[IP] summary Cato fellow, columnist, Doug Bandow resigns for payments
Begin forwarded message:
From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: December 17, 2005 12:02:13 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>, ip@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Cato fellow, columnist, Doug Bandow resigns for payments
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/politics/17abramoff.html?
ex=1292475600&en=3950d66ca9c97761&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 - A senior scholar at the Cato Institute, the
respected libertarian research organization, has resigned after
revelations that he took payments from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff in
exchange for writing columns favorable to his clients.
The scholar, Doug Bandow, who wrote a column for the Copley News
Service in addition to serving as a Cato fellow, acknowledged to
executives at the organization that he had taken money from Mr.
Abramoff after he was confronted about the payments by a reporter
from BusinessWeek Online.
...The revelation caps a year of disclosures about partisan payments
to seemingly independent writers, including Armstrong Williams, the
conservative columnist and television host, who received payments
from the federal Education Department at a time when he was promoting
the Bush administration's education policies in his columns. The
administration has been under mounting pressure to become more
transparent in its communications after accounts that it paid for and
printed articles in Iraqi periodicals as part of its overseas
propaganda effort.
Mr. Bandow did not take government money, but the source of his
payments - around $2,000 an article - is no less controversial. His
sometime sponsor, Mr. Abramoff, is at the center of a far-reaching
criminal corruption investigation involving several members of
Congress, with prosecutors examining whether he sought to bribe
lawmakers in exchange for legislative help.
A second scholar, Peter Ferrara, of the Institute for Policy
Innovation, acknowledged in the same BusinessWeek Online piece that
he had also taken money from Mr. Abramoff in exchange for writing
certain opinion articles.
...But at Cato, said Mr. Dettmer, and at the American Enterprise
Institute, said a spokeswoman there, rules require scholars to make
public all their affiliations, and there is an expectation that
scholars will not embarrass the institution..
--
Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php
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