You can tell I've had a lazy day at home wrapping presents (all but two are bought and wrapped!) and watching movies (and that frustrating Chiefs game) when I make my fifth post of the day. It's a new record.
But that's not what I just found out about that is important enough to report (not to mention the whole cause/effect relationship of setting a personal record). When I was in 9th grade, one of the first people Brian and I gathered research from for debate was a Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute named Doug Bandow. Apparently, he somehow got involved with the now infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the tune of $2,000 per friendly and topical article about such key economic policy areas as markets in the Marianas. I don't know the details outside of this article, but what an idiot to jeopardize a gig at CATO by not disclosing the cash! He's finished with CATO.
It's so sad. And dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, Mr. Bandow. It's not that being paid to write is particularly bad; but you have to disclose it. Especially when you work for an organization that wants to be taken seriously for its ideas rather than its PR value or connections.
It makes you wonder if there are any people who haven't taken cash from an Abramoff associate. I had assumed this was just a political scandal, but if he was paying off academics/think tankers, particularly if it's even remotely related to the Administration's own covert pay offs, there might not be any safe establishment figure in Washington. It also makes you wonder if this particular decision making process was sought by President Reagan in all of his assistants.
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