" In early November, David Koch met with Bob Levy, chairman of Cato’s board of directors, at Dulles International Airport. They were joined by Richard Fink, Koch’s chief adviser, and Kevin Gentry, a vice president of Charles Koch’s charitable foundation who’d been put on Cato’s board of directors. (Former Americans for Prosperity President Nancy Pfotenhauer had joined the board after the same meeting.)

" “They said that a principal goal was to defeat Barack Obama,” remembered Levy. “The way David [Koch] put it was, ‘We would like you to provide intellectual ammunition that we can then use at Americans for Prosperity and our allied organizations.’ AFP and others would apply Cato’s work to advance their electoral goals.” "

" About two dozen individuals, couples or corporations have given $1 million or more to Republican super PACs this year, an exclusive club empowered by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and other rulings to pool their money into federal political committees and pour it directly into this year’s presidential campaign.

" Collectively, their contributions have totaled more than $50 million this cycle, making them easily the most influential and powerful political donors in politics today. They have relatively few Democratic counterparts so far, with most of the leading liberal donors from past years giving relatively small amounts — or not at all — to the Democratic super PACs. "

" The institute has claimed it is "a genuinely independent source of research and commentary" and that "we do not take positions in order to appease or avoid losing support from individual donors". But the documents, if authentic, reveal that its attacks on climate science have been largely funded by a single anonymous donor and that "we are extinguishing primarily global warming projects in pace with declines in his giving". "

Might spur a movement, but more likely it'll remain a coalition or social movement organization. #OWS

" If Congress is complaining that they don't know about something that you care about, the right answer isn't to tell them to go get educated. The right answer is to educate them. Congress mentioned the word "biologics" 75 times in a month because a lobbyist spent a long time doing their job: educating members of Congress on the needs of its industry. "

" Brumberg said the youth are holding onto an unachievable goal of “revolution”—eradicating every last vestige of the old system—when progress, overseen by powerful figures left over from Mubarak’s administration, is likely to be incremental and halting. “This is a process managed by the military, built around mobilizing and negotiating with different groups,” he said. “Whether you like it or not, you have to do politics.” "

" But often, in the human sphere, there are what're called "wicked" problems. In 1973, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber defined a wicked problem this way: "

" The most important group, I’m pretty sure, is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which was founded in 1973 by Henry Hyde, Lou Barnett, and (surprise, surprise) Paul Weyrich. Its goal for the past forty years has been to draft “model bills” that conservative legislators can introduce in the 50 states. Its website claims that in each legislative cycle, its members introduce 1000 pieces of legislation based on its work, and claims that roughly 18% of these bills are enacted into law. "

" The timing of Mr. Thompson’s request surely means that it is a response to my blog posting about the American Legislative Exchange Council, since I have never before been the subject of an Open Records request, and nothing in my prior professional life has ever attracted this kind of attention from the Republican Party. It doesn’t take a great leap of logic to infer that Mr. Thompson and his colleagues aren’t particularly eager to have a state university professor asking awkward questions about the dealings of state Republicans with the American Legislative Exchange Council. This open records request apparently seemed to Mr. Thompson to be a good way to discourage me from sticking my nose in places he doesn’t think it belongs. "

" The Wisconsin Republican Party apparently found Cronon's writing on the links between Walker's initiatives and ALEC unacceptable. In response they demanded--under Wisconsin's Open Records Law--copies of any of Cronon's University emails relating to a series of names and topics. "

" Adult stem cell researchers James Sherley and Theresa Deisher are ideologues. Catholic Theresa Deisher named her biomedical company after the Virgin Mary (AVM for Ave Maria); Baptist James Sherley (famous for throwing a hunger strike and crying racism when his tenure at MIT was denied) is a vehement denouncer of women's reproductive freedoms, calling abortion a "social disease". "

" In their essay outlining the social movement society thesis, Meyer and Tarrow (1998b) ask, ‘‘Has something fundamental changed in the politics in contemporary industrial democracies?’’ We answer that in terms of the overall level of protest participation and in the types of people who demonstrate, there has been no fundamental change. We find only a slight trend toward greater participation in demonstrations during the past 35 years, and that cohorts born after the Baby Boomers are much less likely than their parents to have participated in a protest, although we note a small resurgence among individuals born in the 1980s. Combined with the lack of social and demographic diffusions, this suggests that the United States may have a social movement generation, but it is not a social movement society (pg. 146-47). "

