summary Cato fellow, columnist, Doug Bandow resigns for payments

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf () sethf com>
Date: December 17, 2005 12:02:13 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>, ip () v2 listbox com
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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