Research To Be Done

Writes David Franke:

This article in Counterpunch is a typical statist screed on policy issues. However, it raises an interesting point on the Cato-Koch fight. We are being asked by Cato to fight its takeover by Koch because the Koch brothers would turn it into an arm of the Republican Party. Yet, as this author points out:

“According to the Cato Institute web site, there were 16 members on its Board of Directors and a Director Emeritus prior to the Koch coup on March 1 when the Koch brothers installed four new Koch operatives to replace four Cato loyalists. Of the 16 members, according to Federal Election Commission records, only three have given money to the Libertarian National Committee since 1997. Those three are William A. Dunn, Lewis E. Randall, and Jeffrey Yass. All together, the funds totaled $42,250 over 15 years.

“That small sum is dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to Republican candidates and Republican Committees by the other Cato Board members from 1997 to the present.”

The author, Pam Martens, uses a very specific figure ($42,250) for contributions to the LP, but a very vague figure (“hundreds of thousands of dollars,” with no proof) for contributions to the GOP. It would be very interesting for someone who has the time to compile a specific figure on donations to the GOP by Cato board members.

That GOP figure should be divided between donations to Ron Paul and donations to the GOP. If, indeed, there were donations to Ron Paul.

That would be an interesting comparison…

Republican Party
Libertarian Party
Ron Paul

Then the bigger point would be that those donations to the first two were mostly wasted, and would have been much better spent as donations to the Ron Paul movement and entities such as Mises and LRC…

P.S. Of course the bigger picture would be donations (including to the Democrats) by the corporations backing Cato. But that would be a much bigger project. This would be a start, and would be more telling, since it involves the people actually in charge of running Cato.

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12:52 pm on March 13, 2012