Another Reason Not To Trust The Braintrust

Scaife's Tribune-Review today published an op-ed explaining

Why states should say “No” to ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion.

As part of their argument, they use some research from a well-known think tank:

An analysis by Grace-Marie Turner of the nonprofit Galen Institute (funded in part by the pharmaceutical and medical industries) provides some insights.

Ha.  You see where this is going, don't you?

According to The Bridge Project, PhRMA (the trade group representing the above mentioned "pharmaceutical and medical industries") has given $101,125 (adjusted for inflation, $107,913.74) to the Galen Institute from 2008 to 2010.

Don't get me wrong, it's good to point out that Galen's received some financial support from the industry it is, in turn, supporting with it's own research.  But do I need to point out that over a longer period of time (1998 to 2011) the Galen Institute's received even more money, $480,000 (adjusted for inflation, $569,978) from the Sarah Scaife Foundation?

The same foundation controlled by the owner of the paper publishing the op-ed?

Why qualify the story by pointing out that PhRMA money supports, in part, the Galen Institute while ignoring the much larger pile of money (by the way, that's about 4.78 times as large unadjusted or about 5.28 times as large adjusted for inflation) channeled to Galen by a Scaife Foundation?

Or maybe the answer is obvious.

CPAC Underwriting

Did you know that the Conservative Political Action Conference is going on this weekend?

You did?

That's nice.  Wanna know how much Scaife money is intertwined at there?

Ok, here's what I did.  I started from this page and then cross referenced it with the info at this page and this page and then I limited the data to only that which was available in the last ten years or so (everything from 2003 to be specific) and this is what I found.

For the various sponsors and exhibitors I found, the Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations have given a total of $32 million.  Here's the breakdown:

• Accuracy In Media ($750,000 from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• American Enterprise Institute ($4.225 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• America's Survival ($1.115 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Capital Research Center ($1.945 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Center for Security Policy ($2.66 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Competitive Enterprise Institute ($2.45 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• David Horowitz Freedom Center ($2.35 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Foundation for Individual Rights ($1.025 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Heartland Inst ($75,000 from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Heritage Foundation ($6.6 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Independent Women's Forum ($850,000 from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Intercollegiate Studies Institute ($3.125 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Judicial Watch ($1.15 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• Media Research Center ($2.7 million from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• National TaxPayers Union ($595,000 from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)
• NumbersUSA ($525,000 from Sarah Scaife and Carthage Foundations)

And again, that just represents just some of the money (from 2003) that's gone to some of the conservative organizations at CPAC.

So when the Tribune-Review decides to reprint, say, the Washington Post's coverage of Mitt Romney at CPAC, just remember how much money the Trib's owner has shuffled off to the various organizations supporting the conference.

Follow The Money...Again (A Short Note)

On the editorial pages of today's Tribune-Review we find two (2) columns, each Scaife Foundation connected, each Foundation connection unmentioned.

Imagine that.

Tracing The Cash

This Saturday, the Trib published another one of Craig Smith's interviews with famous conservatives who have unnamed ties to Scaife Foundation money.

This time it's Richard Perle.

This is how Smith describes Perle:

Richard Perle is a political adviser and lobbyist who served as an assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. He worked on the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee from 1987 to 2004, serving as its chairman from 2001 to 2003.

Which is accurate, but incomplete. Some of his other affiliations:

• The American Enterprise Institute, Resident Fellow ($8.361 million in Scaife Foundation money)
• Hudson Institute, Board of Trustees, 2008 ($3.85 million in Scaife Foundation money)
• Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Board of Advisors ($600 thousand in Scaife Money from 2010, 2009, 2008 alone)

Interesting, isn't it, how he's attached to some major conservative think tanks that have received some major Scaife money and when Scaife's paper interviews him, there's no mention of any of it.

Happy Monday, Pittsburgh!

An Interesting Twist

By the pricking of my thumbs
Something tea part this way comes. [not-MacBeth]

That darling of the tea-party, Sarah Palin endorsed Christine O'Donnell, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-masturbation GOP candidate for the United States Senate from the Great State of Delaware has been lying about her education. More than twice.

Talking Points Memo has the story (both of them).

First it was Oxford University:

Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell (R-DE) proclaimed on her LinkedIn the University of Oxford under "education," but it turns out that's another exaggeration on her resume. The claim is that O'Donnell earned a certificate from an Oxford course which her campaign said is "overseen" by a summer seminar program called the Phoenix Institute.

