AEI Pushes Government Propaganda Telling Women to Marry Schlubs

April 6, 2016


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.

Porter’s original column did not stress the wonders of AEI and Brookings agreeing to push for government marriage propaganda, but it does indicate in three separate passages that he was aware of that AEI proposal.

They strongly endorsed marriage….

The collection of proposals — from promoting strong and stable families to improving the quantity and quality of work — actually adds up to a coherent approach to improving an anti-poverty strategy that has fallen far short of its goals.

Many liberals are still skeptical that encouraging marriage will do much to help the poor, but most have come to accept that the children of intact families have a better shot in life.

Porter’s tone was clearly supportive of AEI’s push for governmental marriage propaganda directed at pregnant women.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/04/aei-pushes-government-propaganda-telling-women-marry-schlubs.html