Free Republic

It seemed an ideal marriage, a scientific partnership that would attack mental illness from all sides. Psychiatrists would bring to the union their expertise and clinical experience, drug makers would provide their products and the money to run rigorous studies, and patients would get better medications, faster... --snip-- An analysis of Minnesota data by The New York Times last year found that on average, psychiatrists who received at least $5,000 from makers of newer-generation antipsychotic drugs appear to have written three times as many prescriptions to children for the drugs as psychiatrists who received less money or none. The drugs...

Our reporting partners at the Detroit News are reporting that the FBI has electronic surveillance that links Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers to the Synagro scandal. The evidence reportedly proves that Conyers received either a payment or payments in connection with the city-approved sludge contract.

In the threadbare border towns of South Texas, one of the country’s poorest regions, enterprising locals like Candelaria Espinoza have long been paid to round up votes for candidates on Election Day. There is even a name for these electoral soldiers of fortune: politiqueras. So when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign arrived in South Texas in February seeking an edge in its uphill battle against Senator Barack Obama, Ms. Espinoza was happy to oblige, for a price. The campaign paid her and seven other members of her family $100 to $200 each to knock on doors, deliver fliers and...

He is Steve Ybarra. He's a superdelegate in California and he, now, says he's willing to take either Clinton or Obama's side but for a big price. -snip For the last eight years, I've been trying to get the Democratic Party to pay attention to the needs of voter registration and education and get out the vote to the Mexican-American community. And guess what? We managed to lose two elections because of it. So, we're coming up on an election where the Mexican-American voter will be the person who makes the decision in this upcoming election. HEMMER: How did you...

DNC Superdelegate Puts His Vote Up For Sale Steven Ybarra Wants $20 Million For His Vote SACRAMENTO, Calif. (CBS13) ― In this tight battle for the Democratic nomination we've heard a lot about the candidates courting superdelegates. But, one superdelegate is courting the candidates. He says he'll sell his vote for a price. A very high price: $20 million. Steven Ybarra of Sacramento says that eight-figure price is peanuts for the presidency.

Fourteen months into a campaign that has the feel of a movement, Sen. Barack Obama has collided with the gritty political traditions of Philadelphia, where ward bosses love their candidates, but also expect them to pay up. The dispute centers on the dispensing of "street money," a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city's Democratic operatives in return for getting out the vote. Flush with payments from well-funded campaigns, the ward leaders and Democratic Party bosses typically spread out the cash in the days before the election, handing $10, $20 and $50 bills to the foot...

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors say Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. An indictment in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime. Prosecutors say Iraqi intelligence officials paid for the trip through an intermediary. In exchange, Al-Hanooti allegedly received 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil. The lawmakers are not mentioned but the dates correspond to a trip by Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and...

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has released a list of $740 million in earmark requests he made in the past three years, and it includes $1 million for the hospital where his wife Michelle is a vice president. The request for $1 million for the University of Chicago Medical Center was to help pay for construction of a new pavilion. “I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that Michelle Obama was not part of our lobbying over the request, not in any way,” Kelly Sullivan, another vice president at the medical center, told the New York Times. In any case,...

All right, let’s talk about the money. After I asked readers to focus on the substance of the skeptics’ arguments at this week’s conference on global warming, readers insisted that I should have focused on the financing of the sponsor, the Heartland Institute. Others objected to my (and my colleague Andy Revkin) even writing about a conference sponsored by this group. I’m used to this sort of criticism, but I still find it baffling. Do the critics really think there’s more money and glory to be won by doubting global warming than by going along with the majority? I ask...

Breaking with tradition for presidential candidates, Mike Huckabee is continuing to accept paid speaking engagements in the thick of his insurgent presidential campaign, although churches get a break from his usual fee of up to $25,000. It's not surprising that Huckabee, as a former Arkansas governor who has wowed audiences in debates, would charge for speeches. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of Huckabee's rivals for the nomination, made a fortune doing just that. But Giuliani and other major candidates have put their paid speaking careers completely on hold to focus on the flurry of early nominating contests. Huckabee,...

He is a former minister from Hope, Arkansas (yes of course we know who else came from Hope and it is not a fun coincidence). He makes jokes that he knows nothing about foreign policy. It is not funny. He just proved how little he does know. If he ever wants to be taken seriously by anyone, he should not delegate his articles on the topic to neophyte and left-leaning ghost writers. An article supposedly under his byline in the new issue of Foreign Affairs says: "American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach...

