Reports in The Post last week con cerning the political activities of the supposedly above-the-fray Pew Charitable Trusts were, in a word, shocking.With more than a little help from other leftoid tax-free foundations, good ole George Soros, and the dung flies at National "Public" Radio.What Treglia admitted to was an attempt to deceive Congress and the public within the limits of the law — quite a stunning bit of hypocrisy from a foundation ostensibly in favor of clean and transparent government.
A former program officer for Pew, Sean Treglia, was caught on videotape bragging about how the foundation worked behind the scenes to create the false impression that there was a "mass movement" afoot clamoring for campaign-finance reform.
The intent: to hoodwink Congress.
It worked.
Pew — not to put too fine a point on it — has some explaining to do.
And so do the politicians — such as Sen. John McCain, Sen. Russ Feingold, Rep. Chris Shays and Rep. Marty Meehan — whose speech-regulation schemes directly benefited from this scam.
So, what did they know?
When did they know it?
It's time to find out.And put the hammer down on everyone associated with this monstrous attack on free speech.
UPDATE: John Fund hits this in today's WSJ and has some interesting stats:
Mr. Treglia admits that campaign-finance supporters had to try to hoodwink Congress because "they had lost legitimacy inside Washington because they didn't have a constituency that would punish Congress if they didn't vote for reform."More follow-ups at Ryan Sager's blog as well.
So instead, according to Mr. Treglia, liberal reform groups created a Potemkin movement. A study last month by the Political Money Line, a nonpartisan Web site dealing with campaign funding issues, found that of the $140 million spent to directly promote liberal campaign reform in the last decade, a full $123 million came from just eight liberal foundations. Many are the same foundations that provide much of the money for such left-wing groups as People for the American Way and the Earth Action Network. The "movement" behind campaign-finance reform resembled many corporate campaigns pushing legislation. It consisted largely of "Astroturf" rather than true "grass-roots" support.