The TPM story leads back to this at the Washington Post:

O'Donnell's LinkedIn bio page lists "University of Oxford" as one of the schools she attended, claiming she studied "Post Modernism in the New Millennium." But it turns out that was just a course conducted by an institution known as the Phoenix Institute, which merely rented space at Oxford.

What's more, the woman who oversaw Phoenix Institute's summer program at Oxford tells me O'Donnell's claim about studying at Oxford is "misleading."

By itself, O'Donnell's Oxford claim might not matter too much. But the larger context is that O'Donnell has already been nabbed fudging her education record not once, but twice. She claimed for several years to have graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson Unversity, but she actually obtained her bachelor's degree last summer. And in a lawsuit she suggested she was trying for a Master's degree courses at Princeton -- but subsequently acknowledged she hadn't taken a single Princeton graduate course.

Princeton, too?

Then there's this:

Claremont Graduate University tells TPM that Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell did not attend the Southern California school despite listing it under education on her LinkedIn profile.

But here's the twist:

Turns out O'Donnell (R-DE) did receive a fellowship from a conservative think tank named the Claremont Institute, also in Claremont, Ca. but not affiliated with Claremont Graduate University.

While feeding the ear worm "It's a small world, after all" guess who sends gobs of money to the Claremont Institute?

My best friend 4-evah Richard Mellon Scaife.

According to mediamatters, the foundations he controls (Carthage, Sarah Scaife) have given $4.8 million dollars to the Institute over the last two decades. That's more than any other foundation, by the way.

In yet another ear worm moment, O'Donnell was a 2002 Lincoln Fellow. Did you know that another paragon of honesty is among the 2009 Lincoln Fellows?

Andrew Breitbart.

In 2009, the Scaife sent $375,000 to the Claremont Institute.

y god, his crap is everywhere!

Tribune Review. Again

From today's "Tuesday Takes" we find:

The Allegheny Institute's Jake Haulk reminds that because Pittsburgh largely was bypassed by the national employment growth of the last decade, it did not have the private-sector housing and commercial building booms that went bust in other parts of the country. "But that does not mean the city should try to avoid strong growth in the future," he says.

Mr. Haulk cautions, however, that continuing problems with the city school district and basic city governance issues -- along with an "uninviting business climate" -- mean only "anemic" economic gains are on the horizon. Bottom line: Mediocrity does not a renaissance make.

No mention of the $375,000 in grant money ($125K in 2006, 2007 and 2008) from the Allegheny Foundation - a foundation controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner and publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

Or the $360,000 in grant money ($110K in 2006 and $250K in 2008) from the Carthage Foundation - a foundation controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner and publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

Or the $235,000 in grant money ($110K in 2006 and $125K in 2007) from the Sarah Scaife Foundation - a foundation controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner and publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

For those keeping score that's $970,000 worth of support over the last 3 years and no mention of it when Scaife's editorial page quotes the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy.

The Scaife's journalistic circle jerk continues.

Scaife's Brain Trust. Again.

AND they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel, news source wise. Take a look. In this week's "Midweek briefing" we read:

Writing in The Bulletin of Philadelphia, Herb Denenberg throws the F-bomb. Yes, Mr. Denenberg says the stench of fascism is growing stronger from the Obama administration. That's based on its use "of the vast resources of the federal government to squelch criticism and silence and intimidate critics." Well, what else would you call it, folks?

The Bulletin of Philadelphia? A newspaper that closed up shop for print news in June and is now only publishing once a week? That Bulletin? Such a powerhouse of journalism to depend on.

Here's an example of the truthiness of this Bulletin piece:

The Obama campaign warned that any critics in Missouri would be subjected to prosecution there if they voiced criticism that was not true. There was a "Barack Obama Truth Squad” made up of prosecutors and sheriffs to keep critics in line, promising rebuttals and prosecution in appropriate cases.

The source of this example?

The Scaife funded Media Research Center ($850,000 in money from the Sarah Scaife Foundation from 2006-2008).

The incestuous circle-jerk continues.

But let's take a look at the Newsbusters story in particular. Here's something interesting:

Well, there is a "truth squad." It's in Missouri. It includes prosecutors and sheriffs. Oh, and they have formed their truth squad to threaten and intimidate the critics of ..... Barack Obama.

Wait wait. Didn't the Bulletin at least imply that the Obama campaign had formed the squad? But look - Newsbusters itself said the Sheriffs and prosecutors formed it themselves.

The Bulletin can't even get the smear right.

Great great work from Scaife's Brain Trust. Truly amazing.