Lefty Think Tank Sells Itself on eBay

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I’ve never even sold so much as a lamp on eBay, but the owners of a Bay Area think tank are taking the idea of peddling wares online to a whole new level: They’re selling the whole damn tank. Their ad reads: “Own This Think Tank: BACVR for Sale on eBay – Perfect Holiday Gift for Political Junkies.”

Allegedly the first to do so (eBay did not return my call or email), the Bay Area Center for Voting Research (BACVR) has garnered a few bids, one at approximately $5,100, according to co-founder Jason Alderman.

“You don’t need to be an Ivy League professor or a former administration official to run a think tank. There’s an enormous number of smart Americans out there that can do this, and this is a great way to solicit their help,” Alderman told me at the end of last week.

Since its inception in 2004, The BACVR has produced nearly a dozen research reports with titles like “The Most Conservative (Provo, Utah) and Liberal (Detroit) Cities in the United States,” and “New Study Finds Bay Area Most Liberal Region in America.” While the group claims to be non-partisan, all of its research seems determined to prove the Bay Area’s progressive prowess. But I digress.

When I asked Alderman what qualifications he was looking for in a buyer, he said, “We believe in the democratization of think tanks. The person who can put their money where their mouth is can meet those qualifications. If you are inherently not qualified to do this, I can’t understand why would you would do this.” The group’s move has elicited responses from a few media outlets about instant political pundits, and the novelty of what their auctioning.

I’m all for the blue-collarization of think tanks, or in this case, free-marketization. But I can just imagine the look on my editor’s face if I tried to pass off documents from a think tank—sold arbitrarily on eBay—as primary source documentation.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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