Reason Foundation

Reason Foundation
Formation	1968
Founder	•  Robert W. Poole Jr. •  Manuel S. Klausner •  Tibor R. Machan
Headquarters	Los Angeles, CA
Type	think tank
Subgroups	reason.com reason TV
Interests	public policy
Sponsored by	Scaife Foundations

Reason Foundation is a libertarian think-tank that consists of the Reason Public Policy Institute and Reason Magazine. It describes itself as “a leading voice for individual liberty, economic freedom, and dynamic market-based public policies.”

Funding

Reason lists it corporate and Foundation funders. According to Reason “In 2000, the Foundation’s revenue grew to a new high of $5.3 million. There were 30 private foundation contributors and 95 corporate contributors. Contributions from individuals provided 40 percent of total revenue —75 percent of the 2130 individual donations were in the $50 to $500 range. Larger individual donations are made each year by members of the Torchbearer Society ($1000)[1].

Corporate Funders

Corporate Supporters in 2000 were[2]:

3M	American Airlines
American Chemistry Council	American Consulting Engineers Council
American Farm Bureau Federation	American Forest & Paper Association
American Petroleum Institute	American Plastics Council
American Port Services, Inc.	American Water Works Co.
Anheuser-Busch Company	BAA USA, Inc.
Bank of America	Bayer Corporation
California Association of Realtors	California Water Service Company
Ken and Colleen Butler, Capital Partnerships	Virginia, Inc.
Cargill, Inc.	Chevron Corporation
The Clorox Company	Coca-Cola Co.
Consulting Engineers & Land Surveyors of California	Consulting Engineers
Council of New York State, Inc.	Consulting Engineers Council of North Carolina
Consulting Engineers Council of Texas	Continental Airlines
Cornell Corrections	Corrections Corporation of America
DaimlerChrysler Corp.	Dart Container Corporation
Delta Air Lines	Dow Chemical USA
Eastman Chemical Company	Eberle & Associates, Inc.
Economic Alliance of San Fernando Valley	Economic Development Corporation of Los Angeles County
Edison Electric Institute	Enron
ExxonMobil Corporation	FDX Corporation
FMC Corporation	Farmer’s Insurance Group
Ford Motor Company	Frasca & Associates
Freedom Communications	General Motors Corporation
Georgia-Pacific Corporation	Granite Construction Company
Grocery Manufacturers of America	Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association
International Paper Company	Jacobs Engineering
Kimberly-Clark Foundation	Koch Materials Co.
L&L Connolly Management	LCOR Incorporated
Lehman Brothers, Inc.	Eli Lilly and Co.
Loews Corporation	Logistics Management Institute
Macquarie North America	Management and Training Corporation
Mentor Corporation	Mevatec Corporation
Microsoft Corporation	National Air Transportation Association
National Association of Realtors	National Beer Wholesalers Association
Nossaman, Guthner, Knox & Elliott	Operations Management International, Inc.
Pfizer, Inc	Philip Morris Companies
PolyOne Corporation	Poseidon Resources Corporation
PricewaterhouseCoopers	Privatized Emergency Services Association
Procter & Gamble	Salomon Smith Barney
Serco Group Inc.	Shell Oil Co.
Southern California Water	SunAmerica, Inc.
Tech Central Station.com	Temple-Inland Forest
Products Co.	U.S. Filter Corp.
Union Carbide Corporation	United Water Services, LLC
Vinyl Institute	Virco
Wackenhut Corrections Co.	Watson Land Company
Western States Petroleum Association	Whole Foods Market

Foundations

The Institute received some $5,289,712 from 1985 to 2002, in 107 grants from the following foundations[3]:

• Earhart Foundation
• John M. Olin Foundation
• Sarah Scaife Foundation
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• Claude R. Lamb Foundation
• Carthage Foundation
• David H Koch Foundation
• JM Foundation
• Smith-Richardson Foundation
• Scaife Family Foundation
• Charles G Koch Foundation

Links to Republicans

Californian Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger named several co-authors of Reason’s Roadmap to Reform and members of its budget-working group to his transition team, including former Secretary of State Bill Jones, former State

Treasurer Matt Fong, and former Congressman Bill Baker[4].

