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Cato Institute

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The Cato Institute is a non-profit public policy research foundation (think tank) with strong libertarian leanings, headquartered in Washington, D.C. It is named after Cato's Letters, a series of early 18th century British essays expounding the libertarian principles of John Locke. Collected and published in sets of volumes, Cato's Letters could be found in the libraries of American patriots and helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution. The pseudonymous authors of the Letters named their essays in turn after Cato the Younger, the defender of republican institutions in Rome.

Founded in San Francisco, California in 1977 by Edward H. Crane and Charles G. Koch, the Institute's stated mission is "to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace" by seeking greater involvement of the "lay public in questions of public policy and the role of government."

Because of their strong libertarian orientation, as opposed to left-wing or right-wing orientation, members of the Cato Institute staff are frequently cited as non-partisan experts on many news programs. Some have criticized this, pointing to the specific ideological views of the Institute as a whole.

In November 2002, shortly after Cato was named the "Best Advocacy Website" by the Web Marketing Association, the Alexa ratings service issued a report saying that it was "the most popular think tank site over the past three months," receiving a total of 188,901 unique visitors during the previous month of September. [1]

The Cato Institute publishes the periodicals Cato Journal, Regulation, Cato Supreme Court Review, and Cato Policy Report; policy studies; and books, such as Social Security: The Inherent Contradiction; In Defense of Global Capitalism; Voucher Wars; You Can't Say That!; Peace and Freedom: A Foreign Policy for a Constitutional Republic; Restoring the Lost Constitution; and Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Reconsidered. The Institute may be best known for its work on Social Security reform; the New Republic wrote in 2001, "Cato is an indispensable source of expertise--with two decades of pro-privatization research and lobbying under its belt, it knows more about the issue [of Social Security] than just about anyone else in Washington."


Funding

The Cato Institute has a budget of about $14 million a year, derived from 15,000 contributors. More than 70 percent of its funding comes from individuals, with about 10 percent each from corporations and foundations. According to one critical source, in the 17 years spanning 1985 to 2001, the Institute received $15,633,540 in 108 separate grants from eight different foundations:

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has served on the board of directors of Cato. Although it is often accused of Republican leanings, Cato frequently differs with Republican Party positions on specific issues, such as the 2003 decision by U.S. President George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq, the war on drugs, the support of "faith-based organizations" with government funds, and the decision of President George H. W. Bush to fight the first Gulf War. Cato has also criticized the 1998 settlement that many U.S. states signed with the tobacco industry. [2]

Contact information

http://www.cato.org/
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20001-5403
Phone (202) 842-0200
Fax (202) 842-3490

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