" Williams later updated the post to report that tea partiers in multiple states, including Iowa, Colorado, and Massachusetts, were calling in to plan "their own creative ruses" for embarrasing the union demonstrators. "

" Yet this contention is every bit as bogus as the alarmist arguments put forth by the anti-union crusaders of the 1970s. Contrary to Walker’s assertion, there is no direct correlation between public-sector collective bargaining and yawning state budget deficits. "

" According to one document, the campaign included an entrapment project. The proposal called for first creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” to give to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then to subsequently expose the document as a fake to undermine the credibility of the Chamber’s opponents. In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to “generate communications” with Change to Win. "

" At the moment much of the nation believes that the Religious Right is in retreat. Not so. The Religious Right is reorganizing and rearming, much of it under the banner of Charismatic Dominionism. "

" He has parlayed a 13th-century Catholic philosophy into real political influence. ... Karl Rove told me he considers George a rising star on the right and a leading voice in persuading President George W. Bush to restrict embryonic stem-cell research. ... With the death of the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran minister turned Roman Catholic priest who helped bring evangelicals and Catholics together into a political movement, George has assumed his mantle as the reigning brain of the Christian right. "

" Former AFA employees describe Wildmon—who led the organization until just last year—as an autocratic micromanager incapable of socializing with or showing empathy for his own employees. "

"political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue persuasively that the economic struggles of the middle and working classes in the U.S. since the late-1970s were not primarily the result of globalization and technological changes but rather a long series of policy changes in government that overwhelmingly favored the very rich. "

" Mrs. Thomas’s supporters said she plays an important role as a bridge between grass-roots Tea Party activists and establishment Republicans in Washington. "

" It is not only on the right that the auction of demagogy is operating, and the bids are headed downward. "

"Let's see what MacDonald will say now: The Weekly can reveal that the professor is now partnering with local skinheads and a notorious racist lawyer to create a new political party modeled after England's fascist British National Party, a new party created explicitly to oppose and deport non-whites."

"{Traditionally, the new president would blend his campaign operation with his party's national committee. Some of Obama's closest advisors lean toward that pragmatic view. .., Instead, Obama advisors involved in building the force think it should remain an independent entity -- organized around the "Obama brand.""

"A former Republican White House official, who now works at the American Enterprise Institute, a bastion of Washington neoconservatism, admitted: "She's bright and she's a blank page."

"Working behind the scenes, the Democrats have systematically taken over the anti-war movement, packing the nation's leading group with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war."

"Merck quietly lobbied conservative groups to rein in their opposition. ... After the vaccine was approved, however, Merck immediately began pushing for state legislatures to mandate it, contrary to the regular... practice"

"Think-tanks, long recognised for their independent analysis [chuckle snort], are now at risk of losing their credibility and independence as they get drawn into and polarised by this conflict."

The IHS at George Mason University funds summer internships at a variety of conservative and/or libertarian think-tanks, media outlets, and publications. Incongruously, among them is one student group: Students for Saving Social Security.

Drowning and bathtubs, meet babies and bathwater.

"Even as the donors pour millions into a new political infrastructure, however, problems have emerged that mirror many of the problems of the Democratic Party today and the progressive movement in general."

"directing more than $50 million in the past nine months to liberal think tanks and advocacy groups in what organizers say is the first installment of a long-term campaign to compete more aggressively against conservatives."

"a coarse estimate of the Netroots' numbers shows them to be something less than a groundswell. ... When it comes to money, the bloggers are still playing with Monopoly dollars compared with groups like Emily's List and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."

They're planning 5 decades ahead: "[The PR firm] describes corporate social responsibility as allowing companies to "take the offensive" and that "social involvement will become the primary means for influencing public perception." "

"NCSL claims that term limits result in "legislative brain drain." How dismissive of lawmakers and voters alike! In fact, many citizens have the knowledge and skills required to be legislators — and to be voters."

"The staff migration - a repercussion of term limits passed in 1990 - has strengthened the influence of interest groups in crafting laws but weakened lawmakers' ability to obtain the objective advice and institutional knowledge..."

"Of the school’s 61 graduates ... 2 have jobs in the White House; 6 are on the staffs of conservative members of Congress; 8 are in federal agencies" ... The senior project is designed "to mimic the work that an entry-level staffer would be assigned."

"they don't articulate much of a worldview at all. Netroots activists call this a strength, saying that what binds them is not ideology but partisanship. But,without ideological content, partisan loyalty is vacuous if not amoral-the mere pursuit of power"