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Think Tanks, Lobbying Groups, and Leftists – Oh My!
On a recent visit to Georgetown, my wife and I had dinner with an old friend of hers. I’ll call her “Susan.” They studied together in France during a semester abroad in college, back in the ’80s. Susan grew up in California near Malibu. Her family had a second home in Park City, Utah, and most weekends she and her family would fly to Utah to go skiing. She didn’t get into Berkeley and ended up going to the University of Utah, where she says she basically skied and partied for four years.
While in France, she met a Frenchman who owned a winery. They got married and had two kids. She sent her kids to boarding school at 11 years old and she traveled the world unencumbered. Her husband was unfaithful, and they divorced after 19 years of marriage. Now she’s back in the states, working at a health care think tank in Washington, DC. Which seems sort of funny, because after a very pleasant evening of conversation, my primary impression of her was that thinking was not her strong suit. That sounds mean. But she consistently and clearly struck me as not terribly intelligent. Which is fine. I’m not terribly artistic like Susan seems to be. We all can’t be great at everything.
Anyway, my wife hadn’t seen her in 30 years, and they had a great time catching up. Susan mostly ignored me (which was perfectly fine with me), until my wife mentioned that I was a doctor. Then she turned to me and said, “Oh, you’re a doctor? I help run a health care think tank!”
Me: “That’s nice!”
Susan: “The CDC gave us a huge grant to figure out why people aren’t getting their COVID vaccines. We’ve been researching the problem for over six months. We’ve got the most brilliant minds in the world working on it.”
Me: “That’s swell!”
Susan is a blind follower of the far left, as you’d expect of someone who grew up extremely wealthy, has been sheltered from reality for most of her life, and lacks an active mind. My wife warned me ahead of time, and I assured her that I would just sit there, and not say a dang thing, no matter what Susan said. So I was keeping my answers brief, and keeping an eye on my wife, who was watching me intently, to be sure I didn’t slip up and say something. Anything, really. I couldn’t blame her.
Susan: “This is a real problem with America. People don’t think. I miss Europe so much…”
Me: “I’m sure they miss you too.”
Wife: * stares at me even more intently *
Susan: “We’ve spent millions of dollars on our research so far. But this is so ridiculous. Can you imagine why anyone wouldn’t get their vaccine?”
Me: “Well, some blacks won’t get it because they suspect it’s a government plot to sterilize black people.”
Susan: * genuinely surprised * “Why on earth would they think such a thing?!?”
Me: “They’ve been trained that you hate them, along with every other white person. You can’t really blame them for actually believing it, I suppose.”
Wife: * dirty look *
Susan: “That’s incredible!”
Me: “And some Democrats won’t get them because Biden and Harris spent a year saying that they would never trust a ‘Trump vaccine.’”
Susan: “You’re kidding!!!”
Me: “And some Republicans won’t get it because they don’t trust the CDC or other government agencies.”
Susan: * clearly shocked * “Oh my gosh! That’s unbelievable!!!”
Me: “So in six months of millions of dollars worth of research, did any of your ‘most brilliant minds in the world’ go out and, you know, ask people why they didn’t get the vaccine?”
Wife: “Say, who was that cute guy in France that worked at the pub we always went to?”
Susan: “Well, of course, we’ve been really busy with data collection and analysis. We’ve been talking to some of the smartest people in the country about it. I mean, if you won’t even get a simple vaccine, that kind of means that you’re not exactly a genius, right? So why would we talk to people like that?”
Me: “Um, because you want to know why they’re making a certain decision. One way to figure that out would be to, you know, ask them. I understand your desire to avoid the undesirables. But it’s hard to study fish without getting wet once in a while, right?”
Wife: “Remember that cheap wine we used to drink for like 50 cents a glass? Woo!!!”
Susan: “For Europeans like me, it can be really hard to understand why Americans do things.”
Me: “Especially if you don’t ask them.”
Wife: “How ‘bout we get another bottle of wine?”
Me: “Sounds great!”
Susan: “All we can do is report our findings. We’re not a lobbying group (she spat those words out as if they were distasteful to her). We’re a think tank. We just provide our findings to the government.”
Me: “Let me guess. Your findings are that the vaccination rates are lower than desired because of inadequately funded government programs.”
Wife: * really dirty look *
Susan: “Actually, you’re exactly right. We’re proposing federal and state initiatives to improve vaccination rates. Funding for these programs will be easy because both parties want to fix this. That’s why they should listen to think tanks instead of lobbying groups. We provide them with unbiased information. So we keep them honest, and they keep hiring us for whatever problem comes along.”
Me: “There’s a simple way to test your hypothesis.”
