Cash for columns: The scandal continues (paper dumps shills)

[UpInArms]

http://www.theunionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Cash+for+columns%3A+The+scandal+continues&articleId=b5c6f0ba-fc88-42c0-9457-2d3830619af9

ARMSTRONG WILLIAMS has more company.

Last week Business Week magazine reported that two researchers at two different free-market think tanks took money from indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing columns about issues important to Abramoff's clients. To our dismay, the work of one of those columnists has been published here.

<snip>

Bandow called his sellouts a "lapse of judgment" and had the good sense to resign. Peter Ferrara, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Innovation, took another tack, saying nothing was wrong with someone presenting himself as an independent expert then taking a lobbyist's money to write pieces favoring the lobbyist's clients.

<snip>

On Dec. 1 we ran a Ferrara column on Medicaid spending. It appears to be the only of his columns we have run. It definitely will be the last.

Readers expect that a columnist's views are his own. When a columnist is a paid shill for a lobbyist — particularly a secretly paid shill — a trust has been broken. A journalist's stock in trade is trust, and our op-ed pages are no place for columnists who have proven untrustworthy.

...more at link...

[Demeter]

1. Good Morning, New Hampshire!

As one who spent far too much time in your benighted dreamland, I have to laugh. Sure, the Union Leader had no idea what it was printing at the time!

[UpInArms]

2. here's a WP shill piece

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/18/AR2005121800885.html

excerpt:

Making lobbying reform a priority may sound a bit counterintuitive for this president. After all, the Bush administration hasn't exactly been at odds with lobbyists. Dozens of registered lobbyists -- including one Jack Abramoff -- were among the Pioneers ($100,000) and Rangers ($200,000) who harvested big bundles of campaign cash for the president. From the White House chief of staff (former auto industry lobbyist) on down, the administration is teeming with the once and future kings of K Street.

And yet, it would be good politics and good policy for the president to bite the hands that fund him.

The Democrats can't utter a sentence these days without bemoaning the Republican "culture of corruption." How better to take the wind out of their sails than to co-opt the corruption issue? The president's most effective immunization against the Abramoff virus is one he could administer himself, by getting out ahead of the problem. After all, Democrats didn't make much political headway with Enron and the other corporate scandals once corporate reform legislation was passed.

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), fresh from hearings that exposed the extent of Abramoff's greed and duplicity, has just unveiled his own lobbying reform plan. If the president were to adopt the issue as his own, he could simultaneously upstage McCain and bask in some of the senator's good-government glow. "Be like John" is a smart political play these days.

...more blow at link...

[MrTriumph]

6. Headway? The Dems made great headway on corp. scandals

"After all, Democrats didn't make much political headway with Enron and the other corporate scandals once corporate reform legislation was passed."

The above is typical Republican/MSM myth. The Democrats did a great job of fanning appropriate outrage over corporate scandals. In fact, they did so well, it look like the R's would take a beating in the 2002 midterm elections. That's when Bush began beating the war-drums over Iraq prompting the MSM to become consumed with WMD, Saddam as Hitler, mushroom cloud, 9/11=Iraq, yellow cake, fantasies.

[bemildred]

3. Tsk, is the mask of "objectivity" slipping off? nt

[AnneD]

4. Hey UIA,

Thanks for some hard evidence about what many of us on the Stock Watch thread have been saying all along. They rig the business pages just like they rig MSM. I pity the fool that believes the business news anymore.

[UpInArms]

5. it's the only explanation for such stupid crap to spew

from the mouths of "experts", AnneD.

I cannot imagine an unobjective report that would make the claims that we have heard and read.

:hi:

[AnneD]

7. The irony is...

there are many well heeled GOP donors that are going to be just as 'surprised' as the economist when things go belly up. But they will suffer staggering losses for drinking the koolaid.

:headbang: SWT rocks