

This article may include information from Tobacco Documents Online.

Search the Documents Archives of the Tobacco Industry
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library:

Retrieved from "http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research"
Personal tools

Be a SourceWatcher!

Enter your e-mail address to get the Center for Media and Democracy's free weekly e-newsletter.