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Conservative Think Tank Whores Itself Out
AngelHedgie
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I'm being pretty literal on this.
That's pretty much as close to intellectual whoredom as you can get without putting on the miniskirt and fishnet stockings. And it shows that the stances these groups take aren't always driven by ideology, but by cold hard cash. What saddens me is how blatant the ACU was. No subterfuge, no quid pro quo scheme - just an out and out price tag.
The American Conservative Union asked FedEx for a check for $2 million to $3 million in return for the group’s support in a bitter legislative dispute, then the group’s chairman flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to pay.
For the $2 million plus, ACU offered a range of services that included: “Producing op-eds and articles written by ACU’s Chairman David Keene and/or other members of the ACU’s board of directors. (Note that Mr. Keene writes a weekly column that appears in The Hill.)â€
The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play†— was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.
The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.
That's pretty much as close to intellectual whoredom as you can get without putting on the miniskirt and fishnet stockings. And it shows that the stances these groups take aren't always driven by ideology, but by cold hard cash. What saddens me is how blatant the ACU was. No subterfuge, no quid pro quo scheme - just an out and out price tag.
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I guess I am not surprised one bit though - ACU is a disgusting mouthpiece of an organisation so this type of muck-raking would be right up their alley...
Please. I would be shocked if the same weren't true of other think tanks like the Progressive Policy Institute, or the Brookings Institution.
Shocked.
The ACU just got caught.
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They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
There's no evidence whatsoever but its obviously true because they are totally equal in every way!:x
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Everyone knows progressives/liberals are pure as the driven snow
Can you find a comparable case?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Not off the top of my head. It seems pretty goddamn naive, however, to assume that most powerful lobbying groups like this, who pay their people quite well, aren't at the very least getting tit-for-tat donations, even if it isn't this blatant. I'm quite comfortable in my cynicism.
It seems like one group of people doing something is somehow not evidence that an entirely different group of people is doing the same thing.
To put it another way: people have been convicted of murders, therefore you committed murders. You see how there is no power of causation in that argument?
Yes, this is a liberal echo chamber, but boldly asserting "they must've done it" isn't a convincing argument to anyone but the paranoid.
It would be interesting, as Speaker offered, to see whether this is motivated by a decline in cash flow or just standard operating practise at the ACU.
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Does anyone really look to them for impartial analysis?
The idea is that a think tank will have an ideological focus, and their positions stem from that. For instance, Cato is basically Libertarians 'R Us, so they take stances based on that. They're not supposed to be mercenaries.
In this case, the egregious part is when it switched sides.
Everyone is innocent until proven guilty
except conservatives
edit: not defending ACU, I'm just amused that folks think it's okay to say that they aren't surprised to see a conservative group doing this, but are shocked that some one would suggest a liberal group might ever do it too.
Politics is ugly REGARDLESS of idealogical slants.
Maybe you can explain to me what businesses benefit most from anti-corporate legislation? Anti-gun legislation...? Pro-drug legalization legislation...? Low-income advocacy groups...?
These are not areas where there is big money on the advocacy end in existance for them to sell out to, as opposed to pretty much every group on the Republican side of things, with the possible exception of the pro-Jesus crowd; but there, they mostly rely on individual donations, anyhow.
I'm mystified by the idea that it happening on one side automatically equates to it happening on the other (or that it happened once meaning that it's automatically happened elsewhere regardless of partisanship), and a little pissed off that the mapping of false equivalencies between things that may have happened and corrupt shit we know has happened somehow constitutes a defense.
Equivalencies are a smoke screen to mask wrongdoing. False equivalencies based purely on conjecture are bullshit attempts to make one side look less like an asshole when this stuff actually happens.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
ITT we find out that the ACU do/have done possibly corrupt things.
I fail to see how this has anything to do with any other conservative Think Tank or liberal Think Tanks. I must be comprehending the article too much.
Admittedly, during elections, Republicans sometimes, but not often are ever-so-slightly financially favored when it comes to the amounts donated by the big bad scary corporations that we, the electorate, have absolutely no part in giving these giants that much financial clout.
So, before we discuss what a think-tank is and isn't supposed to do, maybe we should agree upon a common definition. One person might view these as ideologically-driven philanthropic organizations, bravely sparring us the tedious exercise known as research. Another might see them as mercenaries for hire, you will not find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Or maybe we hold both ideas as proper definitions and apply them to the people we do or don't agree with.
Let's look at the term 'think tank'. Let's go to Wikipedia, the ever-helpful source when it comes to someone or something that isn't important enough to be lied about.
Also, let's look at the term in relation to its two core components.
Think source: http://www.answers.com/topic/think
Tank source: google.com
or
Now when you think about what think tank means in relation to its two core words, you get 'using thought as a weapon' or 'thought as a tool of conflict'.
When you put that in the metaphorical war context, are you honestly surprised that, like war, there are people who are willing to fight not for honor or country but for cold hard cash?
Like the WaPo I don't think they actually succeeded in their attempts.
― Marcus Aurelius
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...charities, unions, and public health organizations aren't think tanks, so I don't really understand the point you're trying to make here.
Also, I am rather shocked by this. You'd think corruption and blackmail would be more thought out and take more interesting shapes than a form letter. Hollywood has ruined everything with their drama.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Except that the Democratic constituency is not wholly composed of altruistic organizations kept together by hope and duct tape.
Edit: And the types of organizations that are going to be looking to these think tanks for help are probably ideologically aligned enough with them to know that failure to pay the extortion fees isn't going to cause the tank in question to swing over to the opposite side of the issue.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
So what you're saying is that Richard Mellon Scaife is slacking on the sugar daddy stuff?
Perhaps, but at the same time I doubt this group would be extorting the Chamber of Commerce.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Interestingly, FedEx is not the only corporation that exists in the United States nor is it the sole entity with a greater than $3m budget.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
That would depend entirely on the legislation being discussed. You don't think GE is the least bit interested in new regulatory structures requiring the purchase of Wind Turbines or the promotion of new Locomotive investments by Amtrak or Heavy Rail transit organizations such as Metra or the MTA?
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