In news, you need to know this. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell fought tooth and nail against the federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler last year. The Republican leader saying, “I cannot ask the American tax payer to subsidize failure!” Right, so he’s totally anti-bailout GM. Is GM upset about that? Not so much. Political Action Committee that GM formed, this is back before the bailout, and is now largely owned by taxpayers, donated $5000 bucks to Republican McConnell’s campaign last month. Part of the 190 thousand dollars it donated to various campaigns just over the last 30 days. Although they suspended their campaign contributions when they asked for help from the government for financial support, they’re now following other big corporations back into the game of buying influence in Washington DC.

23 companies with political action committees received a billion dollars or more in tax payer bailouts. And those 23 companies with PACs that received that billion dollars, just last month gave 1.4 million dollars to candidates and virtually all of them Republicans. Big reason all this corporate money is flooding into Republican campaigns? Particularly from Wall Street? Is the democratic party’s push for financial regulation legislation this year. They hate this stuff. “Oh my god you’re going to regulate Wall Street, we can’t have that. Let’s give a million dollars to right wingers. They’ll deregulate us just like Phil Gramm did back in ’99 and we’ll be back in Fat City!”

So now you know the bailouts, the Republican, this is so bizarre. The Republicans are in their campaign commercials against democrats are yelling and screaming about the bailouts. Now you’ll keep in mind, much of this bailout stuff began during the Bush administration, although it was Obama’s decision to bailout General Motors. But in any case, they’re running these television ads going “our tax payer dollars are used to bailout big corporations.” In a televised commercial, former Republican senator Dan Coates goes after his opponent in the Indiana senate race. Currently sitting congressman Brad Elsworth, a democrat, for “supporting the Obama, Reid, Pelosi agenda, including disastrous bank bailouts.” Actually the bank bailout part, that was Bush. But it doesn’t matter. I mean truth, reality, ha! Are you kidding? Do you get it?

These companies took tax payer funded bailouts and then turned around and used those tax payer funded bailouts to give money to Republicans to complain about democrats who voted for the bailouts. Then the Republicans are trying to throw out the financial reform that had it been in place after 1999, keep in mind this is just stepping us back a little bit to ’99 when Phil Gramm and Gramm-Leach-Bliley, you know this whole, this piece of legislation that basically deregulated the banks, and then the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, signed into law enthusiastically by the way by Bill Clinton on the advice of Robert Ruben, former head of Citibank. They’re all conservatives, they’re all corporatists.

So they deregulated Wall Street, and what do we get a giant Ponzi scheme that crashes America. And so these corporations are taking the bailout money that they got to keep them alive and giving it to Republicans to further the cause of further deregulating them so we can have more bankster casino robberies and another Republican great depression. I’m getting dizzy. This is beyond the pale.

Now on top of that, the right wing is developing this incredible “journalistic” infrastructure. We’re going to be talking with Lee Fang at the Center for American Progress in about six minutes or eight minutes about this in some more detail. But right wing “journalists” making a fortune off this stuff. And but on top of that, Raw Story is reporting. "US Chamber of Commerce ‘entering the news business’: report" from Raw Story, Daniel Tencer writing for the US Chamber. He says, “the US Chamber is quietly developing it’s own network of media outlets.”

Now this, actually it wasn’t Raw Story that did the research on this, it was Harvard University’s journalism lab. The Nieman Journalism Lab. And so these journalism students went out and they see, you know, there’s this eruption of local “business newspapers.” Local, statewide, citywide in big cities versions of, you know, local, what look like business newspapers. You know kind of a local versions of the Wall Street Journal although they don’t use that name. You know they have names like, well for example, “Legal Newsline” and “Southeast Texas Record.”

And they go on and on and on about how you know we’ve got to have tort reform. Now if you don’t know what tort reform is, let me lay it out for you. Republicans have been pushing this for a long, long time. Tort reform is very simply says that your life is worth a quarter million dollars period. The goal of tort reform is twofold. One: it’s to prevent big companies, big corporations, from being held accountable for selling bad products or committing basically crimes against you. So if you are killed or your child is maimed in a way that leaves her you know on a respirator for the rest of her life, it’s going to cost you three million dollars through the course of her life just to keep her alive. The most you can get is a quarter million dollars under tort reform. This is how it is in the state of Texas right now for example. One of the wonderful contributions of the Bush administration.

