Pay to Play on the Right

I have taken the unusual step of deleting a post from the front page.The post related to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and a dispute over the engine for it.The Obama Administration and Pentagon support a Pratt & Whitney effort to stop General Electric from making an alternative engine. Citizens Against Government Waste is highlighting this as an abuse.ABC News has the story here and it is rather anti-GE and anti-the alternative engine.I knew there was something I was supposed to remember about the story, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I highlighted it because Citizens Against Government Waste is spotlighting this issue.Well, I should have dug around RedState.Turns out Streiff has done yeoman’s work documenting the pay-to-play scam CAGW has entered into with Pratt & Whitney.On CAGW’s action alert page there is no mention at all of the fact that Pratt & Whitney is paying CAGW for this effort.I get it. Lots of organizations will go in on an issue when they agree about the issue and the other entity involved is willing to help cover costs. But that should at least be disclosed.Likewise, the Heritage Foundation has raised serious issues about giving Pratt & Whitney a monopoly on the engine. Unlike CAGW, Heritage is not getting bought off to make a case.More troubling, it looks like Brian Ross and ABC News bought the CAGW spin hook, line, and sinker, but having never mentioned getting the story from CAGW despite a lot of their story mimicking CAGW bullet points, GE has a point by point rebuttal that actually makes a lot of sense.But the overall issue here is this one: Citizens Against Government Waste could be an honest broker, but is lining its pockets with corporate money by taking on an issue in pay-to-play without disclosing it.I can’t treat a group like that credibly. Neither should you.Pay-to-Play happens a lot on the right and I try never to recommend conservatives involve themselves with organizations that do it. I’ll be adding CAGW to that list.

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