Thursday, October 14, 2010

Ninety-seven cents of every dollar the Civitas Institute spends comes from Art Pope via the Pope Foundation, according to a new report by Facing South. So does four dollars out of every five that John Hood and the John Locke Foundation spend to promote the Art Pope brand of me-first, libertarian conservatism. This is the second of two reports by the Institute for Southern Studies’ Facing South blog; the other report described Pope’s funding of political attacks in North Carolina through a Civitas affiliate and other entities. Nationally, spending on political ads by business front groups, unions, and billionaires has more than doubled since the last mid-term election, according to data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.  The impact is a dagger to the heart of democracy, says Bill Moyers, not the blessing of free enterprise, as Mr. Pope or the Gilded Age’s Mark Hanna would have us believe.