Have you ever wondered where the Bush Admin gets its ideas? [View All]

[CivilRightsNow]

The Wall Street Journal says, "No policy shop has more clout than the conservative Heritage Foundation."


"Keep up the wonderful work of truth which emanates from Heritage." – John Ashcroft


"Some of the finest conservatives in America today do their work in The Heritage Foundation. For those of you new to all this, The Heritage Foundation is America's leading conservative think tank." - Rush Limbaugh, November 10, 2000.


The Democratic Policy Committee Annual Report says, "It is hard to overstate the impact The Heritage Foundation has had on the direction of U.S. policy since the late 1970’s."

Heritage VP, Stuart Butler: "Heritage now works very closely with the congressional leadership…. Heritage has been involved in crafting almost every piece of major legislation to move through Congress." Another Heritage VP, Kim Holmes said, "without exaggeration, I think we've in effect become Congress's unofficial research arm…. We truly have become an extension of the congressional staff, but on our own terms and according to our own agenda."

Mandate for Leadership 2002 -
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Features/Mandate/index.cfm

Priorities for the President - http://www.heritage.org/research/features/mandate/priorities.CFM

Medicare -
In a chapter in her book Slanting the Story, health care reporter Trudy Lieberman details how Heritage's media campaign, begun in 1995, successfully launched in the mainstream press a new language for reporting on Medicare. This language took the focus off the fact that the long-term implication of a FEHBP-style Medicare program would be a drastic cut in government funding of Medicare, placing the burden of increasing medical costs on older adults and people with disabilities. Heritage refocused the debate on simple messages that strongly promoted a FEHBP-style Medicare program as a "consumer choice model" and the only way to "save" Original Medicare from bankruptcy. Heritage brushed aside another possible solution: increasing revenues earmarked for health care. It did so by bombarding editorial page writers, columnists, radio talk shows, and members of Congress with a well-timed stream of issue bulletins, reports, and press releases hammering these messages.

While there were no legislative results by the end of 1995, Heritage had laid the groundwork for its future success. By late fall of 1995, Heritage's Medicare reform proposal and messages had been integrated into the political debate and certain politicians became the new spokespeople for a FEHBP-style Medicare program. For example, Ohio congressman Martin Hoke wrote an op-ed for the Cleveland Plain Dealer using Heritage data to show how without Medicare reform payroll taxes would skyrocket; Representative Dan Miller of Florida promoted the idea of "Medicare choices" on MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.

Heritage crafted a new propaganda campaign "to prepare public opinion for Medicare reform" built on the lessons they had learned from their 1995 activities. As described in the 1997 Heritage document "Mandate for Leadership IV–Turning Ideas into Actions," the key goals of the new campaign were to:

Convince Americans that Medicare provides inferior medicine and poor financial security;
Convince Americans that Medicare cannot be sustained for long;
Focus on "health care security";
Attract provider constituencies to support reform; and
Build bipartisan support first, then reinforce it with a commission.

http://www.medicarerights.org/maincontentheritage.html

North Korea -
The Korea Connection

Heritage has a long history of receiving large donations from overseas (Los Angeles Times, 9/5/88), and the annual take from abroad currently includes upwards of several hundred thousand dollars from Taiwan and South Korea. According to a document uncovered by members of South Korea's National Assembly in autumn 1988, Korean intelligence gave $2.2 million to the Heritage Foundation on the sly during the early 1980s (The Nation, 1/23/89). Heritage officials continue to "categorically deny" the accusation. But Heritage's latest annual report does acknowledge a $400,000 grant from the Korean conglomerate Samsung. Another donor, the Korea Foundation--which serves as a direct conduit of money from the South Korean government--has given Heritage almost $1 million in the past three years (Wall Street Journal, 8/10/95). However, U.S. media outlets rarely allude to Heritage's financial links with Korea--even when such ties are directly relevant.

The New York Times avoided the subject in a news article (3/12/96) about two former South Korean leaders, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, on trial for the massacre of many hundreds of pro-democracy demonstrators at Kwangju in 1980. The article, by Nicholas Kristof, merely said that the pair's attorney "quoted from a report by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative American research institute, referring to the protesters in Kwangju not as democracy campaigners but as 'rioters.'"

Likewise, a Washington Post dispatch (4/9/96) cited the views of Daryl Plunk, "a Korea specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation"--but made no mention of the monetary ties between South Korea and Heritage.While quick to quote the Heritage Foundation, major media outlets have not often probed it. But the Wall Street Journal (8/10/95) did take an exceptional look at the Heritage-Korea connection:


Unlike most other think tanks, Heritage not only suggests ideas but actively pushes them in Congress. And in some cases, its legislative efforts would benefit the goals of major donors. Heritage scholars, for example, have drafted specific language for legislation that would help South Korea by encouraging the U.S. to include Seoul more directly in U.S. dealings with North Korea. Meantime, one of Heritage's largest donors, the Korea Foundation, is an affiliate of the South Korean government, according to Yoo Lee, a spokesman for South Korea's embassy here. Heritage President Edwin Feulner says he isn't aware that the Korea Foundation is an arm of their government.
http://www.fair.org/extra/9607/heritage.html

Oh goodness, and I havent even started on NED. This is just an icicle on a big bad iceberg.

Send me your think tank links.. if you dare.