FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL

When the scandal surrounding Congressman Mark Foley’s pedophilic abuses of congressional pages broke in early fall of 2006, Tony

Perkins – president of this $10.2 million stronghold of the religious right movement - saw a golden opportunity, issuing this statement:

“It’s shocking. But it shouldn’t be totally surprising. When we hold up tolerance and diversity as the guideposts for public life, this is what you end up getting. You get congressmen chasing 16-year-olds down the halls of Congress.” Formerly the pet project of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, the Family Research Council greases the wheels of big ideas like dismantling the separation between church and state and suppressing reproductive rights.

• Getting It Straight: What the Research Shows About Homosexuality by Timothy J. Dailey and Peter Sprigg / This

book argues, among other things, that coming out will lead to an early death. Its purpose is to dispel the myth that “homosexuality is harmless.”

• Women Who Make the World Worse by Kate O’Beirne / O’Beirne’s first book accuses leading feminists of fracturing

families, driven by the notion that men are the enemy.

• “How U.S. Official Promotes Marriage To Help Poor Kids” by Laura Meckler / Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Meckler endorses the government’s decision to spend more than $5 million in taxpayer funds to promote healthy marriage initiatives.

CATO INSTITUTE

In a year in which most experts focused on the importance of early childhood education to academic achievement, the Cato Institute argued against the entire concept of Universal Pre-School. As an alternative, Cato wants tax breaks to allow one parent (let’s guess which one they mean) to stay at home, saying “Instead of forcing both parents into the workplace through heavy taxation, the government should reduce the tax burden on families, allowing childcare to remain in the capable hands of parents.” If only Cato used its massive budget of $15.6 million to advocate for policies that actually address the challenges of working families, which can’t be solved by just a tax break.

• “The Fallacy of Campaign Finance Reform” by John Samples / Contrary to the argument that campaign finance reform will open up the electoral process, this report argues that reducing soft money and special interest contributions will reduce competition and make it more likely that incumbents will hold onto their seats.

• Medicare Meets Mephistopheles by David Hyman / This book argues that “Medicare may be the greatest trick the devil ever played… It turns seniors into health care gluttons… Medicare makes Democrats lust for socialized medicine, while its imperviousness to reform makes Republicans angrier and angrier.”

• “‘Affordable’ Economics” by Alan Reynolds / Reynolds believes certain things should be financially out of reach for average Americans: “Doesn’t the middle class deserve bargain Barolo and budget Bordeaux?… If it seems easy to afford everything you want, then you aren’t middle class.”

THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION

The Heritage Foundation’s ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff made the news this year. But instead of running away from the practices that landed Abramoff in jail, Heritage ran towards them, hiring a lobbyist to protect the lobbying culture in which it is firmly entrenched. From hosting gatherings of the K-Street Project (an invite-only group of conservative Senators and lobbyists) at its eight-story headquarters on Capitol Hill to paying for plush policy briefing vacations for elected officials, Heritage has a vested interest in the status quo. Sounds a little like their policy agenda as well.

• “Card Check Undermines Workplace Democracy” by James Sherk / Sherk argues that card check procedures, in which employees at a given company can unionize if a majority of employees sign a card saying they’d like to, do not shield workers from employer intimidation, as many labor activists have argued, but instead infringe on the right to privacy when one votes.

• “Stupid Soldiers: Central to Left’s Worldview” by Tim Kane / Arguing that Senator John Kerry’s gaffe that without education, “you get stuck in Iraq” was really no gaffe at all but a central conviction of the “anti-war Left,” Kane suggests that: “ Antiwar criticism has morphed into a patronizing attitude toward GIs, by way of questioning the quality of the men and women who volunteer to serve. Perhaps it is easier for the antiwar Left to believe that soldiers are unintelligent than to believe that they are taking risks willingly because they actually believe in the war’s purpose.”

• “Importing Poverty: Immigration and Poverty in the

United States” by Robert E. Rector / The federal government, according to Rector, is spending trillions to lift people out of poverty while its immigration policy is importing poverty from abroad and allowing these recent arrivals to feed off our entitlement programs.

THE COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

The Competitive Enterprise Institute wouldn’t touch environmentalism with a ten foot pole—because it might kill them. Not only did they write “Smoking as a Civic Duty,” but 2006 was also the year in which CEI warned against making fuel economy standards more robust because it would lead to downsizing in the automotive industry, which would lead to more car accident deaths. CEI criticized the Archbishop of Canterbury when he asked Christians to help lower greenhouse gas emissions, saying that lowering these levels, even in “baby steps,” would “result in the deaths of more people in the U.S. than global warming would worldwide.”

