This is a f*cking outrage and cannot be allowed to stand!

[pk_du]

The Armstrong Williams payola case is apparently the tip of the iceberg (as Williams let slip to "The Nation"s David Corn).

This woman:

Virgina Walden-Ford

was paid 2,500,000.00 in 2004 (5 year deal) to " continue its outreach to parents about their options under the No Child Left Behind Act, including public school choice and free academic services such as tutoring "

Source (US Govt): http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2004/10/10262004a.html

Then - she spends her time/money spewing this Anti-Kerry shit all over local radio stations

<snip>
The sham of GOP Black voter outreach is over and the true Republican mission has begun: suppress the African American vote, by any means possible. To that end, the Bush men have enlisted the mercenary services of Black front groups invented by rightwing foundations in the Nineties to push for school vouchers and other elements of the Republican agenda. These bought-and-paid-for servants of the Hard Right took to the airwaves in August calling themselves People of Color United and spending a rich white Republican man’s money to attack Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry as “rich, white and wishy-washy.”

Virginia Walden-Ford, the operative who placed the attack ads on Black-oriented radio stations in the “battlefield” states of Pennsylvania, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin, is for all practical purposes a paid agent of the Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is a founding board member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), the pro-school vouchers group conceived, birthed and jump-started with at least $2 million in 1999 by the far-right Bradley and Walton Family Foundations (Wal-Mart). Since George Bush assumed office, BAEO and a host of its vouchers/privatization siblings – each the incestuous spawn of the Right’s foundation funding network – have collected over $77 million dollars in grants from Secretary Rod Paige’s Education Department. In effect, Virginia Walden-Ford’s BAEO – which received $1.3 million in federal funds – has been “graduated” to a Bush administration functionary, while continuing to be subsidized by the Walton family, Bradley, and other far-right moneybags. These Black attack dogs are well fed.
<snip>


Source: http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Bush-Attack-Dogs2sep04.htm

[Erika]

1. How sad they've sold their souls

for a buck. But that's Bush's world.

[Liberty Belle]

2. Kick!

How many more? This is totally illegal, if only the Justice Department wasn't corrupt to the core.

:kick:

[podnoi]

3. Kick with request to change title?

[tcfrogs]

4. Links don't translate to your argument

No offense, but it sounds like conjecture on your part without any proof.

[pk_du]

7. Let me recap....

1. She is a leader/head of BAEO.org.
2. The organization is paid millions to "advance the cause of NCLB"
3. She goes on a local radio tour in the months leading up to the election promoting NCLB and decrying Kerrys education plans as the leader of another astroturf group "People of Color United"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58006-2004Aug11.html

This last one may be the missing link you need to fully clarify the picture.....you cannot be paid millions by Rod Paige one day to promote NCLB then put on another hat and rip Kerry to pieces all over local radio.

[saltpoint]

5. Are there any leads on who the actual bag man is?

Who is the Bush stooge actually contacting and setting this up with these "journalists" ?

As little as I like Dan Rather's reporting, he has done nothing on the scale of this propaganda and skullduggery.

One of the wwomen on Capital Gang -- not Margaret Carlson, but the other one -- Kate O'Bierne (sp?) -- I've suspected she was a bit too close to the administration, too automatic in denouncing Clinton and Gore and Kerry and Edwards.

Just a hunch -- I have zero evidence.

[DemBones DemBones]

17. I agree about Kate O'Bern (sp.) nt

[Donna Zen]

20. Kate O'Bierne

is very close to Lynne Cheney. Part of the Arkansas project that is covered in Brock's "Blinded by the Right."

[saltpoint]

23. Hi, Donna Zen, and thanks for this info.

I didn't know this at all.

But wow, it explains a lot.

[sandnsea]

6. Bradley Foundation = Heritage

And before that, the John Birch Society.

[Seabiscuit]

8. Thanks. I knew there had to be a link back to the Birchers.

[sandnsea]

9. Unbelievable isn't it?

Apparently the Birchers weren't right wing enough, so they created the Heritage Foundation. :crazy:

Busting open all this money could really help. I'm working on some of it now, starting with Bozell who is behind the Parent Television Council that's been bombarding the FCC.

[Seabiscuit]

10. I remember learning about the John Birch Society in high school

and was appalled and disgusted that there were actually people out there that espoused such insane crap. I considered them irrelevant.

Over the years I thought they'd died off and disappeared.

Meanwhile, they morphed into the Heritage Foundation behind my back and are basically running this country into the ground today? Holy Moly!

This really is a disgusting phenomenon.

[rodeodance]

11. maybe send to the person who broke the Armstrong story?

Maybe he is continuing the investigation? I do not know.

[sandnsea]

12. Well hang on

Because the Bradley Foundation also gave $600,000 to AEI and $200,000 to PNAC and $250,000 to Media Research which is the Parent Television Council. And $3 million to Partners Advancing Values in Education and I don't know who they're connected to yet.

