The Disturbinator 4000XL, a state-of-the-art disburbance generator.
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
A while back, in his well-read takedown of the “free market” think tanks endorsing the original bailout that got us into the present mess, Jay mentioned that the donors to those think tanks probably didn’t intend for their money to be used to endorse a radical expansion of government intrusion into the economy.
I thought of that post when I opened an e-mail this morning from the Ford Foundation. The e-mail was sent to people (like myself) who work for grantmaking foundations.
To help us “think and talk about” good grantmaking, Ford is distributing a deck of “role cards” representing the roles grantmaking staff play, such as “advocate,” “talent scout,” and “disturbance generator.”
It makes you wonder what life at the Ford Foundation is like. They spend all day inventing decks of cards, apparently.
Not only that, but being insulated from the discipline of the market, it looks like Ford isn’t up with the latest technology. As soon as I arrived at my new workplace in August, I had a state-of-the-art disturbance generator installed in the basement. But at Ford they’re still generating disturbance by hand.
I’m sure this is exactly what Henry Ford had in mind for his money when he gave it to a charitable foundation. On the other hand, given what Ford does with most of its time and money, I suppose we should be glad for every cent and every working hour that gets diverted into activities that are merely useless rather than actively destructive.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Ford is a good car 🙂
Given that Ford is the only U.S. automaker that is not now a subsidiary of the government, I expect that the distinction you note will only become more obvious in the years to come.
Too bad the Ford Foundation isn’t controlled by the Fords anymore.