By William K. Black
April 5, 2016 Bloomington, MN
I wrote a two-part column on the joint report by AEI and Brookings on poverty reduction. Part two of my column focused on the policy that report pushed most prominently – a government program of propaganda urging pregnant women to marry. My first article, however, criticized Eduardo Porter’s February 2, 2016 column in the New York Times for ballyhooing the supposed wondrous nature of Brookings and AEI working together. Porter portrayed them as “leading thinkers on opposite sides of the ideological divide.” I pointed out that a majority of the group had hard-right views and that the group had an exceptionally weak member pushing a single idea – marriage propaganda. I also pointed out that Brookings had, for decades, played the same very junior partner role of giving AEI cover for “joint” proposals with Brookings to cripple financial regulation.