The ex-President of the Foundation, Lynn Scarlett, became the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management at the Department of the Interior under Gale Norton.

“I am honored by this appointment and eager to join Secretary Norton's leadership team at Interior,” said Scarlett. “The Department has critical and far-reaching stewardship missions that touch the lives of millions of Americans. I look forward to working in close, collaborative initiatives with our state, tribal, and private sector partners to meet those responsibilities[5]”. Scarlett had served as an environmental campaign advisor to President Bush in the 2000 election and was a member of the Bush transition advisory team for the EPA[6].

Scarlett is also an advisor to the National Environmental Policy Institute along with Robert Hahn from the American Enterprise Institute, amongst others [7] Scarlett was also a senior fellow at the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), a Montana-based organization. FREE “is bankrolled by polluting interests that often have litigation before the federal bench[8]”

In a special report on Scarlett, CLEAR argued that Scarlett had “rarely met a regulation she likes. According to her, the world is just too complex for pesky things like mandated air pollution limits, recycling, or day care standards to work efficiently. In her worldview, regulations stifle innovations that would be cheaper and better because each business owner could decide what works best for the company. On the other hand, Scarlett thinks nutrition labels are too confusing for the general public, so we shouldn’t have them at all. Can be enlightened enough to control their pollution levels when people are too stupid to understand the label on their cereal box?” [9].

Whilst at Reason, Scarlett was the host of Tech Central Station.com’s New Environmentalism site where she wrote a weekly column. James Glassman was sad to see her go: “our loss - both at Tech Central Station and at the Reason Foundation - will be the nation's gain. We're proud that the president has chosen Lynn Scarlett as a steward for the nation's natural resources. He could not have made a better choice”[10].

Scarlett was also a contributor to the book called “Fearing Food - Risk, Health and Environment”, edited by Julian Morris and Roger Bate, at the time from the right-wing think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs in London. Other contributors included Dennis Avery from the Hudson Institute, and Bruce Ames the controversial cancer scientist on the board of SEPP and a Director of the George C Marshall Institute and academic advisor to the Reason Foundation[11].

Current Personnel

• David Nott - President, ex petroleum engineer for Shell Western Exploration & Production. Also ex- Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) and the Mercatus Center, both at George Mason University in Virginia.
• Nick Gillespie - Vice President, editor of the libertarian Reason Magazine
• Adrian T. Moore - Vice President for Research Executive Director, Reason Public Policy Institute
• Robert W. Poole, Jr - Founder. He advised the White House Office of Policy Development on privatization during the Reagan years, and testified before the President's Commission on Privatization in 1987. During the Bush administration, he worked with the Vice-President's Competitiveness Council and the White House Counsel to help develop an executive order on infrastructure privatization.[12]

Board of Trustees

• Thomas E. Beach - Beach Investment Counsel, Inc.
• William A. Dunn - (Chairman elect) DUNN Capital Management on Board of CEI and PERC
• David Fleming - Latham & Watkins
• C. Boyden Gray - Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering
• James D. Jameson
• Manuel S. Klausner - Law Offices of Manuel S. Klausner
• David H. Koch - Koch Industries
• James Lintott - Sterling Foundation Management
• Stephen Modzelewski - Maple Engine, L.L.C.
• Sarah A. O’Dowd - Heller Ehrman White & McAuliffe
• Robert W. Poole, Jr - Reason Foundation
• Randall Smith - InSite MediaCom, L.L.C.
• Al H. St. Clair - Procter & Gamble
• Harry Teasley, Jr - (Chairman)
• Frank Bond - Trustee Emeritus
• Walter E. Williams - George Mason University

