Project 2025
After a recent post under my personal page in response to the debate and future elections, I decided to find out what I could about Project 2025. I should preface this by stating I did not read Project 2025 in its entirety. Rather, I researched it reading various web entries on the subject.
Project 2025 is the creation of The Heritage Foundation; founded on February 16, 1973 referred to in the piece I read as an activist American conservative think tank.
The Heritage Foundation is an associate member of the State Policy Network, founded in 1992, a network of conservative and libertarian organizations financed by the Koch brothers, Philip Morris, and other corporate sources. (Wikipedia, 2024)
What I thought of was more along the lines of lobbyists on steroids. It has put forth efforts to influence leaders of this country as far back as Nixon and are now posturing with Project 2025 to influence Trump should he be elected this November.
By virtue of their lengthy existence, they are by no means Trump MAGA supporters. Rather they have the intent of putting their two cents in via the oval office; an office they do not wish to run for or occupy.
Not to jump too quickly into the fray, but this is where it loses me.
If you want to be the leader of this country, run for office. Don’t back seat drive those in the position like a puppeteer.
In short, I am no more “anxious” about Project 2025 than I was Mandate for Leadership, a report aimed at reducing the size of the federal government given to the Reagan administration, which, incidentally, Reagan like so much he gave a copy to each member of his cabinet to review. I am, however, continually alarmed at how influential people with deep pockets insist on exercising whatever control they can muster in Washington to their own end.
I came upon this next article which I share with you all now:
The open secrets blog post http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/09/opensecrets-battle—koch-brothers.html linked to from Josh Murdock’s answer to Is George Soros the liberal equivalent of the Koch brothers? shows the difficulties with a comparative analysis. For my part, I will try to distinguish three kinds of spending that get lumped in the “political influence” category
- Direct spending on politicians, PACs, and advocacy groups to influence short run election outcomes.
- Spending on lobbyists to influence policies, typically done to seek policies that favor their business, company, or industry.
- Spending on think tanks, foundations, policy houses, international movements, etc. typically done with long term goals.
With (1), it’s pretty straightforward: Soros has supported Democratic candidates in the US, and the Koch brothers have supported Republican candidates. This doesn’t reflect the deep alignment of either side with the corresponding party, but simply that Soros thinks the Democrats are the lesser evil and the Koch brothers think the Republicans are the lesser evil. The Open Secrets number crunching suggests that Soros spent a lot more than the Koch brothers in recent years, but that may be a function of recent events.
(2) isn’t really that important. Neither Soros nor the Kochs stand out specifically on the lobbying front. Given the huge discretionary powers of the US government, it’s not surprising that lots of companies, whether they like politics or not, feel the need to engage in lobbying to promote their interests. Soros and the Kochs aren’t unusual in this respect.
(3) is the most interesting. Unlike the case of (1), where each person has to choose between two parties, here it is possible to promote a wide variety of agendas. Both Soros and the Kochs have funded organizations that aim (or claim to aim) to promote individual liberty, oppose tyranny and communism, etc. The Kochs additionally value economic liberty while Soros (probably) values democratic participation and low levels of inequality more. The Kochs have helped found and/or fund libertarian organizations like the Cato Institute, Institute for Humane Studies, Mercatus Center, and Reason Foundation, all of which promote individual liberty, economic freedom, or both. Soros has helped fund a number of initiatives to promote civil liberties and greater democratic participation, plus those with a more explicitly progressive agenda.
I want to make two points here. First is that I don’t think that the pattern of donations of either Soros or the Kochs in category (3) can be explained as self-interest, narrowly construed. Rather, it stems from their beliefs about what’s good for the world. When they want to look out for themselves, they spend in category (2)– far more effective. Second, the ideologies motivating their spending, while different in crucial ways, are not diametrically opposed. Both appear to support civil liberties and individual freedom to an extent that would make the median American voter (or the median world citizen) uncomfortable. (Naik, 2024)
I leave you with this thought in closing. I began looking into this at 7:00 am this morning. At 5:18 pm, I received an email from someone named Tony Johnson, Director of Membership The Heritage Foundation. Nine hours later! I have not responded.
References:
Vipul Naik, retrieved from the world wide web on July 4, 2024 from https://www.quora.com/Is-there-any-real-ideological-difference-between-Soros-and-Koch-considering-that-their-main-objective-is-to-maximize-their-pharaonic-wealth-and-more-often-than-not-at-the-expense-of-the-general-public-since-the
Wikipedia, retrieved from the world wide web on July 4, 2024 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation#:~:text=The%20Heritage%20Foundation%20is%20an,Morris%2C%20and%20other%20corporate%20sources.