Founded in 1977 the Cato Institutes 1998 budget made up US$ 11 million. Its funding consists of corporate and private donations (especially from corporations and executives in the highly regulated industries of financial services, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals industries) and sales of publications.
Catos corporate donors include tobacco firms:
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Think tanks undertake research in very specific public policy areas. Which topics they cover mainly depends on their political and ideological orientation. In any case think tanks produce incredible amounts of "research findings". The crucial aspect usually is not their production, but their distribution. Therefore most think tanks have developed sophisticated dissemination strategies, whose main aim is the communication of their ideas to important audiences. These include members of governmental institutions, policymakers in the executive branch, news media, intellectuals, business men as well as academic and policy communities - in short, everybody, who is involved in shaping public opinion.
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One of the most impressive examples of the dissemination of ideology through educational activities has been performed by the UK- based Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), founded in 1955. Dedicated to the idea of free-markets the IEA from the beginning saw the "education" of the public as a key element in the distribution of their ideology. "The philosophy of the market economy must be widely accepted; this requires a large programme of education ..."
Aiming at the wide acceptance of their ideas, the IEA undertook an extensive publishing program with the objective to make the fairly complex concepts of economic liberalism and monetarism available to a student or sixth-form audience. In the 1960s IEA papers normally reached the hands of students through the university Conservative Associations.
The work that the IEA did in this field reaped a rich harvest during the 1970s and 1980s, as many of the younger political activists who staffed the various free-market think-tanks, such as the
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The political orientation of think tanks is as broad as in every other kind of institutions or organizations. It ranges from conservative over centrist to progressive. Still it can be noted, that there are considerable differences between the right and the left wing of think tanks, especially concerning funding sources and revenues as well as media relations, which have considerable consequences on their perception and influence on the public as well as on policy makers.
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The Manhattan Institute, founded by
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Although advertising, public relations and think tanks at first seem to have nothing in common, after a closer look certain similarities arise.
The first thing which can be noted is that public relations and the advertising industry, as well as - especially conservative - think tanks like the Heritage Foundation or the Brookings Institute have strong ties to corporate firms. Whereas the connection between the advertising and public relations industry and corporations is based on a consultant - client relation many think tanks heavily rely on corporate funding to pursue their activities. Therefore the interests of corporate firms are to an - in some cases considerable - extent reflected in their activities.
Furthermore the aims of public relations and advertising firms and think tanks are not too different. Their main goal is to sell ideas and values. Albeit it sometimes makes the impression, as if only products, services and understanding (in the case of public relations) are sold, for the greater part the only thing being marketed is (political) ideology.
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American conglomerate corporation whose subsidiaries are involved in such financial services as health and life insurance, mortgage and investment banking, securities brokerage, and assets management. As American Can Company, the company was noted for its production of metal cans for food and beverages, as well as other metal, paper, and plastic packaging and such consumer products as disposable cups, containers, towels, and tissues. Headquarters are in New York City.
ISO (International Organization for Standardization), founded in 1946, is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 100 countries, one from each country. Among the standards it fosters is
Source: Whatis.com
Writing and calculating came into being at about the same time. The first pictographs carved into clay tablets are used for administrative purposes. As an instrument for the administrative bodies of early empires, who began to rely on the collection, storage, processing and transmission of data, the skill of writing was restricted to a few. Being more or less separated tasks, writing and calculating converge in today's computers.
Letters are invented so that we might be able to converse even with the absent, says Saint Augustine. The invention of writing made it possible to transmit and store information. No longer the ear predominates; face-to-face communication becomes more and more obsolete for administration and bureaucracy. Standardization and centralization become the constituents of high culture and vast empires as Sumer and China.
A CPU is the principal part of any digital computer system, generally composed of the main memory, control unit, and arithmetic-logic unit. It constitutes the physical heart of the entire computer system; to it is linked various peripheral equipment, including input/output devices and auxiliary storage units...
A bottom-up
Caching generally refers to the process of making an extra copy of a file or a set of files for more convenient retrieval. On the Internet caching of third party files can occur either locally on the user's client computer (in the RAM or on the hard drive) or at the server level ("proxy caching"). A requested file that has been cached will then be delivered from the cache rather than a fresh copy being retrieved over the Internet.
One of the largest of American holding companies, primarily engaged in petroleum operations but having major interests in chemical products and retailing. It was formed in 1976 to be the parent company in the merger of Mobil Oil Corporation and Marcor Inc. Mobil Oil Corporation carries on a full range of petroleum operations from exploration to marketing, with major production in the Gulf of Mexico, California, the Atlantic coast, the Alaskan North Slope, the North Sea, and Saudi Arabia. Headquarters for Mobil Corporation (and Mobil Oil Corporation) are in Fairfax, Va.
Global financial services firm. Engages in mutual funds and international equities.
The term refers to the separation of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of persons. It is most often applied to
American holding company incorporated on Oct. 7, 1968, which owns Bank of America National Trust and Savings Association (incorporated Nov. 3, 1930) and several subsidiaries engaged in financial services, insurance, real estate, investment management, computer leasing, and other banking-related services. Bank of America NT & SA has some 1,400 branches in California and operates subsidiary banks and financial institutions in several other U.S. states and in Europe, Latin America, and the Far East. It is one of the world's largest banks in assets. Headquarters for both BankAmerica Corporation and Bank of America NT & SA are in San Francisco.
In mathematics, the term binary number system refers to a positional numeral system employing 2 as the base and requiring only two different symbols, 0 and 1. The importance of the binary system to information theory and computer technology derives mainly from the compact and reliable manner in which data can be represented in electromechanical devices with two states--such as "on-off," "open-closed," or "go-no go."
The Institution traces its beginnings to 1916 with the founding of the Institute for Government Research. Brookings, based in Washington D.C. is financed largely by endowment and by the support of philanthropic foundations, corporations, and private individuals. Its funds are devoted to carrying out its own research and educational activities. It also undertakes some unclassified government contract studies, reserving the right to publish its findings.
Founded in 1851 in London, Reuters is the world's largest news and television agency with 1,946 journalists, photographers and camera operators in 183 bureaus serving newspapers, other news agencies, and radio and television broadcasters in 157 countries.
In addition to its traditional news-agency business, over its network Reuters provides financial information and a wide array of electronic trading and brokering services to banks, brokering houses, companies, governments, and individuals worldwide.
http://www.reuters.com