American Enterprise Institute?

[SHRED]

I was told they are not comprised of "conservatives" but rather "neocons".
Can someone enlighten me here.
Is AEI just a Neocon outfit?

[Crunchy Frog]

1. Yes.

According to Wikipedia. "It has emerged as one of the leading architects of the Bush administration's public policy; more than two dozen AEI alumni have served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government's many panels and commissions."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

A list of members:


Christopher DeMuth, who served in the Reagan administration, has been president of AEI since 1986
Ted Frank is resident fellow and director of the AEI Liability Project.
David Frum, an author and former speechwriter for Bush, is a resident fellow.
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a resident fellow. He is the director of the Project for the New American Century's Middle East Initiative and a former Middle East specialist at the CIA.
Newt Gingrich, member of the Republican Party and Speaker of the United States House of Representatives between 1995 and 1999, is a senior fellow at AEI focusing on health care (he has founded the Center for Health Transformation), information technology, the military, and politics.
Author James K. Glassman is a resident fellow.
Michael Greve is the John G. Searle Scholar and director of AEI's Federalism Project.
Jeane Kirkpatrick is the former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and an AEI senior fellow.
Michael Ledeen was previously involved in the transfer of arms to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair -- an adventure that he documented in his book, Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair.
John Lott, Jr. is an opponent of gun control and the author of a book titled "More Guns, Less Crime."
Joshua Muravchik, is a Resident Scholar. He researches Middle East politics, democracy, neoconservatism and the history of socialism.
Charles Murray, an influential policy writer and a researcher, is the W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom. He is best known as the co-author of the controversial The Bell Curve in 1994.
Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy and Public Policy and Director of Social and Political Studies at the institute. He has written extensively about the role of faith in government.
Richard Perle serves on the United States Defense Policy Board and the former deputy Secretary of Defense.
Lee Raymond, CEO of ExxonMobil, is the vice chair of AEI's board of trustees.
Christina Hoff Sommers is a critic of the feminist movement. She is the author of Who Stole Feminism and The War Against Boys.
Fred Thompson, the current D.A. on Law & Order and former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, researches "National Security & Intelligence (China, North Korea, and Russia)" for the AEI.
Ben Wattenberg, a speechwriter for President Lyndon B. Johnson, is a senior fellow.
John Yoo, formerly of the Office of Legal Counsel, and a professor at Boalt Hall, is a visiting scholar.


Funding sources:

AEI has received more than $30 million in funding from sources including the following:

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc.
Castle Rock Foundation
Coors
Earhart Foundation
JM Foundation
Microsoft Corporation <1>
Philip M. McKenna Foundation, Inc.
John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
Sarah Scaife Foundation
Scaife Family Foundation
Smith Richardson Foundation


Looks pretty neocon to me.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. Jeepers, what a scorpions' nest.

The think tank from hell.

[Wordie]

14. A small revision needed: Ledeen is Rove's foreign policy advisor. n/t

[spindrifter]

2. Check AEI on SourceWatch

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Enterprise_Institute

This should give you some responsible reporting on who and what they are.

(I refer to SourceWatch for info on just about every think tank I run across--and it's been pretty interesting and appalling to see what is funding what.

[Eric J in MN]

5. SourceWatch lists their alumni, like

# Dick Cheney
# Alan Keyes
# Jeane Kirkpatrick
# Irving Kristol
# Kenneth Lay

[spindrifter]

6. Yes, you can

get bios on people involved in AEI from SourceWatch. For example, Lynne Cheney is also one of their "fellows." She was chair of the NEH and has written variously on history topics--but I don't know what actual research she has done in either field.

[Eric J in MN]

3. David Frum is one of their scholars, and he was a speechwriter

for Bush who brought us "Axis of Evil."

Here is a list of their scholars:
http://www.aei.org/scholars/filter.all/scholar_byname.asp

[pnorman]

4. People for the American Way

Right Wing Organizations

American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
www.aei.org and www.taemag.com (American Enterprise Magazine)

Established: 1943
President/Executive Director:Christopher DeMuth
Finances: $24.4 million (2000)
Employees: 50 resident scholars and fellows
Publications: Monthly newsletter, dozens of books and hundreds of articles and reports each year, and a glossy policy magazine, The American Enterprise.
American Enterprise Institute’s Principal Issues:

# American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a think tank for conservatives, neoconservatives, and conservative libertarians.
# Areas of interest include: America’s “culture war,” domestic policy and federal spending, education reform, neoconservatism, affirmative action, welfare reform.
# President George W. Bush has appointed over a dozen people from AEI to senior positions in his administration. AEI claims that this is more than any other research institution.

