Cliff Kincaid suggests that Abramoff isn't as slick as Soros:
whatever happened to convicted inside trader and billionaire currency speculator George Soros? He is the proponent of drug legalization who tried to buy the presidency for the Democratic Party in 2004. His other causes include needle exchanges for drug addicts, open borders, assisted suicide, voting rights for felons, abortion and homosexual rights.
Soros makes Abramoff, who spent about $5 million on political influence operations, look like a piker. Soros reportedly spent $400 million in 2004 on his network of foundations and non-profit groups. In reference to his more than $20 million campaign to defeat President Bush in 2004, the National Legal and Policy Center filed a formal Complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Soros had violated the Federal Election Campaign Act by failing to report significant expenditures.
Except for some payments to two columnists, Abramoff tried to influence politicians. Soros has a far more impressive record of influencing the press. Soros has put some of his massive fortune into press groups like Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE), the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and Center for Investigative Reporting. James V. Grimaldi, a Post reporter covering the Abramoff affair, is on the IRE board. These groups never subject Soros to scrutiny, except to strictly itemize how much money he is giving away. That earns him the title "philanthropist" or "financier," but never "inside trader."
You'll want to read the whole piece.It makes you wonder who's behind a lot of op-ed pieces in the newspaper.Witness
Lew Rockwell's insight on the subject:
Intellectuals are always in a position to sell their talents to special interests, and many of them do, especially in Washington, where the sting of payola is soon anesthetized.
The truth is that this is a selective and partisan attack. The media love exposing the conflicts of interest when they appear on the right, while ignoring the same thing on the left. Why no articles on the conflicts of interest of thousands of left-wing nonprofits that are supported by the very federal programs for which they lobby relentlessly? Something like the American Cancer Society comes to mind.
Heh.