According to The Politico, New York Post columnist and FOX News contributor Dick Morris has been secretly advising former client Mike Huckabee on his Presidential campaign. Morris claims he is acting in an entirely voluntary capacity by simply offering free advice. Keep in mind that nationally syndicated columnist George Will was pilloried by the media when it became public that he had secretly and voluntarily helped Ronald Reagan prepare for his Presidential debates in 1980. A prominent national GOP insider tells Politics1 that he believes Morris -- despite his claims to the contrary -- is paid for his services through...

Republican presidential candidates have pulled out their knives for Mr. Nice Guy. A surprising surge of support for Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, who had long seemed a rank outsider in the 2008 presidential race has turned him into a target six weeks before voting in Iowa. The Times of London reports that “running on a shoestring budget as an affable conservative with unrivalled religious qualifications (he is a former Baptist minister), Huckabee has been previously dismissed as an under-funded no-hoper. He is mostly known for a quirky sense of humor and his skills on bass guitar -...

Mike Huckabee's most vigorous and able nemesis in Arkansas is the unabashedly liberal and uncommonly activist editor of the weekly free tabloid in Little Rock. I've been knowing and admiring Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times for 30 years, since we were lads breaking in at the late, lamented Arkansas Gazette. He went to bat with higher-ups to make me a columnist. Then, when I up and quit one day, they made him the columnist. There wasn't any drop-off that I could tell, and I'm being kind to myself. He's one of the smartest people I know. He's one of...

Having a graduate in the U.S. Senate is not only a source of pride for colleges and universities, it can also mean wads of cash from the federal government. A major spending bill under consideration in Congress provides more than $70 million in earmarks for the alma maters of 30 senators, roughly 40 percent of the higher education money earmarked in the legislation, an analysis by The Examiner shows. The earmarks are tacked on to a $606 billion appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services and Education that was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate last week and that now...

Big Paychecks for U2 Millionaires Oct. 26, 2007 The Associated Press U2 Ltd., the Irish band's music publishing company, raked in $30 million-plus last year — and $25.8 million of it went to five unidentified "employees," according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press. Those "employees" are suspected to be the band members and their longtime manager, Paul McGuinness. But U2's public relations firms in Dublin and London refused to confirm that. While Bono has won accolades worldwide for raising awareness of Third World poverty, he has been criticized for moving U2's corporate offices out of Ireland to avoid...

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. - A politically conservative student armed with a video camera and a Web site is trying to force a Democratic congressional candidate out of his teaching job at Central Michigan University. Dennis Lennox, a 23-year-old junior, has posted videos on YouTube of himself questioning assistant professor Gary Peters about campaigning for office while holding a prestigious position at the university. Some say Lennox is persistent. Others accuse him of pandering for attention. "What I'm doing isn't about getting media attention," said Lennox, a political science major. "I'm speaking for the hundreds of students, alumni, taxpayers and even...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Air Force's No. 2 acquisition official, facing scrutiny for a temporary job arranged by the service while he awaited Senate confirmation, was found dead at his home in an apparent suicide, according to an internal Air Force memo obtained by Reuters on Monday. "Mr. Riechers was found deceased in his home, cause of death appears to be suicide, time of death is unknown," said the memo, which was issued late Sunday. Charles Riechers became the principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition at the Air Force in January 2007 after working two months for defense contractor...

In a letter to the FCC, Ralph Nader, the world's most visible consumer advocate, has requested an investigation into the advertising practices of General Motors with regard to several radio personalities. The letter from Nader was prompted by an Automotive News article entitled, "Puff Piece. Rush Limbaugh is one of the radio personalities GM is working with to talk up its vehicles" (sub. req.). The article goes on to detail how the General has supplied DJs, broadcasters and Limbaugh with test vehicles, private meetings and VIP tours of GM facilities. Nader contests that this type of promotion may be against...

Rush Limbaugh WASHINGTON – He's been the target of Fairness Doctrine advocates. He's been the target of aggressive prosecutors. He's been targeted by Customs officials. And now Rush Limbaugh, the king of radio talk-show hosts, is being targeted by activist Ralph Nader who is asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate claims General Motors "payola" is influencing him to say nice things about the U.S. automaker.