Business Advisory Board includes:[13]

• Joseph Alibrandi - Whittaker Corporation (Retired)
• Frank Baxter - Jefferies & Company Inc.
• Ron Boehm - ABC-Clio
• Jeff Buckingham - New Edge Networks
• Kenneth Butler - Capital Partnerships Virginia
• Viggo Butler - United Airports Ltd.
• Willard Z. Carr, Jr - Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
• Shane A. Chalke - Annuity Net Inc.
• Chris Conway - Mentor Corporation
• Joseph Coulombe - Trader Joe’s (Retired)
• Devon Cross - Donors’ Forum on International Affairs
• Marie L. Fioramonti - Prudential Capital
• Daniel Fylstra - Frontline Systems
• Charles Gibbons - PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Karen J. Hedlund Nossaman - Guthner, Knox & Elliott
• Doug Henderson - Western States Petroleum Association
• Warner W. Henry - Henry Companies
• Yvette Hirth - The DBT Group Inc.
• William Huston - Watson Land Co.
• James D. Jameson - LIDCO Inc.
• Jerry L. Jordan - Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
• A. Samuel King - University Restaurant Group
• John Mackey - Whole Foods Market Inc.
• Roy E. Marden - Philip Morris
• T.J. Rodgers - Cypress Semiconductor
• Cliff Slater - Maui Divers Inc. (Retired)
• Shawn Steel - Shawn Steel & Associates
• Michael E. Tennenbaum - Tennenbaum & Co.
• Loronzo Thomson - L.H. Thomson Company
• Ron K. Unz - Wall Street Analytics
• Richard Wallace - Freedom Communications Inc.
• Thomas W. Wathen - Pinkerton Security & Investigative Services (Retired)
• Pierluigi Zappacosta - Digital Persona

Academic Advisory

The Academic Advisory Board consists of libertarian and conservative think tank types such as Bruce Ames (was on the advisory board of TASSC, is a Director George C. Marshall and academic advisor to SEPP), Terry Anderson of PERC, John Baden of FREE, Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation, Richard Epstein the father of “takings”, Thomas Gale Moore of the Hoover Institution, Charles Murray of American Enterprise Institute, and Paul Craig Roberst of the Cato Institute.

Other Staff at the Foundation or the Reason Public Policy Institute:

• Ronald Bailey, Science Correspondent of Reason Magazine
• Michael De Alessi - Director of Natural Resource Policy including regulation. Author of Fishing for Solutions published by the right-wing Institute of Economic Affairs in London[14]
• Kenneth Green, Director of Environmental Program Reason Foundation; Chief Scientist the right wing Fraser Institute in Vancouver.

Issues

Reason runs the website http://www.newenvironmentalism.org/, which is another website to promote Ronald Bailey’s views and that of Reason magazine and other Reason staff.

References

• [1] Reason Foundation (2000) Annual Report – Forging A World of New Choices, p25
• [2] Reason Foundation (2000) Annual Report – Forging A World of New Choices, p30
• [3] http://www.mediatransparency.org/search_results/info_on_any_recipient.php?286
• [4] The Reason Report (2004) Winter, p7
• [5] http://www.doi.gov/news/010713e.html
• [6] http://www.clearproject.org/reports_scarlett.html
• [7] http://www.nepi.org/Directory.htm
• [8] http://www.ems.org/interior/scarlett.html
• [9] http://www.clearproject.org/reports_scarlett.html
• [10] http://www.Tech Central Station.com/040201A.html
• [11] J. Morris & R. Bate (1999) Fearing Food – Risk, Health and Environment, Butterworth, Heinemann,
• [12] http://www.reason.org/robert.html
• [13] Reason Foundation (2000) Annual Report – Forging A World of New Choices, p31
• [14] http://www.rppi.org/dealessi.html

 

Sponsor

Event	Description
Scaife Foundations	Grant-making foundation overseen by the late right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

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