Joseph Bast

Joseph Bast is president of the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based industry-funded think tank. Bast opened the International Conference on Climate Change (2009), organized by Heartland. He "studied economics as an undergraduate" at the University of Chicago but did not complete the degree.

Background
Bast is the "coauthor of 12 books, including Rebuilding America's Schools (1990), Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care (1992), Eco-Sanity: A Common-Sense Guide to Environmentalism (1994), and Education & Capitalism (2003)," according to his Heartland profile.

Heartland paid Bast $96,292 in 2007, according to the organization's financial report for that year. His wife, Diane Carol Bast, is the think tank's Vice President of Internal Affairs. She was paid $76,337 in 2007. Joseph Bast was paid $80,797 in 2005, according to Heartland's financial report that year.

Bast currently sits on the board of directors for the American Conservative Union, after being elected in 2007.

Affiliations
A biographical note lists Bast's current and former affiliations as being:
 * Board of Directors of Nomos Press Inc., 1983 - 1988;
 * Board of Directors of The Heartland Institute, 1990 - current.
 * Founding Director, officer, and member of the executive committee, State Policy Network, 1991-1997;
 * Board of Advisors, Advocates for Self-Government, 2003 - current;
 * Board of Advisors, Illinois Policy Institute, 2004 - current;
 * Board of Advisors, Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, 2005 - current;
 * Board of Directors, American Conservative Union, 2007 - current.

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Heartland Institute
 * International Conference on Climate Change (2009)
 * Think tanks

Articles by Bast

 * Joseph Bast, "Opening Remarks: 2008 International Conference on Climate Change", March 8, 2009. (A copy of his Powerpoint presentation is available here.)