Letters to the Editor
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@engsoc
Would you care to provide the demonstration that they are horrified by the Bush regime?
Go to Glenn's old blog. Search "Cato." Follow links. Glenn's old blog is at this url: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/
They have issued several papers not just in opposition to the war in Iraq, but about all this John Yoo nonsense re: dictatorial Executive privilege. Glenn has repeatedly cited, quoted, and linked to those.
CEO's for tobacco give Cato money, because their interests happen to converge. But Cato's interests are not the profits of Big Tobacco. They are seeking to prevent attacks on private property rights and consumer choice -- the right of adults to make their own decisions, and take responsibility for them.
If R. J. Reynolds wanted to give me money to promote the right of pvt pty owners to allow smoking, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
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Mona
Against all better judgement, I'm going to wade tangentially into this latest installment of Libertarian Wars and ask an honest, non-combative question of Mona here.
You mention wanting to preserve rights to private property and individual choice, and I agree that these are laudable goals at least in the abstract.
May I ask, what do you think of the Supreme Court's ending of the Lochner era of strict economic liberty - that is, the end of the Court's recognition of an inviolate freedom to contract for employment, thereby allowing the government to impose safety, health, and other labor standards on employers? In other words, do you think government (state or federal) should have the ability to tell an employer that they must have certain safety standards in place, must pay a certain minimum wage, or must not require their employees to work beyond a certain amount of hours per week?
I'm not trying to bait you into a trap, I'm just earnestly curious.
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@DCLaw1
Lochner was judicial activism at its finest. While I agree with the result politically, it is constitutionally and jurisprudentially indefensible.
Herbert Spencer's views are, indeed, not incorporated in the Constitution. Resorting to "freedom of contract" to reach the result in Lochner was sheer sophistry, as a constitutional matter.
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Mona
But what no one seems to get is that the CEO's of large corporations are not libertarians. There is a reason for that. Cato does not endorse government being in bed with big business in the corrupt fashion it so clearly is.
But what would you call Cato's willingness to take money from these very same corporations if not "being in bed with big business in the corrupt fashion it so clearly is"? Surely you're not suggesting that these donations do not and have not affected Cato's choice of issues to focus on, and the stances it takes on them? I do not have the evidence to back this implication up since I've not done the research, but it would be hugely surprising if this was not the case. Cato may well be an "independant" think tank or public policy institute, but to believe that its work and positions are not affected by the big corporate dollars it receives seems quite strained.
I agree, btw, that CEOs of large corporations are not--or likely not--libertarians, for the reasons you cite--they love those welfare checks and other entitlements in the form of tax credits and loopholes and regulatory favoratism (obtained, of course, via campaign donations that help elect politicians who support such policies). But they also seem to have no problem donating money to allegedly "libertarian" think tanks putting out reports that just happen to favor their business interests in other ways (and whose positions on corporate welfare never seem to be embraced by government). Hmm.
Sorry, Mona, but I think that you're oversimplifying the relationship between government, corporations and think tanks. They are all in bed with each other, most recently in the rather dishonest attempt to privatize social security on the false basis that it would fix its looming fiscal problems, when it was clearly intended to begin the dismantling of that program and benefit Wall St. To disagree that this was what it was all about is simply delusional. And Cato was right there at the center of it all, "independantly" and "coincidentally" supporting the very same positions endorsed by both government (i.e. the Bush administration) and Wall St. Once again, hmm.
Incidentally, I have nothing against libertarianism, libertarians or libertarian think tanks--even though I disagree with many but not all of their positions. I do have a problem, though, when they take money from the very companies whom their "independant research" just happens to support. It just stinks to high heaven, and suggests a certain quid pro quo collusion which is hard to ignore, and renders all this "research" to be of rather questionable merit.
I am not saying that everyone who works at Cato is implicitely corrupt, or that all of its output is corrupted by corporate money. But so long as it continues to accept corporate donations (directly or indirectly, as we all know about backdoor donations thanks to Bill & Hill's fine work in the 90's), and its output often endorses and supports positions that happen to benefit these same corporations, this cloud of collusion and corruption will always hang over it, rendering anything it puts out as having questionable merit.
As Eisenhower might have said, beware the corporate-think tank-government complex (which is really just a superset of the M-I complex that he warned us about while at the same time heavily and perhaps hypocritically contributing to its rapid growth). A fear of THIS sort of collusion is one that I share with libertarians. Sadly, it does not appear to be entirely shared by so-called libertarian think tanks such as Cato, which have compromised their alleged principles and beliefs by taking this corporate money. I do not mind their taking it. I do mind their alleging that it doesn't affect their output, which it clearly does.
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@bucky1
Well, I don't know if the article you cited is representative or not of Cato. As I said, I didn't spend much time on that site. But since you bring it as an exhibit for the defense, we might as well assume it is representative.
No, the fact that the article expresses views that differ from mine does not make it propaganda.
I will tell you what it is exactly that unmistakably makes it a propaganda piece.
The promiscuous use of such vague terms as "likely" and "unlikely" by scientists who are trained in precision speaks volumes about how much is unknown.
This is just silly. It is precisely because scientists are trained in precision that they have to use words like likely and unlikely. To say we know something for sure implies 100% certainty, and in science we never achieve that, even in the hard sciences like physics. At most we have very convincing evidence, as is the case here. To appeal to the wording of the conclusions of the panel to imply there's a significant level of doubt is spreading disinformation.
Next: a paper published in Science reviews the literature on the subject, and concludes there is overwhelming agreement. Another paper claims the contrary, but we are not told where it was published. A wikipedia search shows that the author is a social anthropologist, his paper was rejected by Science, and he now admits he was in error. I won't give the link, just search in wikipedia for Benny Peiser. Furhter, he appears to have received money from Exxon (see my previous comment).
I don't think I need to say more.
I will repeat it: if you want to see what a site on global warming that isn't propaganda looks like, go to www.realclimate.org. I think you will easily appreciate the difference, if you're in good faith.