Good call by BloggingHeads bookers,
getting Matthew Yglesias and Matt Welch
to debate the burning issue of how Koch money influences politics. Yglesias, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, does his segment from inside the 13th and H St Washington, D.C. building paid for in part by a generous 2004 grant from George Soros. Welch, the editor-in-chief of Reason magazine, speaks from the Connecticut and S St Washington, D.C. offices of Reason, which is funded in part by Reason Foundation trustee David Koch.
I’m pleased that the Jane Mayer-inspired
debate over Koch
has pushed everyone out of the closet vis-a-vis funding. Conservatives had been hurling the epithet “Soros-funded!” at every organization they didn’t like for six years. Liberals had been doing the same with “Koch-funded.” The reality is that think tanks and public interest magazines are
funded by rich people
and that the only thing that really matters about their funding is the
degree to which they fund or silence views
that hurt their bottom line.