American Enterprise Activities:

# AEI sponsors and participates in debates and lectures on many issues.
# AEI scholars have testified before Congress on a variety of issues.
# Several AEI scholars have written articles in favor of government censorship of the arts.
# Scholar Michael Novak has argued that prayer belongs in public schools and that it doesn’t violate the establishment clause.
# AEI scholars have advocated federally-funded school voucher programs.

AEI's Background and History:

# Most of AEI’s Board of Directors are CEOs of major companies, including ExxonMobil, Motorola, American Express, State Farm Insurance, and Dow Chemicals.
# Big donors include the top conservative foundations, including Smith-Richardson Foundation, the Olin Foundation, the Scaife Foundation, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
# Corporate supporters have included: General Electric Foundation, Amoco, Kraft Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, General Motors Foundation, Eastman Kodak Foundation, Metropolitan Life Foundation, Proctor & Gamble Fund, Shell Companies Foundation, Chrysler Corporation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Pillsbury Company Foundation, Prudential Foundation, American Express Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Smith-Richardson Foundation, Alcoa Foundation, and PPG Industries.
# Kenneth Lay, CEO of Enron, was until recently on the board of trustees of American Enterprise Institute. Other famous former trustees include Vice President Dick Cheney.

AEI Fellows and Scholars List :

# Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney
# Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House
# Robert Bork, failed Supreme Court nominee
# David Frum, a presidential speechwriter for President Bush, contributing editor to the right-wing magazine Weekly Standard
# Christina Hoff Sommers, anti-feminist crusader, author of “Who Stole Feminism? How Women Betrayed Women”
# Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, a book that asserted inherent intelligence differences between the races
# Ben J. Wattenberg, host of PBS weekly show “Think Tank”

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=4456

pnorman

[spindrifter]

7. Probably one of the scariest

things about AIE is the positioning of people for govt. appointments. Not only do they "introduce" their ideas through publication--their own and in a variety of journals and MSM, but they then use the "credentials" to get their people named to policy-making positions.
We should be doing this stuff.

[moondust]

8. Ideological junkyard.

[DemGirl7]

9. Yeah it's a major Neocon place

When I went on my campus's D.C. a year and half ago, It was one of places we went to, I had stop myself from :puke: listening to BS that I was being told.

[calimary]

10. It is the cradle of the PNAC - Project for a New American Century

whose cornerstone was remaking the Middle East in our image and likeness, bringing democracy by force, and starting with Iraq. Their manifesto, prepared and presented to Bill Clinton, urging him to invade Iraq, was filed by Clinton in the round file and there it sat until they were able to find themselves a friendlier puppet for the White House.

william kristol is the chair of the PNAC and an AEI pride 'n' joy. Signatories of PNAC include dick "Hey 19!" cheney, wolfowitz, feith, perle, and li'l brother jebbie bush. The membership is a real rogue's gallery. This is the Holy-of-Holies of the American Enterprise institute.

Also, CNN's chief poll-cruncher, Bill Schneider, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He betrays his bias every time he has to report on more bad numbers for bush. For him, as well as for bush, the smirk disappears when he's forced to do that. He becomes somber as an undertaker. He's almost jolly on camera when he likes what he's reporting (something beneficial to bush or republi-CONS). His face takes on this vague aura not unlike the cat that just ate the canary.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

11. With regard to Bill Schneider, when I used to watch him on CNN

I thought he was fair though. I couldn't tell he was one.

[Wordie]

13. They just hosted the LIAR Ahmed Chalabi, and are trying to restore his

reputation. That should give you some idea.

[Crunchy Frog]

15. One of the reasons that I will never donate to NPR

is the frequency with which they bring on "experts" to discuss some particular issue, and who just happen to be members of the American Enterprise Institute. They always announce that fact, and make it sound like it's such a respectable scolarly institution. They never give any information about the underlying political agenda. They simply present the person as an apparently neutral "expert".

The insidious way in which they worm their message all through the corporate media with virtually no one knowing their real agenda, and no one in the corporate media having any inclination to reveal it is one of the most disturbing things that I've noticed.

Overall, they seem to do a pretty good job of covering their tracks if there are even long time members here who don't know who they really are. I don't know how we go about trying to push the media into coming more clean about the political agendas of the people they invite to speak on different issues.