More On Richard Mellon Scaife and the Heritage Foundation

An astute reader wrote in today, commenting on this blog post. The post, in the event you missed it, outlined some of the recent monies granted to the Heritage Foundation by the philanthropic foundations controlled by Tribune-Review owner/publisher Richard Mellon Scaife.

My astute reader wrote:

Hell, David, that $2 million barely scratches it. He and Joseph Coors gave so much money that there's a plaque -- a bas relief of the Scaifer hisself -- in the lobby of the Heritage Foundation. Ever heard of Ed Fuelner? He's the CEO and all-encompassing head of the Heritage Foundation and herewith I give you one of the great finds of the You Tubes: Fuelner fawning over the man and crediting him (and himself) with ending the Cold War. Enjoy. And tremble.

And then my reader included a youtube link which you can watch (and tremble) for yourself on your own time

I did a little digging and found Mediamatters' fuller set of numbers: between 1985 and 2007 the Heritage Foundation received $21.235 million in grants from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, $2.559 million from the Carthage Foundation and a comparatively paltry $100,000 from the Allegheny Foundation - all foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife. That's close to $24 million between 1985 and 2007.

And there's never a mention of Scaife's multi-million dollar support of the Heritage Foundation whenever his editorial board sees fit to write about it.

Or when the Foundation is mentioned in a news article:

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., has felt the heat of an IRS investigation. The agency raised issues about a money-raising letter the foundation distributed in 1996 that was signed by then-Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole. In return for his signature, the foundation gave him the names of people who answered the letter.

The IRS didn't strip Heritage of its tax-exempt status.

Or even when Heritage President Ed Feulner gets weekly column space in Scaife's paper.

But wait wait, there's more. The connections are tighter. From the Feulner's bio at the Heritage Foundation website, we can read that:

He is a longtime officer and director of three grant-making foundations: the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Aequus Institute and the Thomas A. Roe Foundation.

And that Richard Mellon Scaife is Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Heritage Foundation. His bio brags about:

Scaife’s extensive involvement in the publishing industry - he is the owner and Chairman of the Board of the Tribune-Review as well as a number of radio stations - has brought a refreshing alternative voice to the media markets of Western Pennsylvania, including his hometown of Pittsburgh.

So Ed Feulner is on the board of the Sarah Scaife Foundation and Richard Mellon Scaife is on the board of Heritage Foundation; The Trib's editorial board routinely references studies out of the Heritage Foundation and the President of the Heritage Foundation gets a weekly column at The Trib; and tens of millions of dollars have flowed from one foundation to the other over the past 25 years or so.

How surprising is it that all this just as routinely goes unmentioned on the pages of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review? That it's all just plainly hidden from that paper's readers?

A Circle-Jerk of massive proportions continues.