Susan: “What do you mean?”
Me: “Just once, submit your findings to the government on some problem, and suggest that the best way to fix their problem would be to spend less money on something. Anything, really. See if you get any future grants. That way, you’d know that they really want honest information rather than confirmation of their own biases, and you could – OW!!!!”
Wife: * really dirty look after she kicked me in the shin *
Susan: “I don’t understand…”
Me: “Ah! Here’s our next bottle of wine! Why don’t you ladies refill your glasses? If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go the little boys’ room…”
* Limps away from table at 35mph *
I’d never really thought about the difference between think tanks and lobbying groups in Washington. After hearing Susan point out how different they are, I suspect that they may have a lot in common. They’re all just trying to earn money by promoting the growth of the government that pays them money. It’s not a parasitic relationship – it’s symbiotic. Which is much worse.
This sort of relationship makes sense, I suppose. Presuming you’re either a leftist or a sociopath. Which, in DC, seems to be a pretty safe assumption for much of the population.
Our government is broken in so many little ways. And it’s infested, at every level, with people like Susan. Which means it’s very unlikely to get better. They can’t fix problems that don’t even strike them as problems. To them, everything is ok.
The three of us drank three bottles of really yummy wine, ate some really good food, and blew nearly $300. I woke up with a hangover, a sore shin, and a grumpy wife: “I can’t take you anywhere!”
Why did my kid have to decide to play at Georgetown? Nebraska has a great volleyball team. Those visits would have been pleasant, at least…
Published in General
Agencies pay think tanks (a) to affirm what the agency already believes (b) to reward ideological allies (c) to create a future employment landing zone or (d) to deliver bad news about policy failures so the agency does not have to do it and/or (e) invent (pass on) reasons why the agency needs more funds.
A ton of healthcare “think tanks” seemed to spring into existence around 1993 when Clinton appointed Hillary to be health policy czar. She ordered a gathering of lefty groups (excluding almost any group that actually represented hospitals or doctors) to allegedly advise her.
The gathering was later ruled illegal because Hillary was doing a formal rule-making and thus had to be open to all citizens. The irony was that Hillary could have offered the defense that she clearly had no intention of listening to anyone. The gathering was just there to cheer when Ira Magaziner finished translating the new American healthcare plan from the original Swedish or from wherever they were borrowing a single-payer model. I recall some lobbyist friends laughing that it was so cute seeing little groups of nerds at downtown restaurants exchanging little diagrams and jargon as if they were going to be part of Hillary’s process.
I am surprised that your wife’s friend at her age is at such a group unless (a) she is a contributor and/or (b) doing grunt work for a small salary. Being vapid, having no clue about government and the world and accomplishing little for a small salary is usually a slot for a recent college graduate.
Hillary may be gone but her spirit lives on in in many academic, NGO and “think tank” entities. When doing health care policy there is, of course, no reason to understand much less talk to doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, medical equipment manufacturers or pharmaceutical companies because they are all part of the problem. It is for them to deliver as ordered when the solution is unveiled.
I love this.
The Minnesota Democrat party really goes crazy with that. They really know how to minimize the career risks and jack up the compensation.
George Soros literally had a separate office costing him over $100,000 a year inside of the Minneapolis government. It was something about climate change and getting people to walk or whatever.
Me too.
When she said, “I help run a think tank…” I suspect that she might have been inflating her role a bit. Although perhaps not – I have no first hand knowledge.
And I don’t understand what she’s doing back in the states, or why she feels the need to get a “job”. At dinner, she was wearing $300 jeans and $1,000 Italian shoes. What is she doing? Why? I don’t know.
My guess is she wants to feel important, and she lacks marketable skills, so she is drawn to Washington.
But I really don’t know.
That’s one of many reasons that I found her so fascinating…
Fantastic summary. That sounds like the voice of experience. From someone who understands The Game.
I doubt that Susan even knows that there is a Game, much less that she is a participant in it…
Sociopaths can inflict horrible pain on people they are close to and that makes them unusual. Taking advantage of weaker populations in order to advance the population that you are a part of is both human and animal nature. Remember that our ancestors were the ones who succeeded in raping and conquering the weak.
And no reason to worry about the cost.
No they don’t. Everyone wants to move to America and then they complain and try to make it like the place they left.
That’s how I feel. I have always been a stranger to all humanity.
What the lobbyists do for the legislators and their 60-person staffs is often more important than any Caribbean vacations they may pay for: they provide packaged and edited information in the forms of long reports and condensed talking and selling points. This gift is more important than anyone can imagine. It allows complicated legislation to be pushed through overnight, as the 3,000-page Affordable Care Act bills were. The lobbyists are the authors of the legislation, and the staff need only edit it lightly.
