There are four main cogs that make up the machinery as I see it - conservative "free market" think tanks, public relations groups, fossil fuel organisations and ideologically aligned media.
A survey design guide led by scholars at the Williams Institute, a US think tank, explained: "Public policy debates have heightened the need for high quality scientific data on... sexual orientation".
A new study by the public policy think tank Demos and the public interest group U.S. PIRG calculates that U.S. Senate candidates will have to raise an average $3,300 every day for six years to match the campaign chests of the median 2014 winner.
And he had created a think tank to tackle public policy issues especially health and education.
(The Williams Institute, a UCLA School of Law think tank that researches public policy related to gender and sexuality, estimated that there were 1.4 million trans Americans in 2016 double that of the previously most reliable estimate, but still based on data from just 19 states).
Representatives from major fossil fuel corporations and industry groups had joined forces with operatives from major conservative think tanks and public relations experts to draft what they called their Global Climate Science Communications (GCSC) plan.
It was not until the past decade or so, when the influence of right-leaning think tanks on public and elite partisan opinion became undeniable, that the left scrambled to get into the game.
A miasma of existential doubt seems to hang over large chunks of the aid industry, even here in the UK, where I've argued before that a combination of government, NGOs, think tanks, academics, public opinion and history constitutes a particularly productive and resilient 'development cluster'.
- What portion of these funds are being used to influence government policy by subsidizing Beltway think tanks and public opinion by the likes of Abu Dhabi Media, financing such propaganda vehicles as the film Promised Land, denigrating shale gas and depicting fracking in a hysterical light in order to derail our efforts to achieve energy independence?
But this led to me to think about what I'd do if I were a multi-millionaire with idiosyncratic politics and wanted to start a think tank to make the public case for my peculiar creed.
