Mike McIntyre of the PD really is an easy sell. He bought Drew Carey’s line that Reason.TV is “non-partisan”. Which is funny, because if you just go to Reason.TV’s website for 5 seconds, you immediately are greeted with a who’s who of the right wingnutosphere, Fox News clips, and hit pieces on Barack Obama.
Forget the 5 seconds, though. Any blogger who’s spent more than a month paying attention to the right wingnutosphere knows that Reason.TV is anything but non-partisan. But apparently since it’s Drew Carey selling McIntyre a bunch of hooey, print it!
Carey took time off from his gig as host of TV’s “The Price Is Right” to help produce and star in a series of Web reports detailing Cleveland’s woes and a number of proposed fixes that will be launched next week on reason.tv, the Internet arm of the nonpartisan, libertarian-leaningReason Foundation, on whose board Carey serves.
Who is the Reason Foundation? Let’s ask Media Matters, the go to place for transparency on these shady conservative “think tanks”.
The Reason Foundation advocates for the privatization of many industries. It has supported the legalization and taxation of marijuana. Recently, the organization has opposed financial bailouts, President Obamas economic stimulus package, government-run health care, and the Employee Free Choice Act. The Reason Foundation has received funding from numerous foundations and corporations, including the Koch Family Foundations, the Scaife Foundations, and ExxonMobil.
In other words, big oil. The Koch Foundation is run by the family who owns the single largest privately held oil company in the world, and who fund Reason to the tune of $1.5 million. Koch also brought us the health care town hall hysteria.
This foundation provided funding for the organization Citizens for a Sound Economy. In 2004, Citizens for a Sound Economy split into two groups: FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. In the Conservative Transparency database, FreedomWorks’ financial data includes data from Citizens for a Sound Economy.
Yes, that FreedomWorks, the outer fringe of GlennBeckIstan which has been trying to kill health care reform for a solid year. Reason gets another $1.7 million from another big oil funder, the Scaife Foundation – the people who have frothed at the mouth about Bill Clinton for so long, so frothily, they brought us impeachment in 1998. But those are just Carey’s funders, so let’s cut Drew some slack right?
Well, Drew might get some slack if he hadn’t given every penny of the $7,300 he’s ever given to political campaigns to, you guessed it, Republicans. Drew maxed out to Ron Paul in 2007, at $2,300, and gave the remaining $5,000 to George Voinovich over the past 12 years since 1998.
Non-partisan, Mike McIntyre? Try again. Maybe we’ll see Drew Carey on the ballot for county office in September. I bet he tries to tell us he’s an “independent”.
Tags: drew carey, reason.tv
Tim: In this instance, the word “partisan” applies to political party.
The quote you list states, in part: “The Reason Foundation … has supported the legalization and taxation of marijuana. …” Hardly a Republican, or Democrat, platform plank.
The story is clear throughout that the organization advocates less goverment, less regulation, privatization, tax relief, etc. … Some of its views are shared by the Republican party. Some are not.
The story clearly identifies the organization is leaning libertarian, not Republican, per se. I think nonpartisan is fair here in that context.
[...] “Candidate” Tim misses the bigger picture. It’s not that not only is Drew Carey hardly a non-partisan figure, but he’s blatantly wrong. [...]
The Price: I never wrote that Drew was a nonpartisan figure. I wrote that the Reason Foundation is a “nonpartisan, libertarian-leaning” organization. Whether Drew is right or wrong is perfect fodder for robust discussion and debate.
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