GioBlog

About Tom Giovanetti

This is my personal blog.

I'm the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), a non-profit, non-partisan public policy think tank founded in 1987. I consider my self extremely lucky and blessed for having an opportunity to work at IPI and try to make a difference in the world with my time and efforts. Somehow, without purposeful strategy or either family or political connections, I managed to have a rare opportunity in a rare field handed to me, and I thank God for the opportunity.

At IPI, I work with the finest, most professional, most pleasant and most forgiving people you can imagine.

I'm obviously interested in public policy and politics, since that's my profession. But as an evangelical Christian and a seminary graduate I'm also interested in Protestant and Reformation theology, and I'm fairly involved in our local church in Denton, Texas.

Since I've brought up religion, IPI is a secular organization, and IPI focuses on issues related to taxes, economic growth, deregulation, property protection, and entitlement reform. Despite my personal beliefs, I am fastidious about not involving IPI in issues that are related to faith or Christian activism. There are other organizations that already claim to do that, though generally I think the organizations of the "Christian right" do a pretty embarassing job of changing hearts and minds.

Other interests include classical music, the local professional sports teams in Dallas, and marine aquariums. Before getting involved in public policy, I was known as an expert on aquariums, worked in the industry, designed products, and wrote scores of magazine articles and books, one of which is still selling well (in a 2nd edition) 15 years after it's initial publication.

In public policy, I'm particularly interested in intellectual property policy and tax reform. My biggest concern at the moment is the decline of Western Civilization; and particularly about the degree to which tolerance has become such an overweaning virtue of our culture that Western culture has lost its conviction, and is ripe to be overrun by those who have more confidence in the superiority of their ideas and their culture.

I do my best to keep personal opinions here at Gioblog, and to keep my personal opinions away from IPI's Policy Bytes blog, where I blog professionally.

Comments on the blog are always open, but remain in the "draft" doldrums until I approve them for public consumption. Otherwise I'm happy to hear from anyone at tomg@ipi.org.