Saturday, January 07, 2006

Seeing the Forest on Not Seeing the Forest


The Abramoff Indictment Justice Investigation Hides Connection to RWNM

Dave Johnson is agreeing with me about the non-profit foundation links in the Abramoff scandal not being pursued by the Justice Department when the lack of oversight of the tax-free foundations is the heart of the scandal. He provides links to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy which reports that the indictment reveals "the debilitated condition of government oversight of nonprofits and foundations."
You see, the entire "conservative movement" operation depends on tax-free donations to so-called "charitable" organizations like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and hundreds of other national and state organizations that are supposed to be non-partisan but in reality operate almost entirely to the benefit of the Republican Party. So any kind of crackdown on the misuse of tax-free charitable donations would threaten the continued existence of the right-wing noise machine itself.

Abramoff's connection to and abuse of a "clearly phony" non-profit organization is a lead the Bush Administration's Justice Department doesn't want to follow, because it is this network of organizations that pays - and pays well - for the army of right-wingers who write op-eds, articles and books supporting the Republican agenda, who make appearances on so many radio and TV shows and who offer "informed opinions" for news articles and programs. These are the PR and marketing organizations that send out the repeated pro-conservative messaging and strategic narratives that move American ever more rightward. An honest investigation of their funding and operation would threaten the underpinnings of the conservative movement's "Right Wing Noise Machine."


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