We ain’t seen nothin’ yet either. The “climate crisis” will see this sort of influence in storms of paper that are being generated as we speak.
Lobbyists and think tanks derive their influence from making it possible for our elected officials to go to parties instead of pouring over long boring reports.
Better than most today who go by that epithet.
Same deal with folks moving to Red states.
Bingo
I am reminded of the think tank > government > think tank > government revolving door. Keep an eye on Mayor Pete’s growing CV.
I don’t know if I would feel “validated” unless I got to kick her in the shin too.
Is the French economy sinking, so she was one of the rats leaving that ship, and she wants to suckle from DC for a while before our economy maybe sinks too?
Reasons KED isn’t married, number which?
Bad assumption.
There’s someone for everyone.
But you see, if your wife would never kick YOU in the shin, there would never be a reason to return the favor.
Why Dr Bastiat would tolerate such behavior from his spouse, is HIS problem.
Funny story, though.
Why my wife tolerates my behavior without kicking me in the shin more often than she does is HER problem.
In defense of the lobbying industry, the vast majority are playing defense, explaining to legislators that their cherished proposed solutions have downsides they did not foresee.
Example: When Congress outlawed asbestos in almost every commercial use, it was up to EPA to implement the law, to write the details of the actual regulations. Deep in the many pages of new regs, EPA outlawed rebuilding brake shoes with asbestos pads. This would have effectively eliminated about 750 small and medium firms that rebuild the brakes traded in each time you get new brakes (75% or more of all brakes sold are rebuilt— brake shoes are highly durable and valuable parts for obvious reasons). It would also thereby jack up the price of new brakes, foster uncontrolled disposal of asbestos remnants on discarded shoes (instead of asbestos being collected and properly disposed by the rebuilding companies when they applied new, non-asbestos pads), be wasteful by not recycling brake shoes and in general be costly, environmentally unsound and stupid.
Here is the fun part: The overworked EPA lawyer who drafted that section of the regs admitted that he was largely unaware of the existence of the parts rebuilding and distribution industry. Confronted by industry lobbyists, EPA refused to change the pending offensive provisions because it was too much trouble to reopen the rule-making(!?) A federal court disagreed and tossed out the offending regs.
Fighting this kind of crap and letting Congress and agencies know when they are doing harm is what the vast majority of lobbyists do.
But didn’t she later, in effect, agree that you were correct? And if you hadn’t, would she have realized that her friend was a snob? Sounds to me like you did her a favor, and for that she kicks you?
That’s incredible.
On the other hand, no it’s not.
Thanks for the insight.
As I understand it, Microsoft didn’t employ lobbyists until after the anti-trust suit, when they decided they needed to protect themselves. I wish I could afford a lobbyist.
One way or another you are much better off to the extent you can afford lawyers and lobbyists in this world. Unions. Trade associations. A job at a corporation. This is part of why Socialism and populism are an issue right now.
It’s a really great thing to be able to afford just about any lawyer bill.
When the government does anything except provide actual public goods and stop force and fraud, it’s nothing but friction to society.
Another example: The federal judiciary opposed the Violence Against Women Act and sent their own designated lobbyists to Congress because (a) federal judges were terrified they might have ugly divorce cases dragged onto their dockets as ancillary and pendant jurisdiction matters attached to a claim under the act and (b) doubts about constitutional power to create a new category of federal crime. Chief sponsor Sen. Biden, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee was enraged by what reps of the federal judicial conf told him, got personal and refused to amend. SCOTUS got some revenge in United States v. Morrison, eliminating the civil claims portion of the act.
Other lobbyists have reported that Sen. Biden was an unusually poor listener. A safe seat, seniority and the power to safely threaten/blackmail interest groups for contributions kinda cuts against Madison’s vision of a government open to petitions by the people. And after decades of living in that mindset, we made that putz President.
Was the Violence Against Women Act one of the ways Biden established his credentials as as “feminist?” That would earn him adulation in certain circles. This may help explain why Dr. Jill has kept him on a short leash since they first met.
They actually thought that regulatory stuff only applied to bad industries that had smokestacks or oppressed the poor. They were a force for good so why would they have a problem? Their lobbying shop, retained law firms etc is now enormous.
Do remember the laughter when actor Richard Dreyfuss actually hired a personal lobbyist? How do you do that job? Other lobbyists say things to a Congressman like “on behalf of the half-million members of our union…” or “my client, the association that represents all of America’s major defense contractors…” and you say “Mr. Dreyfuss would like me to say…”