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.