Quotes About Think tanks

America has become accustomed to a permanent state of war. Only a small slice of society—including many poor and rural teenagers—fight and die, while a permanent national security elite rotates among senior government posts, contracting companies, think tanks, and television commentary, opportunities that would disappear if America was suddenly at peace. To most of America, war has become not only tolerable but profitable, and so there is no longer any great incentive to end it.

In contrast to the crapshoot of electoral politics, investing in think tanks offers a reliable and proven way to slowly change policy and culture over time—and without the high-profile controversies that can come with partisan giving, which is often a concern to wealthy donors who also run businesses.

The perpetrators of the actual bad stuff that does real and lasting harm to people, like leakage of industrial chemicals into water systems, seem to get not so much as a second glance; the bloviation from media pundits and think tanks creates false problems that waste time and energy debunking.

Think tanks support so-called experts who will offer an opinion on anything—if the price is right. The result is that the rich and powerful flourish, while everyone else is left further and further behind. The cumulative impact of decades of these decisions has been to hollow out America's middle class and to leave us, as a nation, weakened. The game is rigged. It is deliberately, persistently, and aggressively rigged to help the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful.

If the big banks expect to buy influence when they give money to favored think tanks, then the public has a right to know. If the big banks don't expect to buy influence and are merely making charitable contributions, then their shareholders have a right to know. Either way, there's no excuse for keeping these payments secret.

Because policymakers often rely on think tanks' research when crafting laws and regulations, it's critical to know whether these organizations are truly independent.

At one time, the Left had a monopoly not merely of the media and academia, but also of the world of policy think tanks.

For some time, I've said this issue of comprehensive immigration reform is not just an issue about immigration or human rights or civil rights, it's about our economy. You take 11 million people from out of the dark and into the light. The think tanks have surmised that you are talking about trillions of dollars infused into the economy.

I so often doubt how much people on television believe what they're saying. They're playing roles for think tanks or political parties or shills of whatever stripe.

I think when you have so many people working for American-based think tanks and American-based defense companies, there is always going to be a bent towards proposing American-led solutions for foreign problems. People get paid big money in Washington to come up with ways that America can fix problems overseas, and they are not always right.

Think tanks are chiefly supposed to provide independent expertise to policymakers. But they also seek to be politically relevant.

There are people who appear on television who are paid for by shadowy think tanks whose financing they won't come clean about.

Washington, D.C. is full of think tanks, theoreticians and advocacy groups. Governors are the ones whose feet are on the ground.

I think that there's been an unfortunate tendency for right wing think tanks to dominate these discussions. They often produce very shoddy studies and policy recommendations, which are nevertheless taken very seriously.

This reflects a quiet but paradigmatic change: a shift in intellectual and ideological influence from academia to think tanks, the vast majority of which were conservative and dependent upon corporate sponsorship.

Conservatives, through their think tanks, figured out the importance of framing, and they figured out how to frame every issue. They figured out how to get those frames out there, how to get their people in the media all the time.

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be 'fixed' - I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines - ever asks the opinions of teachers.

Republicans use think tanks to come up with a lot of their messages. The think tanks are the single worst, most undisciplined example of communication I've ever seen.

Conservative media outlets portrayed climate change as a job-killing hoax hatched by tree-hugging extremists. Big Oil funneled millions of dollars into a web of think tanks and public relations firms committed to obscuring the facts about climate change.

Republicans use think tanks to come up with a lot of their messages. The think tanks are the single worst, most undisciplined example of communication I've ever seen.

A 2013 study by Riley Dunlap and political scientist Peter Jacques found that a striking 72 percent of climate denial books, mostly published since the 1990s, were linked to right-wing think tanks, a figure that rises to 87 percent if self-published books (increasingly common) are excluded.23

All it takes are a few billionaires willing to spend a small fraction of their wealth supporting politicians, think tanks—or actually "think" tanks—and partisan media willing to spread the tax-cut virus. That's easily enough to keep the zombies lurching along.

Democrats have a network of think tanks and sympathetic independent experts who look hard at evidence, try to devise solutions to real problems, and sometime affect actual legislative proposals. Republicans have nothing comparable; their tame "experts" are basically in the business of saying whatever their political masters want to hear.

The think tank was invented in the twentieth century to offer objective analysis of complex issues. Now, though, think tanks often operate as the motherships of ideological movements on both the left and the right—weaving together a jumble of values and ideas into a coherent story and actionable policy agenda.