DAILY KOS CO-AUTHOR FINED $30K FOR UNETHICAL STOCK TOUT Wed Aug 08 2007 19:12:23 ET Prominent liberal blogger Jerome Armstrong has agreed to pay nearly $30,000 in fines in a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations that Armstrong touted the stock of a software company, without disclosing that he was being paid to do so, the NY TIMES reports. Armstrong is the co-author of _Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics,_ with Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. He is also the founder of the Democratic activist site MyDD.com. Under the agreement, Armstrong neither...

A database company that has showered money on Bill and Hillary Clinton – and is alleged to have aided scam artists – now appears to have close links to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's family as well. The firm InfoUSA, headed by major Clinton backer Vinod Gupta, has placed Pelosi's son, Paul Pelosi Jr., on its payroll – even though he has no experience in the company's main business activities, NewsMax has learned. [...] The company is also under fire in a shareholder lawsuit which alleges that Gupta is appropriating company funds for personal use and his political pet projects. Shareholder...

OAKLAND Managers of Yoshi's, one of the Bay Area's best-known jazz venues, said they will pull the club's first-ever CD off the market after community leaders complained the recording featured no black musicians. Club managers apologized Friday for what they called "a huge mistake" and "a major oversight." They said they plan to create a new recording that better reflects the musicians who play the 340-seat venue at Oakland's Jack London Square. "We really messed up on the CD," said Yoshi's owner Kaz Kajimura. "We apologize to anyone who feels slighted by this omission, as that was never our intention."...

In broadcasting, it’s called “payola” when a radio station accepts gifts from companies that stand to benefit financially from the station’s influence. In medicine, its common practice, according to a new study. The survey, conducted by researchers at the Harvard Medical School, found that nine out of ten doctors in the U.S. admitted to accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies, ranging from meals and drug samples to cash and travel. Lead researcher Eric Campbell said there is no apparent benefit to patients in this “special” relationship between doctor and drug company.

Speaking for the second time this month in front of a predominantly gay audience, Hillary Clinton assured the crowd at a Gay Men’s Health Crisis dinner at Chelsea Piers that help was on the way. She guaranteed her support of their issues “when I’m President,” and pointedly referred to a special AIDS grant she pushed through Congress for the first time “since the end of the last Clinton administration.” The crowd laughed appreciatively at what was at once a well-worn bit about the Clinton restoration, and an acknowledgement of the influence of the gay fund-raisers and activists who may put...

Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign reached a deal to pay a key South Carolina black leader's consulting firm more than $200,000 just days before he agreed to endorse her run for president.....The arrangement involves South Carolina state Sen. Darrell Jackson, a well-connected African-American leader and pastor whose support is coveted by national campaigns. Jackson confirmed that his public-relations firm struck a deal with Clinton's campaign just days ago for a contract worth up to $10,000 a month through the 2008 elections. Jackson had also been in talks with Sen. Barack Obama's campaign about endorsing him and a consulting contract for more...

House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi's endorsement of Rep. John P. Murtha's bid for House majority leader set off a furor yesterday on Capitol Hill, with critics charging that she is undercutting her pledge to clean up corruption by backing a veteran lawmaker who they say has repeatedly skirted ethical boundaries. Pelosi (D-Calif.) directly intervened in the heated contest between Murtha (D-Pa.) and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) on Sunday by circulating a letter to Democratic lawmakers. The letter voiced her support for Murtha and put her prestige on the line in a closely fought leadership battle. Some Democratic lawmakers...

I can foresee his response to this..."I was misquoted"

The documents seized in the FBI raid on the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) remain unread by Justice Department investigators, pending a federal Appeals Court ruling scheduled for August 27. [snip] But we already know a bit about the charges and some of the alleged partners of Congressman Jefferson. Two people have pleaded guilty to bribing him.

Take a look at the photo of Congressperson Cynthia McKinney above. Obviously the source of that picture must be some vicious hate-filled right-wing website that dislikes the "progressive" policies of Ms Mckinney, right? Wrong. The source for that picture is none other than the Daily Kos. You read that correctly. This picture is part of an ad by McKinney's primary opponent, Hank Johnson, that is figured PROMINENTLY at the top of the list of Daily Kos advertisers. I should have had a hint of this latest Kos Blogola scandal yesterday when I did a search on the Daily Kos...

CARACAS, Venezuela The government of Venezuelan has donated 100-thousand dollars to a Santa Cruz-based non-profit organization dedicated to preventing violence among youths. Deputy Justice Minister Yuri Pimentel made the announcement during a meeting in Venezuela's capital with American singer and activist Harry Belafonte, who accepted the donation on behalf of the California Coalition of Barrios Unidos. The California Coalition of Barrios Unidos began as a community based peace movement in the violent streets of urban California in 1977.