And so the Republicans have been pushing this tort reform thing. And these newspapers are all pushing this tort reform thing. As I said, tort reform has two reasons. Number one: it allows corporations to say you know back, for example. Back when GM did their side saddle gas tanks. This was back in the ‘70s, Ralph Nader exposed this. They knew that if they put gas tanks on the sides of the trucks, because there’s a lot of side impact collisions. That those would burst and the gasoline would spread all over the people in the cab and people would die horrible flaming deaths. They knew this. And they estimated that probably about 1000, my recollection is, actually I shouldn’t give the number because I don’t have the exact number. It’s in the first edition of "Unequal Protection" I have the whole story. We took it out in the 2nd edition to replace it with the Citizen’s United information.

But in any case, I interviewed a woman whose son was killed in one of these side saddle crashes. And GM pretty much, they pretty much knew how many people were going to die every year and they figured that at a quarter million dollars per person per year, in other words if they just paid people off, a quarter million dollars for every person who died, it would still be cheaper than the extra $3 it would cost to put a rubberized liner in those things or to move them to the back of the car. So they saved $3 a car, and they make more money than the number of people who would die. So your life became a cost, you know a cost benefit equation. Same thing with the Ford, the Pinto.

That’s what tort reform is all about. It says that if a corporation makes a decision that is going to cause your child to die, the most you can get from them is a quarter million dollars. So when they make those decisions, they can do the calculations in advance and figure it out really easily. So these newspapers that are promoting this all over the country, turns out, guess who owns them? The US Chamber of Commerce. And guess who is not disclosing in their mastheads or their about pages on the internet that they are owned by the US Chamber of Commerce? All of these newspapers. This whole giant right wing infrastructure that the Chamber has built. Spent 41 million bucks on it. It’s amazing. 15 minutes past the hour.

**Commercials**

Thom Hartmann: Yeah money talks and integrity walks is the way it seems it’s going, especially journalistic integrity. Lee Fang is with us with the Center for American Progress, ThinkProgress.org is the blog. Hey Lee, welcome back to the program.

Lee Fang: Hey thanks for having me.

Thom Hartmann: Great to have you with us. You have written a brilliant piece here,"Right-Wing ‘Journalists’ At Secret Koch Meeting Make A Living Defending Unlimited Corporate Political Money" is the headline. People can find it over at ThinkProgress.org. Give us the story.

Lee Fang: Well you know I have covered last week a secret meeting convened by the billionaire David Koch with almost 200 different corporate executives from the oil, banking, health insurance lobby, real estate lobby. They got together and helped plan the 2010 election and presumably are funding a lot of these undisclosed attack ads.

But they also fund a lot of the right wing infrastructure and that includes some of these conservative journalists and conservative outlets like the Washington Examiner, like the Media Research Center, like CNS news. And it’s important to note that a lot of the loudest voices protecting undisclosed corporate money, attacking campaign finance laws, defending the Koch brothers, are people literally funded by the Koch brothers.

So it’s an interesting story in terms of media integrity. Because these people not only appear in right wing outlets, but they appear normally on CNN and MSNBC and are interviewed on NPR without disclosing their ties to people who are benefiting from our broken campaign finance system.

Thom Hartmann: Now, Lee Fang, the response I’m sure from them would be well you know the Center for American Progress is funded by progressives, isn’t it? Progressive foundations, and individuals, Media Matters is funded in large part by George Soros, we’re just doing what everybody else is doing.

Lee Fang: Well I think there’s a moral difference here in that what I support, I work at the Center for American Progress, I write for Think Progress, this full disclosure. I want every ad on TV to be disclosed who is funding it. I think every organization…

Thom Hartmann: The source, in other words, the source of your paycheck is clear to anybody who wants to look. But the source of the paychecks of these guys who are writing these right wing hits, is not disclosed, or the publications for that matter.

