This was the hand I used to hand over the payments to the “scholars”
A month or so ago, I took the Strib to task for their uncritical printing of a letter which opined that conservative think tanks were staffed by those whose conservative views prevented their hiring by legitimate universities.
More on that topic today from Paul Krugman in the NY Times (subscription required.) As Krugman notes, Republican lobbyist extraordinare Jack Abramoff’s involvement in using the ostensibly scholarly works of these think tanks for conservative political purposes was reported before in The New Republic (subscription required.) Now it seems Abramoff was directly involoved in handling payments to think tank “fellows” at the Cato Institute and the Institute for Policy Innovation. Thank that bastion of liberalism, Business Week, for bringing that to our attention.
Anyway, as Krugman points out, Abramoff paying for “scholarship” on behalf of his clients doesn’t deviate much from the Republican norm of planting softball questions at news conferences or paying directly for op-ed pieces on behalf of Administration programs.
So, when they say, “You can’t believe everything you read,” that’s certainly the truth these days. You can believe that much.
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