CELEBRATED LIB STRATEGIST HAS SHADY MARKET PAST Jerome Armstrong, the political strategist who followed a famous Internet fundraising effort for Howard Dean in 2004 with a book on "people-powered politics," has a sordid past as a shill for a worthless dot-com stock. Armstrong, 42, touted a dubious Chinese software company, BluePoint, beginning in 1999, without disclosing that he accepted "below-market" shares in exchange for the glowing reports he posted on a site called Raging Bull, according to a 2003 civil suit that named him as a defendant. "Armstrong posted over 80 times on the BluePoint message board located on the...

Uh oh. The rumblings about "Kosola" (i.e. Kos's and his friend and collaborator Jerome Armstrong's financial relationships with certain politicians) have migrated from various blog comments sections to Salon to, now, The New York Times, where the Opinionator formerly known as Chris Suellentrop lays them all out (behind the TimesSelect wall, alas). Most significantly, Suellentrop links the work Kos and Armstrong have done hyping Howard Dean, Sherrod Brown, and now Mark Warner (while one or both were on said pol's payroll) to an episode from Armstrong's past. Sullentrop notes that: some people . . . compare the blog boomlet they...

The New York state attorney general has levied a $12 million fine against Universal Music Group for payola. This is the largest fine so far in the war between Eliot Spitzer and the music industry, surpassing the $10 million that Sony had to pay and the $5 million for Warner Music Group. But Universal — home of many overnight stars including several rappers who’ve come and gone — would be the place for this. The company has had enormous success, but at the same time encountered lawsuits from middle-men distributors claiming inflated sales numbers — double dipping at the cash...

Clear Channel, CBS, Citadel and Entercom Will Be Investigated in First Federal Payola Investigation in More Than a Quarter Century April 20, 2006 The FCC has launched formal investigations into pay-for-play practices at Clear Channel Communications, CBS Radio, Entercom Communications and Citadel Broadcasting. The story was broken by Charles Duhigg in an L.A. Times Page One story. As Duhigg notes, this is the biggest federal payola inquiry since the congressional payola hearings of 1960. The story cites two FCC officials as revealing that the FCC had requested “letters of inquiry” from the four radio powers in search of evidence that...

Chris Matthews is talking to Joe Scarborough. Tom DeLay called Matthews tonight and told him he is dropping out of the race for his congressional seat......

One music industry source said some subpoenas may have been issued already in connection with the probe, while other labels had been tipped off that subpoenas would likely be coming in the next few days. It appeared that Sony BMG had already received a subpoena, the second industry source said. The major record labels are Warner Music Group, EMI Group Plc, Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group and Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann Ag. Executives from the labels were not available or declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the DOJ was not immediately available for comment....

The activity du jour for Business Week’s Capitol Hill correspondent Eamon Javers seems to be systematically “outing� conservative columnists as corporate shills. On January 13, BusinessWeek’s web edition ran an article by Javers deceptively titled, “A Columnist Backed By Monsanto.� The article begins, “Michael Fumento's failure to disclose payments to him in 1999 from the agribusiness giant has now caused Scripps Howard to sever its ties to him.� What Javers is talking about is that the Hudson Institute, the conservative organization that employs Fumento as a senior fellow, received a book grant of $60,000 from Monsanto in 1999. The “payment�...

Stealth sponsorship of talking heads and op-ed columnists is surprisingly common In the opinion industry, pundits who present themselves as independent voices sometimes turn out to be quietly financed by powerful interests. The latest example BusinessWeek has unearthed: The Hill, a Washington newspaper read closely in Congress, published an opinion piece last June extolling "payday loans." Readers weren't told that the author, Tom Lehman, a professor at Indiana Wesleyan University, had taken money from the industry that pushes these controversial high-interest loans. In other instances, BusinessWeek Online has recently identified Douglas Bandow and Michael Fumento, two prolific authors of newspaper...

With no real issues to promote, Democrats are putting all their eggs into the basket of corruption to restore their political fortunes. They and their friends in the mainstream media are working overtime to connect everyone and everything on the right side of the political spectrum to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to multiple felonies. One channel that Democrats and liberals are working is tying conservative think tanks to the Abramoff scandal. They know that these think tanks have been one of the most effective forces in Washington over the last 30 years in advancing a...

