Where the Money Leads

Media Transparency follows the money fueling the right-wing movement, to show how conservative philanthropies, through their tax-exempt funding strategies, shape public discourse.

The big givers include Milwaukee's Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Scaife, Koch, Coors, and Walton family foundations. They alone have poured $28 million into the American Enterprise Institute. That kind of money buys a lot of "experts."

With coordinated giving on a grand scale, they've led the way in funding a movement to radically alter the social, legal, educational, media, political and religious landscapes of the United States, building a supply-side machinery for implementing a hard-right agenda.

Media Transparency follows their money and what it buys with a unique database -- 50,000 grants to 9,000 recipients for $3.5 billion -- and 60 to 70 original articles per year that connect the dots between the money and the movement's radical public policy goals. .... http://www.mediatransparency.org/whereth...

Obama adviser faults Bill Clinton speech

...The former president told a group of veterans Friday in Charlotte, N.C.: "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics."

...McPeak also had made off-the-cuff remarks to reporters Friday in comparing the former president's comments with the actions of Joseph McCarthy, the 1950s communist-hunting senator.

"I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I've had enough of it," McPeak said.

Wolfson called that comparison outrageous and called for a retraction.

"I think most Democrats were shocked to learn that a two-term Democratic president was compared to Joseph McCarthy," he said.

McPeak was more scripted Saturday and joked that "occasionally I say something a little earthier."

Last month, Obama's wife, Michelle, drew criticism for telling an audience in Milwaukee, "For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change."

The campaign clarified those comments by saying she was proud of U.S. politics for the first time and has always been proud of her country

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080322/ap_o...

Glad everyone appreciated my coverage this morning. There was so much more I tried to get but I'm not a stenographer.

C-span doesn't seem to have captured the Medford stop. Most of the speech/questions was classic Obama, but there were some new insights.

Here's the thread with my coverage, if anybody missed it.

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/24367...

Thanks for your play on play Fred, you did a stellar job.

Medford, OR

57.

Joan In Florida
Sat, 03/22/08

I wrote to C-span Thursday after a week of boring replays...

Since that time, they seems to have loaded up C-span with Obama stuff. It does help to put in your two cents now and then...

====================

Thanks. I don't know if C-Span does coverage themselves or if it is a cooperative that picks up videos of others.

Anybody know?

5.

mainefem
==================

Thanks for the link. That was a very good thing to say, so no wonder they will show it on the evening news. The timber industry is a very destructive industry here that has blamed environmentalists for the loss of jobs they themselves caused by overharvesting and clear-cutting, and mismanagement and neglect, due to not thinning. There are simply no more tree of any value to mill.

The current trend is wood products has been to harvest "fiber" which is a way of using the scrawny thin trees we mostly get. Mills are no longer wood mills, but forest products processing plants. That's why there's so much toxic pressboard available and so little solid wood anymore.

Environmentalists have stood in the way of blocking the last of the old growth forrests, maybe a years worth of wood for one saw mill, but billions of dollars with huge trees, and for that environmentalists have been pegged as the bad guy, blamed for people's loss of "our way of life"

Most of the rednecks and lumberjacks here used to be Democrats, but like the south, the right wing liars converted them to wasteful industrial republicans with the promise of work. In the end, they lost their jobs anyway, because there's no more wood to cut (except for burned out forrest fires)

Agree completely with the topic post.  But Stephen Crockett left one thing out--the importance of secrecy in cutting the public back out of our public affairs.  making public officials provide an account and an accounting of their actions as our agents is the best disinfectant.

I think lots of people have failed to fully appreciate government in the sunshine requirements and the availability of public records because they're personally not interested in the minutea of government.  But, that's not the point.  The process of making the record alone is a check.  Just knowing that their decisions and votes are available for public review makes public officials mind their p's and q's.

It's actually possible that the public records acts need to be strengthened.  I see no reason, for example, why Presidential papers can still be sequestered two decades after they were compiled on the basis of a presidential order.  And then there are those orders.  There ought to be some limit on what they can cover and prohibiting public access to information should not be dealt with that way.  Not to mention that executive privilege needs to be more closely defined.

7:45 PM EDT

Fred -

Speaking of "overharvesting", I just saw on ABC News that the pacific salmon industry may have a fishing ban imposed on it from Oregon to the Mexican border.

There's been a huge drop in the wild river salmon population from a 1.5 million count a few years ago to just 35,000 now.

The biggest culprit is man-made -- dams. 

7:48 PM EDT

where were the three candidates today tells me a lot about their priorities:

Clinton was in NY

McCain was overseas

Obama was in OR

Great job, Fred. Medford is a more conservative area - not like Eugene and Portland. Impressive.

