The Tribune-Review, My Old Friend

It's been a while since I've done a blog post like this.

Luckily for me, today's Tribune Review offers up so many tendrils that it's easy work to point out the extent of Richard Mellon Scaife's media influence.

Let me start with this editorial on the new START treaty. Needless to say, the braintrust doesn't like it but that's beside the point. We're looking at how deeply entwined the paper is with the pieces sources. And so when we see something like this in Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper:

Even worse, The Heritage Foundation notes "the Kremlin's post-signing statement ... says that any 'qualitative' or 'quantitative' change to American missile defenses would lead to a possible withdrawal of the Russian federation from the treaty."

We should remember that foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife (the Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations) have funneled more than $23 million to the Heritage Foundation.

As I've written before, Scaife is even on the Board of Trustees for the Heritage Foundation.

Two things that never seem to get mentioned whenever the Trib uses the Heritage Foundation for source material.

But let's move on in the editorial:

Richard Perle, former assistant secretary of Defense for arms control, says this "dangerous, shortsighted policy" handicaps the modernization of America's aging nuclear arsenal.

Yes, they're quoting one of the architects of the illegal war in Iraq. But again, that's beside the point.

Richard Perle is affiliated with some of the most prominent conservative organizations around and as such is deeply entwined in Scaife money. For example:

• Perle is a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute ($7.3 million in Scaife money)
• Perle is a trustee of the Hudson Institute ($3.9 in Scaife money)
• Perle is on the advisory council for the Center for Security Policy ($175K in 2009, $300K in 2008, $300K in 2007, $350K in 2006, $350k in 2005 that's about $1.5 million in Scaife money in the last 5 years alone)

So that's $35.7 million in Scaife money.

So far. We're not done.

Take a look at Craig Smith's interview this week. It's with Richard A Levy and Smith describes him as:

The chairman of the Cato Institute's board of directors, he also sits on boards of the Institute for Justice, The Federalist Society and the George Mason University School of Law.

Ok so that's:

• Cato Institute ($2.2 million in Scaife money)
• Institute for Justice ($1.36 million in Scaife money)
• Federalist Society ($3.955 million in Scaife money)

By my math, that's somewhere around $43 million dollars in Richard Mellon Scaife money given to various think tanks that the editorial page at his newspaper is using for source material.

As I've said any number of times, the circle jerk continues at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.