This morning's New York Times has an article about communities that wind up owing millions on publicly-funded stadiums that have already been abandoned or torn down. This ought to be an obvious lesson in the evils of corporatism: The corporations and billionaires that own sports franchises launch PR campaigns to convince voters to subsidize them by building an expensive stadium, and then as soon as they can find a better offer they ditch the community and leave the taxpayers holding the bag.
In the middle of the article, though, you get a different spin from "a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute", who blames the whole thing on "politicians". So corporations aren't the problem, Big Government is the problem.
But who exactly are we listening to when we listen to the Manhattan Institute? That's where it gets interesting.
As if it were quoting a disinterested expert, the NYT writes:
“The Meadowlands wasn’t a bad idea, but rather than pay it off, they let it ride,” said Steven Malanga, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, who has written about the perils of publicly financed stadiums. “Politicians essentially turned a good thing into a money loser for taxpayers at exactly the wrong time.”
So spending public money to benefit private corporations "wasn't a bad idea", it's just political mismanagement that kept the whole thing from working out for everybody, just like the corporate PR promised. There's no need for the voters to be suspicious of future corporate hand-outs, or to think of corporations as sociopathic predators. Government is the problem.
And this opinion comes not from the PR department of the New York Giants, but from the Manhattan Institute. Most NYT readers probably have no idea who they are, but what could sound more urbane, intellectual, and maybe even a little left-wingy than "the Manhattan Institute".
Well, follow the money. SourceWatch reports:
Between 1985 and 2005, the Institute received $20,629,883 (unadjusted for inflation) in a total of 296 grants from only nine foundations
On its donor list are such public-spirited folks as the Koch Family Foundations.
In other words, the point of the Manhattan Institute isn't to analyze urban development projects and the best use of public money, it's to promote conservative ideas.
So the real meaning of the quoted paragraph is: Corporate America wants you to continue trusting Corporate America, and to blame government even when corporations shaft you in the most obvious ways. And this message comes to you in the middle of an article in the "liberal" New York Times, attributed to an apparently disinterested "expert".