Kindly recommend another post. Thank you.

http://www.blogforamerica.com/view/24422...

hello ohio

Bush to visit National Museum of the United States Air Force on March 27



MARY BETH LEHMAN

Staff Writer

GREENE COUNTY — The Miami Valley will soon have another political visit, this time from someone already elected to the office of president — George W. Bush.

According to reports from the White House, Bush has made plans to visit the Miami Valley next Thursday, March 27. Bush will begin his visit with a speech at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, where his speech will highlight issues related to the global war on terrorism.

Public Affairs representatives for the Air Force museum have stated that the museum would be closed for the entire day Thursday to accommodate the president’s visit, and the speech itself will not be open to the public.

The office has also stopped taking calls from those not involved in the media or the president’s visit, and they are asking anyone who needs to get in touch with public affairs to wait until March 28.

 

Is Hillary Positioning for 2012?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/is-hillary-positioning-fo_b_92904.html

Congress woman Corrine Brown of Florida says Dean should "fix it", meaning the Florida Fiasco, or he should resign..

Ah, Corrine, you guys made the mess and now you want Dean to clean it up for you. 

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1931

 "JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Democratic Congresswoman Corrine Brown places the blame for the delegate flap squarely on DNC Chairman Howard Dean.

"I think Howard Dean should fix the problem or resign," Brown exclaims during an interview at First Coast News studios."

Then she made what almost sounds like  a threat to the DNC.

"Let me tell you something. If he (Dean) does not work this out, not only do I show up, I show up with a million Floridians. We will circle the convention. No one will go in until we resolve this issue. I'm not playing with him. He needs to get it straight before then. I'm not playing."

8:25 PM EDT

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-the-audacity-of-treating-voters-like-adults-798979.html?r=RSS

Matthew Norman: The audacity of treating voters like adults

Friday, 21 March 2008

Wherever the coming months lead along the serpentine and endlessly captivating trail to become the 44th President of the United States, something unforgettable and potentially transformative happened in Philadelphia on Tuesday. A major Western politician talked about the most enduringly incendiary issue of the past half century as if he were addressing adults. If Barack Obama's speech on race has passed you by, find 37 and a half minutes to watch it on YouTube and judge for yourself whether you've ever seen one like him in your life.

...

8:29 PM EDT

I just love it how Howard is the center of attention.  Hillary probably wishes now she had clapped for him during his speech at the 2004 dem convention.

Cynthia McKinney needs to get on state ballots (Greenies)--as does Nadar (I).

Mainefem darlin, it's Nader, N-A-D-E-R

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nope. N-A-D-I-R

What a spectacle. Corrine Brown and a million Floridians marching defiantly toward the Convention, Hillary alongside in her yellow jacket and combat boots.

I don't think it will happen. Fl is at 9' above sea level. The nosebleeds alone would slow them down.

Nader=Nadir=A

where only B is relevant

15.mary vb
Sat, 03/22/08

Great job, Fred. Medford is a more conservative area - not like Eugene and Portland. Impressive
=====================

Thanks
Yes it is but the Rogue valley also includes Ashland and Talent, which goes democratic 3 to 1 in elections. this used to be a big wood mill area, now it is tourism, education, and retirement living.

But there is still a lot of misplaced bitterness towards environmentalist who mistakenly get blamed for the demise of the forrest products industry. Actually it is the contrary. If people listened to environmentalists, there would be more work.

Studies have shown selective harvesting yeilds many time more fiber over the long run than clear-cutting and replanting, which destroys the forest soil ecology. But clear cutting means a big fast buck for somebody.

Logging companies export many logs to Asia too. There is a law against exporting "raw timber" but there's so many loopholes, all they have to do is remove the bark and it is no longer "raw timber."

5.

* rdorgan
Sat, 03/22/08
====================

yea, I saw that too. Estimates are from 1.5 million fish a few years ago to 35,000 today.

the report blamed man's effect, but I think the bulk of it came from the biggest fishkill in history, because Bush/Cheneye sided with the ranchers and farmers and drained Lake Klamath, here in southern Oregon, for irrigation, causing a huge oxygen depletion.

Talked to a guy and his wife working a hot dog truck, when I was living in Klamath falls.

He said the formaldehyde from the pressboard plants gave him terrible diarrhea and headaches. He had to quit.

With my MCS I could not live in Medford. The two pressboard plants pollute that whole part of the valley. The air smells like pressboard everywhere.

One guy who worked in the arsenic-treatment vats for wood died at 43 of cancer after working there two years. Arsenic wood is being phased out.

From NYT  'Obama Talk Fuels Easter Sermons'

This Easter Sunday, the holiest day of the Christian calendar, many pastors will start their sermons about the Resurrection of Jesus and weave in a pointed message about racism and bigotry, and the need to rise above them.

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