This coming Wednesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren is set to deliver remarks and serve as an honorary co-host of an event at the US Capitol, co-hosted by two groups: the
Center for Economic Policy and Research (CEPR) and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP).
Please see the following quote from Gordon Gray, Pinpoint’s Executive Director:
“Recent reports make clear that the Private Equity Stakeholder Project is far from the credible “watchdog” group it has long portrayed itself to be. It’s disturbing that this group, whose senior staff includes actual, self-described communists and expressed anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric, would be welcomed into the US Capitol by a member of the US Senate.
It’s little surprise then that Pinpoint has identified significant methodological flaws in PESP’s published work, which virtually always attacks the US free enterprise system.”
As noted at our launch, key to Pinpoint’s mission is vigorously pushing back on the policies and voices in the public policy debate who aim to dismantle America’s free enterprise system, and to promote and defend the essential pillars of our nation’s economic growth and prosperity.
With that aim in mind, here are 3 key things to know in advance of Wednesday’s event:
- PESP’s senior leadership includes self-described Marxists and communists, and CEPR’s co-director has praised Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. As recent media reports indicate, in 2022, a senior PESP leader posted that they were “becoming more principled of a Marxist” and described her political views as “communist.” Another senior staffer tweeted in 2016 that she was a “Marxist.” In 2013, CEPR’s co-director positively eulogized Venezuelan socialist dictator Hugo Chavez, whose hand-picked successor is today trying to steal an election in Caracas.
- PESP’s senior leaders have espoused extreme anti-Israel, pro-Hamas rhetoric. Just a week after the heinous October 7 Hamas attacks, PESP’s staff union “released a statement … that did not mention Hamas, calling for ‘an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestine’ and a ‘complete cessation of US military aid to Israel.’” On the day of the terrorist attack, a senior PESP researcher liked an X post that included the antisemitic phrase “from the river to the sea.”
- PESP produces research attacking the US free enterprise system with significant methodological issues. As Pinpoint laid out last week, in April 2024, PESP produced a “Private Equity State Risk Index,” claiming it as an objective measure of the risks facing states, yet a closer examination of their research displays significant data and methodological deficiencies.