Via Big Government.
……if you haven’t thought of the labor movement as a cerebral bunch, think again. Meet Peter Dreier, Donald Cohen, Nelson Lichtenstein, and their syndicate of progressive university professors – the “intellectual infrastructure” of the progressive labor movement.
It is no secret that progressives have created a self-cloning machine by hijacking our educational system. Their indoctrination efforts are well documented. But we rarely think of research institutions as propaganda factories. A Request for Proposal (RFP) recently obtained by Big Journalism gives us a rare look at how progressives and labor unions attempt to manipulate the national media narrative.
And their process? you may ask. Use the credibility and resources of the American higher education system to create researchprop – biased collegial research papers that serve as propaganda to support political policies.
Entitled Cry Wolf, the RFP proclaims a desire to look “for faculty and graduate students… interested in writing short (2,000 word) policy briefs” that “construct a counter narrative that demonstrates the falsity or exaggeration” of conservative claims. Writers of briefs selected by the project coordinators will receive 100,000 pennies for their thoughts.
Their hopes with this researchprop is for these papers to “become the basis for opinion pieces designed to run in the mainstream media, on line, on the air, or in the press,” with the end outcome of building the following narrative in the public consciousness: that conservative objections to their policies are just the old dirty tricks of the right-wing.
If executed successfully, the “first reaction of millions of people, as well as opinion leaders, will be, ‘there they go again’,” reads the RFP – a clear attempt to label any right-leaning objection to progressive policy as another case of crying wolf.
……the project reaches into some of the most prestigious public and private schools of higher learning in the U.S., including MIT, Yale, Harvard, USC, Columbia, Rutgers, UC Santa Barbara, University of Pennsylvania, and President Obama’s alma mater – Occidental College.
Distributed by Peter Dreier, Professor of Politics and Director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College, the request for proposal asks for help “in an important project in the battle with conservative ideas.” Drier is a frequent collaborator with the California AFL-CIO and the infamous ACORN.
http://biggovernment.com/pcourrielche/2010/06/08/in-praise-of-capitalism-how-the-social-justice-left-uses-economic-incentives-to-create-academic-propaganda
Academic intelligentsia has been indoctrinating college and high school students in anti-capitalist/anti-American dogma for years. I’m surprised it took them this long to hop into bed with unions.
This is an excerpt from Drier’s email which outlines the tactics:
From:
Peter Dreier [mailto:dreier@oxy.edu]
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 11:45 AM
Subject: Paid activist research – request for mini-proposals
Cry Wolf Request for Proposals – please forward.
Cry Wolf ProjectColleagues:
We are looking for faculty and graduate students (in history, sociology, economics, political science, planning, public health, and public policy) interested in writing short (2000 word) policy briefs for which we can pay $1,000. For specifics, read on…
We are writing to ask for your help in an important project in the battle with conservative ideas. Today, as in the past, the fight to transform American politics and policy takes place on a battlefield in which ideas, narratives, and the construction of a politically driven conventional wisdom constitutes a set of highly potent weapons. Too often conservatives in the Congress and the media have captured the rhetorical high ground by asserting that virtually any substantial, progressive change in public policy, especially that involving taxes on the wealthy or regulation of business, will kill jobs, generate a stifling government bureaucracy, or curtail economic growth. But history shows that in almost every instance the opponents of needed social and economic change are “crying wolf.” We therefore need to construct a counter narrative that demonstrates the falsity or exaggeration of such claims so that the first reaction of millions of people, as well as opinion leaders, will be “There they go again!” Such a refrain will undermine the credibility and arguments of the organizations and individuals who use such dire social and economic prognostications to thwart progressive reform.
Crying wolf???
The 15% unemployment, the tyrannical socialist government takeover of private industry, banks, and healthcare. The $13 trillion dollar deficit and burgeoning debt. The wanton destruction of our economy through Obama’s “spread the wealth” and “fundamental transformation” idiocy. The trashing of the U.S. Constitution by a bunch of leftwingnut megalomaniacs.
Object to all that, and you’re just “crying wolf”. History demonstrates that socialism/communism doesn’t work out real well. The “progressive” label puts lipstick on a big, ugly warthog. It’s just a puff piece orchestrated to soften the real meaning.
……On each issue we seek to document three things: First, historical examples and quotes drawn from speeches, legislative testimony, newspaper and other media opinion pieces, think-tank reports, or political platforms which claim that a proposed policy or regulation would generate a set of negative consequences; second, a discussion of how these crying-wolf claims impacted the new laws or regulations as they were passed into law; and third, a well documented analysis of the extent to which conservative and special interest fears were or were not realized during the years and decades after the new laws or regulations went into effect.
……We hope that many of these become the basis for opinion pieces designed to run in the mainstream media, on line, on the air, or in the press.
That’s funny. The MSM has been propagating the very same line of bullshit throughout Obama’s tenure and the Dem majority’s hold on power. The New York Times and MSNBC are some of the most vocal mouthpieces for everything on Dreier’s wish list. Dreier’s tactics are the same. Employing the collegiate angle doesn’t make it more credible.
Obamanomics has already generated a set of well documented negative economic consequences.
No amount of creative revision on Dreier’s part will change the history books….unless far left liberals stage a coup of the Texas highschool textbook committee.