• “Unhappy Days Are Here Again” by Henry I. Miller / Writing in the National Review Online, Miller offers his analysis of the incoming Congressional leadership: “Not only is Pelosi herself radical, but many of the powerful Democratic committee chairmen-in-waiting are members in good standing of what veteran bipartisan presidential advisor David Gergen has called the ‘loony Left.’”

• “Put a Stop to ‘Big Tofu’” by Gregory Conko / More powerful than Big Business or Big Oil is Big Tofu, which is exerting its coercive influence on the American diet. Says Conko: “From attacks on movie theater popcorn to fast food burgers, Big Tofu wants to keep you from dining on steak, French fries, soda and anything else it deems bad for you. The top priority: protect you from yourself by imposing its vegan-leaning, beans-and-rice, ‘if-it-tastes good-it-must-be-bad-for-you’ views on what constitutes a proper diet.”

THE MANHATTAN INSTITUTE

Fight, fight! From the home base of President Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” comes a year of flat-out contradiction on immigration. In one corner, Fellow Tamar Jacoby argues that immigrants are good for the American economy and that the best policy will lead to gradual citizenship for these “hard-working, churchgoing people with families.” And in the other corner, fellow Heather Mac Donald pleads with the government to close the borders, stop the “Immigrant Gang Plague” and give relief to “police forces and county jails reeling under the burden of illegal-alien rapists.” The Institute is funded in part by oil companies, behemoth banks, and conservative foundations, and with its opposing views on immigration, it can please its entire donor base.

• “Hispanic Family Values? Runaway illegitimacy is creating a new U.S. underclass” Heather Mac Donald / Mac Donald argues that allowing immigrants, with their high illegitimacy rates, to cross our borders amounts to an attack on the traditional American family.

• “Making Civil Justice Sane” by Philip K. Howard / Making the case for tort “reform,” this article suggests that the threat of lawsuits is responsible not only for the repeal of “fun,” but ultimately for childhood obesity: “Fun, for example, is fraught with fear. Schools ban dodgeball and tag. Jungle gyms, diving boards, and seesaws seem relics of some past civilization. Meanwhile our children, rescued from the risks of roughhousing and accident, suffer from the far greater risk of obesity, now at epidemic proportions.”

THE HOOVER INSTITUTION

In 2006, the Hoover Institution offered its support of low-income workers: “Part of the low income of low-income workers is a result of many of them choosing to work fewer hours… Such choices are not necessarily bad choices; more power to them if they want to enjoy their leisure.” The market value of the Hoover Institution’s endowment exceeds $250 million, so it’s not such a heavy lift to raise their $25 million annual budget. It’s surprising then, with all their leisure time, that the Hoover Institution hasn’t come up with a better analysis of the impact of globalization on our economy than claiming that poor people are poor because they want more free time.

• “Food Stamps: The Never-Ending Story” by Jeffrey M. Jones / This article claims that food stamps may have made sense during the Great Depression, but today amount to nothing more than runaway entitlement.

• “The High Price of Cheap Drugs” by Russell Roberts / This analysis of the different methods of making prescription drugs more affordable ends with a blanket indictment of any government intervention to keep costs in check: “[T]he result would be lower prices today and less innovation tomorrow…who would want to punish their grandchildren in this way?”

THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

A tireless proponent of rolling back regular Americans’ access to the courts, AEI Fellow Ted Frank called the effort to help Katrina victims rebuild just one more attempt to “scapegoat insurance companies on behalf of trial attorneys.” Luckily, insurance companies have Frank to do their bidding. Entering a debate in which both homeowners and the insurance companies that are supposed to protect them had valid arguments, Frank was quick to take the side of insurance companies by backing arguments that would excuse them from paying deserving claims. Hopefully, the dozens of former AEI staffers that have been absorbed into the Bush Administration are a little more concerned about the real victims of this humanitarian crisis.

• “Ignore Democrat Spin: the Bush Economy is Solid” by Kevin A. Hassett / Hassett on the economy before November 7: “So the Bush economy is pretty terrific. It will be interesting to see if voters decide to surprise the pundits and reward Republicans tomorrow at the polls.”

• “Halloween Is an Economist’s Biggest Nightmare” by Kevin A. Hassett / This opinion piece takes issue with what its author deems the most harrowing of all candy bars, the Charleston Chew, and argues that instead of candy, trick-or-treaters should get money on Halloween.

• The Wal-Mart Revolution: How Big-Box Stores Benefit Consumers, Workers, and the Economy by Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox / Based on the economic theory that people use money to buy things that make them happy, this book argues that Big Box stores benefit society because their cheaper prices allow people to buy more and thus to be happier.

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