Lee Fang: Well at the end of the day, I support public financing of elections. I don’t think we should have any of this corporate money flooding our political system. These guys don’t They say hey corporations should be able to spend unlimited amounts and the American public doesn’t have a right to know. And I think there’s, it’s interesting that they’re always making these arguments, and they’re at the same time they’re funded, in terms of a lot of money, from these same secretive right wing corporations.

Thom Hartmann: Let’s go through some of these guys who are taking this right wing money basically under the table and then in mainstream publications writing op ed pieces that just seem as if “I’m just a thoughtful conservative offering my opinion.” Stephen Moore for example.

Lee Fang: Mhm. Yeah Stephen Moore is interesting. You know he’s on the Wall Street Journal editorial board, he appears on CNBC, Fox, a lot of different outlets.

Thom Hartmann: He’s been on this show a number of times.

Lee Fang: Right, yeah, he’s a very prominent guy. But it’s interesting because he sits on the board of several groups that are funded by this network, like the Foundation For a Defensive Democracy, a neo-con organization, and he actually leads a front group that is funded and completely connected with these secretive right wing plutocrats. So he’s not only a journalist but he’s an activist and he actually runs a political attack group.

Thom Hartmann: Michael Barron is also a name that’s probably familiar to a lot of people.

Lee Fang: Yeah. Formerly a democrat, he’s literally on every talk show, he’s a constant face on the Sunday shows, you name it, Meet the Press, everything like that, but you know he constantly mocks progressives for wanting campaign finance reform and ironically always mocks welfare. But if you look here, just this year alone, he received a 250 thousand dollar gift, no strings attached, ther’es no…

Thom Hartmann: It’s like a MacArthur fellowship, you know the genius awards are 250 thousand bucks from the MacArthur Foundation.

Lee Fang: Right, equivalent to that, a 250 thousand dollar check from one of these right wing organizations that are connected to the Koch network, just for being a loyal conservative. He also has a fellowship through the American Enterprise Institute, which is the type of fellowship he has ranges in the hundred thousand dollar a year range. Again, I don’t see what he even does for AEI, I’ve never seen him actually write a report for them. And he’s also funded by the Washington Examiner which is owned by Phil Amshutz, a Koch ally. He’s a billionaire and industrialist. He gets a check there. And he also is a paid contributor to Fox News.

So he goes in his columns and mocks welfare, mocks health reform, mocks campaign finance reform, always has very pithy little lines to make fun of people who want to change a lot of these problems in society, but he never discloses that he’s making 3 or 400, maybe even half a million dollars in right wing money a year.

Thom Hartmann: That’s mind boggling. We’re talking with Lee Fang of the Center for American Progress, ThinkProgress.org blog. Lee, a couple years ago, this was actually maybe a little more than that, a friend of mine who is, who at the time was the program director for one of the largest radio stations in the country, that carried mostly right wing stuff, made, and who was very, he’s conservative and he’s actually wired into some of these networks. He made the comment to me that if I would flip to the right, that you know given my skills and you know ability to write and talent and what not on the radio, this is not to pat myself on the back, this is what he said, he said you know you could be making a couple million dollars a year, easy. And I’m like well I don’t and I’m not going to. But it’s true, isn’t it?

Lee Fang: That’s right, if you want to advocate for the middle class, if you want to advocate for the poor, there isn’t a 250 thousand dollar check waiting for you. And you know that’s the problem structurally. It’s not just the Bradley Foundation. There’s literally almost two dozen different right wing institutes that give out free checks to high school students, to college students, to young journalists, to even older folks like Michael Barron, as long as they take the line that corporate American should have all power in America. It’s a problem and it’s a structural problem because the incentives are there for people to support big corporations.

Thom Hartmann: And the Koch brothers are behind much of it.

Lee Fang: Sure but they’re the ones actually organizing a lot of this right wing money but it’s not only them. It’s people like Phil Lancet and the Bechtel corporation. A lot of these big corporations.

Thom Hartmann: Wow. Lee, we’re out of time but thanks so much for being with us. Lee Fang, Think Progress.org, check it out. Thanks Lee.

Lee Fang: Thanks for having me.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.