<It started with a fellow named Armstrong Williams. Mr. Williams was a relatively popular conservative commentator on both radio and TV. When Bush carved the school vouchers out of his new “No Child Left Behind” back in 2001, Armstrong Williams was none to pleased and said that “Mr. Bush scooped out the soul of his own education proposal." Pretty harsh language but soon, Mr. Williams changed his tune. In fact, he eventually became one of the champion’s of the NCLB legislation. What changed his mind you ask? One would be logical to conclude that it would be the $240,000 payoff he received from the administration to tout the law, that changed his mind. Once he received this payola, Mr. Armstrong commented in his weekly article a numerous occasions the value of the very bill he demeaned just a few years earlier. Of course, he also never revealed to his readers that he had been paid off, permanently ruining his ethical reputation.
If this was an isolated incident, it would be frightening enough, but this week it has been revealed that Armstrong Williams is only the tip of the propaganda iceberg. He only represents one opinion Bush is trying to buy from you. Next up this week was a woman named Maggie Gallagher. Ms. Gallagher is a syndicated columnist who may have violated the law in promoting the Bush marriage initiatives to Congress, without revealing she had been paid by Bush to promote those initiatives. Did you get that America? In 2002 and 2003, Ms. Gallagher received over $40,000 from the Bush administration to pimp their vision of marriage as the panacea for all social welfare problems. On September 4, 2003 and again on March 3, 2004, Maggie Gallagher appeared before Congress as a witness for the Majority (GOP) during the Federal Marriage Amendment. At those hearings it appears that Ms. Gallagher did not bother to inform Congress of the fact that her opinion had been bought. It is unclear at this point if this was technically a federal violation of law or a violation of Congress.
Let’s walk through this again. Ms. Gallagher was paid $40,000 by the Bush administration to tout its marriage initiatives. From that point on she began to promote the initiatives in her columns extensively. These columns graced the pages of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among others. She was also paid to complete a report entitled, “Can Government Strengthen Marriage?” Considering she was paid tens of thousands of dollars, I am going to guess her answer was “yes”. Then, because she had now written so much about the subject, she was called as an expert witness before Congress when they were deciding whether to fund the 300 million dollar “marriage promotion initiatives”. The problem is that she did not tell Congress that she had already received over $40,000 in payola to push the same initiatives she was now pretending to be an “expert” on.
When she was busted this week her comment was, “I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it”. I don’t know about you, but I forget people who hand me $40,000 every day, don’t you? This excuse is so preposterous that while Ms. Gallagher may play an expert on marriage before Congress, she is obviously divorced from reality. .
So, we have yet another example of George Bush taking your tax money, buying a media opinion, to then try and convince you (and Congress in this case) about a plan he knows won’t float on it’s own. Are you outraged yet? Are you disgusted yet? If not, let’s discuss Michael McManus.>
http://www.opednews.com/wade_012905_bush_whores.htm 
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