How to Create A Vast Left-Wing Think Tank:

[Jackpine Radical]

Use retired professors and other intellectuals. There have to be thousands of retired left-wing professors of law, social sciences, poli sci, etc. whose idealism could be activated. Most of them are still in university towns near libraries & similar resources. Pay them small stipends and turn them loose to create progressive agendas, tactics, etc. Use teleconferencing, email & other cheap means of communication to hold down costs. Let them provide consultation to individual state & Federal candidates for small fees. Consider each election an opportunity for research. Develop new polling tactics, new meme-vectors to infect the people with progressive ideas, even new social structures as needs arise.

[rockymountaindem]

1. That's a great idea.

If you get a lot of them together, the workload on each individual would be pretty low, so they could all enjoy retirement while still contributing a little something to the cause.

[napi21]

2. Good idea, but the RW have done that and pay their tank folks very

very well!

I can't believe the left doesn't have any people with money involved on their side. Why couldn't we do the same?

[Jackpine Radical]

3. We will never compete against the greedheads on economic terms.

I'm quite aware of how well the RW funds its think tanks. Hell, the Puggies even pay people to go out & place yard signs. If their major strength is access to money, then their major weakness is dependence on money. They are incapable of appealing to higher motives than greed, fear and anger. We don't have that much money, and we never will. Therefore we have to look at our unique strengths as our route to political salvation. Two things we do have are intellect and altruism. This proposal is intended to capitalize (pardon the word) on both.

[spindrifter]

4. Do we know how

much the think tankers for the neocons make? I would like to know how much money is going into developing their agendas.

[ToolTex]

7. Someone from The American Enterprise Institute said on "Think Tank"

that their annual budget is $20 mil. And I think he said they have 150 employees.

That averages about $133k per each, but that would include travel, overhead, etc. I would think. Not so much really.

[spindrifter]

8. It's probably a lot more

than those retired profs. made--unless they were in the highly lucrative life sciences or the similarly lucrative business schools--places that probably would not have the liberal idealist thinkers we are looking for.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Some of those AEI employees are probly pretty far down the ladder--

gofers, interns, typists, janitors. On the other hand, they probly also have to pay rent for the facilities. Overall, it wouldn't surprise me to find that the salaries of the principal investigators are in the $100-125 k region. More than the average academic salary in poli sci or history.

[AirAmFan]

5. A "Data Analysis Issues Forum" would be a great vehicle for issues research

at DU, IMO. What makes a think tank a think tank is original research on data. Many DUers are college students who have to write several papers a year anyway. And there are many older DUers who know where to find relevant data for any issue and what to do with them. A "Data Analysis Issues Forum" could bring the two groups together for original research on issues such as: irregularities in vote outcomes; patterns of poverty in neighborhoods; lack of health insurance coverage; and dozens of other possible issues.

Focusing on these issues at state and local levels very often could produce results that would be the best available: Most think tanks produce only national-level resutls, neglecting state- and city-level outcomes that would attract the interest of many media outlets, including MSM newspapers.

What's really essential for such a forum to be successful is a rotating group of original posters, each of whom makes a commitment to stick with a topic for at least several weeks and to produce some final product--such as a paper to be submitted to complete a college course requirement. With help and suggestions from dozens of DUers, students would be able to write much better papers than they could completely by themselves.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. I think there are the seeds of a workable structure n here.

I think there might also need to be some professional work on idea generation and testing (e.g. focus groups, deliberative polling), etc.

[AirAmFan]

11. How to search for issue-related data using Google: Minimum wage example

I Googled '"minimum wage" site:icpsr.umich.edu' a few minutes ago and got 352 hits. ICPSR at the University of Michigan is the largest social-science data archive I know. And, for each dataset it contains, it includes a folder of references to published articles that have used past versions of that particular dataset.

There have been several good DU threads lately on the minimum wage. This issue is at the top of Harry Reid's legislative agenda because 86 percent of the public supports an increase, while the Wall Street wing of Republicans regard a minimum wage increase as anathema. The google search I listed above gets hits on research at places like the American Enterprise Institute funded by corporate interests such as the National Retail Merchants Assn. But an honest look at the latest incarnations of the actual data these articles misused and twisted often would show the opposite of the lies corporate flacks bought from their corrupt sociologists and economists.

To get actual access to the data at http://www.icpsr.umich.edu , you have to be affiliated with a member university and set up an account. Everything else on the site is available free of charge to the public. And, of course, '"minimum wage" site:icpsr.umich.edu' is a template for any issue you can think of: Just substitute in place of "minimum wage" "poverty", "unemployment", "racial discrimination", "gender discrimination", or any other issue that social science data could be used to investigate.

[Jackpine Radical]

12. OK--There's a very worthwhile project for the 2006 campaigns:

A list of potential issues for liberal/progressive candidates, like this:

Topic % Favoring

Increase Minimum Wage 86
National health insurance xx
etc

It would show us which issues to hammer the cons with, which to advocate for.

[pretzel4gore]

6. it's class....

i recall being on a ship approaching detroit city in the 70's and seeing the mansions with their vast yards, heli pads and full service docks miles away from the city give way to smaller and smaller estates until estates became villas still with yardage then the villas turned into houses with floating dock, and the houses turned into duplexes etc pressed up against each other before we were sliding past industrial wasteland detroit city itself....i think many many years of conditioning has disappeared the 'left wing' professors and white caller professionals, with rewards for those selected as upper classmen too great for anyone to refuse (except for true eccentrics)...if one reads f scott fitgerald or even henry james, the prevalence of wealthy americans bumming in europe, year after year, in the stories, is astonishing, because they do nothing (does anyone recall the bruce willis beer commercial where he's in a pub and a few gorgeous women are partying at table; willis says to the camera 'i need 2 guys, right now, to back me up, two CONFIDENT guys! anybody, but they must be CONFIDENT!')? WEll, money, in guaranteed and adequate amounts, bestows CONFIDENCE, and our culture is being slowly ruined by undermining confidence in those not lucky enough to be rich (or plain lucky, like willis, to get a yob as an actorer)
in the 70's, a ordinary worker (say a millworker, long haul trucker, a cop or a fireman ie basic middle class) could put a downpayment on a house 2 years after working fulltime! Today, many fulltime workers starting out can never hope to buy a house (with any idea of actually owning it within a reasonable time) That it appears was the idea the rightwing had; to make money precious to the poor while making it increasingly insignificant beneath the dignity of thinking about, to the rich, just like in henry james/scott fitgerald's time

[Poiuyt]

13. We could just have them read DU!

It seems there's an awful lot of brain power right here

[AirAmFan]

14. But only original research can counter false right-wing "facts", and finding

original research on DU is very difficult now. It's there, but finding it is a needle-haystack task. There ought to be a forum where you'll know you'll find original research being discussed at DU, anytime you want to see some or post an idea for some.