The Campaign Finance Reform Scam

JK mentioned this story earlier, but I haven't seen the following questions asked...

CAMPAIGN-FINANCE reform has been an immense scam perpetrated on the American people by a cadre of left-wing foundations and disguised as a "mass movement."

But don't take my word for it. One of the chief scammers, Sean Treglia, a former program officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, confesses it all in an astonishing videotape I obtained earlier this week.

The tape — of a conference held at USC's Annenberg School for Communication in March of 2004 — shows Treglia expounding to a gathering of academics, experts and journalists (none of whom, apparently, ever wrote about Treglia's remarks) on just how Pew and other left-wing foundations plotted to create a fake grassroots movement to hoodwink Congress.

"I'm going to tell you a story that I've never told any reporter," Treglia says on the tape. "Now that I'm several months away from Pew and we have campaign-finance reform, I can tell this story."

Here's the story...

"The target audience for all this activity was 535 people in Washington," Treglia says — 100 in the Senate, 435 in the House. "The idea was to create an impression that a mass movement was afoot — that everywhere they looked, in academic institutions, in the business community, in religious groups, in ethnic groups, everywhere, people were talking about reform."

A few questions beg to be asked...

Who were the reporters and from which newspapers and television agencies are they from? This meeting took place a year ago, and as Ryan Sager points out, not a single one reported on it.

Why not?

The answer is simple. News agencies stand the most to gain from campaign finance reform. With limited commercials, limited campaign spending, there is no other source to turn to than the media for the issues, who have an unrestricted license to broadcast as much or as little about candidates and their positions as they desire.
Not to mention the monopoly on the audience that they would hold during the run up to an election.

If these "journalists" are really objective about their profession, why don't we know about this?
How can anyone conclude that the reporters sitting in the audience were part of the story, not part of the reporting?
With their now year long silence, how can we conclude anything but their tacit approval of this fraud?

Who were the academics? Who were the "experts?" Who were these people?

... and why are they in on the plan?

Media and Blogging Posted by AlexC at March 23, 2005 3:26 PM