[tyedyeto]

18. They are still around

I have seen billboards here in AZ telling us to get out of the UN - sponsored by the JBS.

[sandnsea]

13. Ralph Reed paid by Enron????

http://www.deal-with-it.org/hearts/reed.htm

According to the Post: "Reed proposed sending 20 'facilitating letters' to each of 17 members of the congressional commerce committees that handle deregulation. Under the proposal, Enron would pay Reed's firm $170,000 for generating the letters, each signed by a third party.

"Reed asked Enron to pay his firm $25,000 to generate letters to the editors of newspapers, each signed by a prominent figure. 'These op-eds and letters are then blast faxed to elected officials, opinion leaders and civic activists for use in their own letters and public statements.' He said his firm had recently 'placed' opinion pieces in The Washington Post and the New York Times." Reed would do these and other public services and acts of loyalty for a mere $380,000.

[AP]

21. William Kristol admitted he was paid by Enron on the Dianne Rehm show.

When I heard that it was like a bomb. I thought that that was the end of his time as a comentator on her show.

Nope. He was back every Friday after that.

[Al-CIAda]

26. Ralph Reed's Gamble

Ralph Reed's Gamble

by JACK NEWFIELD



When Ralph Reed was the boyish director of the Christian Coalition, he made opposition to gambling a major plank in his "family values" agenda, calling gambling "a cancer on the American body politic" that was "stealing food from the mouths of children." But now, a broad federal investigation into lobbying abuses connected to gambling on Indian reservations has unearthed evidence that Reed has been surreptitiously working for an Indian tribe with a large casino it sought to protect--and that Reed was paid with funds laundered through two firms to try to keep his lucrative involvement secret. Reed has always operated behind the scenes, and apparently he didn't want to risk becoming a humbled hypocrite like his right-wing cohorts William Bennett and Rush Limbaugh.

News accounts of the emerging scandal have focused on the two main figures under investigation: lawyer/lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Mike Scanlon, House GOP majority leader Tom DeLay's former spokesman and head of two campaign and public relations companies. But Reed has managed to slither below the media's radar--until now.

Neither he, Abramoff or Scanlon returned phone calls.

In early 2002 the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana was desperately trying to kill a planned competing casino that the rival Jena Band wanted to build in southwestern Louisiana. This new casino would have broken the Coushattas' geographical monopoly and cost the tribe--whose casino was grossing $300 million a year-- an estimated $1 billion in gambling revenue over five years. The Jena Band had hired former GOP national chairman Haley Barbour to make sure its casino compact was approved by the heavily politicized Bureau of Indian Affairs. So the Coushatta tribe, which already was in the process of paying Abramoff and Scanlon some $32 million over three years, also hired Reed, according to three witnesses and documents obtained by The Nation. This was not a crime, just furtive hypocrisy.

Con't-
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040712&s=newfield

[bliss_eternal]

14. kick

:kick:

[Carolab]

15. I couldn't believe it in the months leading into the "election"...

I kept hearing all these black voices boosting Bush on education, etc. I had to turn the sound down on the radio when these "ads" came on. I just shook my head in disbelief that any person, let alone any black person, would do this--no matter how well paid.

[xchrom]

16. kick

[Maestro]

19. Buy alliances if you can't convince them

that what you propose is worthwhile. Disgusting.

[Donna Zen]

22. Two points:

Educated people often question authority. After the 60s kids kicked up their heels, those in power became worried. They are not going to spend gobs of money educating everyone anymore. The solution as they see it is a stratified system of education--even more unequal than it is now.

Pirate-A-zation of education is big bucks. Whatever they are spending for propaganda, the payback is huge.

I am shocked by the attitude toward public education in the country in general, but also on liberal discussion boards. Even here, I have seen the schools vilified. I suppose it is the "kewl" thing to do, but selling out your schools will not improve them. When you lose them, as is the neocon plan, they will be missed.

[sunnystarr]

24. You are so right on! (nt)

[sandnsea]

25. They want Christian schools

I was doing a bit of research last night and the Bradley Foundation funds PAVE, a scholarship program in Wisconsin. $3 million a year. It all goes to Christian private schools, not just any private school. I always thought vouchers was a money-making scheme and capitalist brainwashing scheme. Nope, just more of the theocratic take-over, or maybe a little of both.

[fooj]

27. I need to let my teachers union in on this crap!

What a shameless bunch...

[XemaSab]

28. No God but mannon...

(and Bush is his prophet)!

[slater71]

29. All these fucking repuke talking heads in Washington now.

All of them on radio row. Do you think they paid for their trips, their food, their hotel rooms, the inaugural balls? If they even took one free donut, they are taking something for spouting their bullshit on the air to further the agenda of this administration, and that makes them the same as Armstrong Williams in my book.

[Al-CIAda]

30. bump