As I write this, MI's website is featuring the work of David Gratzer, "the Manitoba-born fly in Obama's health care ointment." Gratzer is a 30-something Canadian-born physician (cited as among the "most extreme wingnuts in health care" by The Health Care Blog) who these days spends most of his time fabricating misinformation about Canada's health care system in order to frighten Americans away from a national health care plan. One assumes Gratzer is well paid for his services.
Gratzer is the author of several books, and his articles frequently are published in America's most widely read newspapers and news magazines. Rarely does anyone bother to fact check what he writes. However, in a recent appearance before Congress he had the misfortune of being grilled by a grim Dennis Kucinich.
Following the Money
The Manhattan Institute and other right-wing think tanks are conduits of money between extremist right-wing foundations, most of them financed by old family fortunes, and talent - writers/spokespeople skilled at presenting their views. MI's funders include John M. Olin Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (which recently gave a $250,000 award to William Kristol for "outstanding achievements"), the Sarah Scaife Foundation (controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, who bankrolled the Arkansas Project to destroy the Clinton Administration), the Castle Rock Foundation (funded by the Adolph Coors Foundation).
One difference between the Right and the Left is that progressive foundations and benefactors tend to fund programs, whereas conservative foundations and benefactors support institutions and the "fellows" who speak and write for them. One of the services of the right-wing infrastructure is to be sure that talented conservatives are guaranteed an income so that their time can be devoted to the "cause," a practice ironically called "wingnut welfare." Ironically, because so many of the fellows devote their time to putting an end to "entitlements" like welfare.
Further, if you investigate which foundations donate to which institutions, you find the same few family foundations giving to a cluster of right-wing think tanks that duplicate much of the same work on behalf of the same causes - "tort reform," union busting, privatizing, deregulating, tax cutting. By pretending to be working independently, the think tanks appear to be corroborating each other's "research."
MI President Lawrence Mone explained how MI works in a 2002 speech to the conservative Philanthropy Roundtable:
"We make sure we have the right messenger; people like Charles Murray, George Kelling, and Peter Huber, and then, we market our message to the right people through our books, forums, and City Journal. It takes time, and it takes money, but in the end we know we are making a difference."
MI has a three-step strategy.
"The first vehicle," he explained, "is an aggressive book-publishing and marketing program, which redefines debates on national issues." Rather than publishing books itself, as do many think tanks, the institute demands that its scholars "pass the 'market test' of commercial trade houses." Secondly, the institute publishes the quarterly magazine City Journal, which is aimed at New York elites. And thirdly, the institute holds "Manhattan Forums," which "bring together cross-sections of the nation's elitesfrom the worlds of government, business, journalism, and philanthropy."
And when the Manhattan Institute speaks, the political and media elite listen.
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