Krugman is paid to play his baseless leftist games. Who was it that said that the measure of a man is what he worries about? President Bush is a big man who worries about big things like protecting America from global terrorism. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman — Bush’s most vicious media opponent and America’s looniest liberal pundit — is a little man who worries about little things, such as whether conservative pundits are being paid too much by lobbyists, and whether retail workers are being paid too little by Wal-Mart. In his column Monday [subscription link via New...

The White House on Thursday expressed concern about the U.S. military secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles, but the military said it was important to spread the truth while insurgents were "lying to the Iraqi people

BACK-SCRATCHING BIZ: Lil' Kim, one of many artists whose popularity was rigged. WireImage Eliot Spitzer.......unveiled a deal to halt bribery of DJs and rigging of ratings — schemes designed largely to hype mediocre acts, but also bigger names, in order to score higher returns. Four months ago, he extracted a $10M settlement from industry leader Sony BMG to break up its payola ring involving DJs, radio station executives and crooked middlemen. He's still probing the industry's two remaining mega-firms — EMI and Universal Music. In his crackdown on Warner music — the industry's No. 3 label — Spitzer accused...

It’s Hard to Believe, But… Tokyo: An indignant Japanese woman summoned the police after a man she met online cheated her out of 1 million Yen. The man was “supposed to” track down and murder the wife of a man, with whom the woman was having an affair. The hitman had promised to chase the victim down on a motorcycle,pull alongside her in a tunnel, and spray her with a lethal bio-agent…but then he realized it was a lot simpler to cheat the woman who had hired him. (It’s so hard to find reliable help these days !) New Jersey:...

A manager of a program designed to speed approval of complex construction projects at the San Francisco’s troubled Department of Building Inspection was arrested today on charges he solicited and took bribes over a 12-year period. Augustine Fallay, 47, was being held on $500,000 bond on 10 counts of bribery, three felony counts of perjury and two counts of filing false economic disclosure statements with the city. Fallay, according to prosecutors, accepted a $50,000 loan, cash and free work on his home in exchange for his assistance in gaining permits. Property records show that Fallay owns real estate in Oakland...

--SNIP-- A Sony Music promo exec unknowingly sparked Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's major payola investigation when he started hitting on a woman at a poolside bar at a Miami hotel last year. The exec bragged about some of the excesses in his line of business, according to chatter in music industry circles. The executive must have felt pretty good, as the attentive woman probably hung on his every word. He must have thought he was spinning a Gold Record. It turns out the woman who was the object of his affection worked in Spitzer's office. Nearly a year — and...

Sony BMG admits to bribing radio stations to play its artists. IN 1980, according to a book about the music industry by Fredric Dannen called “Hit Men”, CBS Records decided to run an experiment with a band, Pink Floyd. Their concert dates were sold out in Los Angeles, and radio stations everywhere were playing “Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)”. Dick Asher, the deputy president of CBS Records, wanted to find out whether the band's popularity meant he could refuse to pay the usual bribes, or illegal “payola”, to the four big Top-40 radio stations in Los Angeles. Like...

New York,NY (AHN)-Once upon a time in the 1950s and early 1960s a scandal named "payola" became known in the radio industry.It refers to record companies paying radio disc jockey's and station owners money on the side to play their artists more often than those not paying under the table. Sony-BMG Music,the world's 2nd largest record label was fined $10 million dollars Monday for violating terms of the 1960 Payola Act. The "pay for play" practice has been under investigation since the mid part of 2004 and the probe found "air time is often determined by undisclosed payoffs," New York...

I always say when people ask me that the so-called vipers of the movie business would not last a day in the record business. Now Eliot Spitzer's office has decided to prove the point. "Please be advised that in this week's Jennifer Lopez Top 40 Spin Increase of 236 we bought 63 spins at a cost of $3,600." "Please be advised that in this week's Good Charlotte Top 40 Spin Increase of 61 we bought approximately 250 spins at a cost of $17K …" Ironically, it didn't help, as the memo notes that the company actually lost spins — or...

Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the nation's second-largest music company, is expected as early as Monday to agree to a settlement with New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer in an ongoing payola investigation, said sources familiar with the talks. Representatives of Sony BMG and Spitzer declined to detail ongoing discussions, but sources said the terms of the settlement might include promises that Sony BMG would not engage in certain practices and fines that might exceed $10 million. The sources requested anonymity because of the confidentiality of the discussions. Sony BMG is one of at least four record companies Spitzer subpoenaed last...