This morning (hey, did you know the Trib had some publishing trouble yesterday?) on the braintrust's op-ed page we find this:
Revolt of the Light Brigade: Freedom Action has begun a petition drive to have Congress rescind what effectively is a ban on incandescent light bulbs. The group is an offshoot of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It cites not only the congressional overreach but the mercury danger of compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Sans that, can a black market in incandescents be far behind?And even that, they get wrong. But first, Freedom Action/Competitive Enterprise Institute.
We've discussed them before. Suffice it to say the CEI is a free market think tank aggressively funded by the Trib's owner, Richard Mellon Scaife. According to the numbers at mediamatters.org, he's supported it to the tune of a little more than $2.8 million over the last 25 years or so. According to those numbers, in fact, he is the single largest funder for the CEI.
No mention of that in the editorial - that he funds the think tank his editorial board references.
Also not mentioned in the blurb - the bill that "effectively" banned the old fashioned light bulb was signed into law in 2007 by that champion of Congressional Overreach and Environmentalistic fascism, George W Bush.
One interesting thing - if you actually were to go to the Freedom Action press release describing the petition to end the "ban" (which really wasn't a ban, of course) you'd find that it doesn't actually mention any "mercury danger" even though the Trib said it did. Nor is the word mercury found (at this point, at least) at the Freedom Action website at all.
So even though Scaife's given all this money to the CEI (of which Freedom Action is a part) and even though I am sure he pays his braintrust a very nice salary, they can't even get that simple part right.
The circle jerking continues at the Tribune-Review - even though they need a better fact checker.
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