Buying Influence

Over the last couple of years, I have examined how courts, Congress, state legislatures and governmental administrators/regulators have bowed to those with cash. Whether current practices influence through unbridled mass media (the aftereffect of the Citizens United and McCutcheon Supreme Court rulings), direct campaign contributions, allowing the regulated to become the regulators, etc., the trend towards letting those with money establish the rules, the playing field and the opportunities – even at the expense of 90% of the entire American population – has accelerated.

I’ve also addressed how the gradual (and not-so-gradual) withdrawal of government funding from basic medical and scientific research has slanted going-forward research towards obviously lucrative areas of study, often at the expense of niche research or efforts where the likely beneficiaries are not likely to have enough money to make the research profitable. We might not have had the Ebola crisis if researchers had believed that the third world countries had the cash to make efforts to extinguish this disease profitable.

But what is becoming part of this disturbing trend is the impact on the quest for private dollars to replace government funding in all forms of research. With so many hands out, donors are now shopping for research agencies for any subject matter that will benefit them, their values and their businesses. Since private money is needed at levels we have not experienced in recent memory, private money is forum shopping and adding strings to what were once truly charitable efforts. It’s a basic response to the rise of demand for private research funding and hardly an off-setting increase in the supply of contributors. And since contributions to such research agencies is almost always tax deductible, taxpayers are still footing a big part of this bill… but the “objectivity” that we once expected in this arena may be vaporizing in our rather rapid transition from democracy to plutocracy.

Nothing makes this clearer than in looking at one sterling example at the top of the research food chain, an organization with a stellar reputation for objectivity and neutrality. “Founded in 1916, [the Brookings Institution] was Washington’s first think tank and remains very much at the heart of the city’s establishment. A University of Pennsylvania survey ranks Brookings the world’s top think tank, and for decades the institution has been a sought-after destination for senior-ranking government officials when they leave office. Its hundreds of scholars — about 150 in-house and 250 who retain nonresident affiliations — occasionally operate as unofficial government envoys who take part in delicate international diplomacy. Others produce definitive works examining Congress, the economy and American society.” Washington Post, October 30^th.

But even here, the wondrous luster of academic neutrality has lost a bit of its shine. “Over the past decade, a new business model has taken hold at Brookings. The Washington institution renowned for impeccable research and its clout as an independent policy architect has in recent years placed an emphasis on expansion and fundraising — giving scholars a bigger role in seeking money from donors and giving donors a voice in Brookings’s research agenda.

“The shift has been powered by a new era of corporate influence in Washington, in which wealthy interests outside government are looking for new avenues to reach policymakers on the inside. Lobbyists are increasingly encouraging clients to donate to Brookings and other think tanks as a way of getting researchers to spend time on the issues that donors care about. Lobbyists say they warn clients not to expect that they can dictate research results from an elite think tank such as Brookings but note that they gain a chance to make their case directly to researchers, stay in touch as papers are written and suggest participants in public forums.

“By enlisting Brookings and other top-tier think tanks, ‘you can amplify or raise an issue,’ said Ed Kutler, a senior partner at Mercury, a public affairs and lobbying firm that has developed expertise in think tanks. ‘You can buy attention, but not a point of view or an outcome.’” Washington Post. Not so nasty as “self-described-neutral” think-tanks slanting the result to favor donors’ perspective, not that uncommon anymore either, but even in choosing which fields to research directs legislative focus, supplies data for litigation that subsidizes one party over another and even directs overall public priorities.

When a foundation at least embraces its bias (like the clear conservative bent of Washington’s Heritage Foundation), at least the public can sense the values that underlie the work. But when neutrality is the basis of the foundation, the fact that money has become so hard to find that revered institutions are beginning to bend… is disturbing, to put it mildly. It’s just part of a nasty mega-trend that seems to be redefining the United States in a way that has to have our forefathers spinning in their graves.

 I’m Peter Dekom, and if we don’t care enough to fight these undemocratic trends, then we have no one to blame but ourselves for the plutocracy we seem to be creating!