Center for American Progress Takes Aim at Koch Industries, Shoots Self in Foot

Think Progress reporter Lee Fang has a long history of being spectacularly wrong. However, there's a seemingly unending thirst for his breathless demonization of the Koch brothers and other rants about corporate greed among the low IQ end of the liberal spectrum.

Fang's latest piece however, is exceptionally bad: "Blow To Public Financing At The Supreme Court Litigated By Koch and Walton-Funded Groups." It seems that the recent Supreme Court decision striking down Arizona's laws regarding public financing of elections were litigated by some public interest legal groups -- the Institute for Justice and the Goldwater Institute -- and those groups had nefarious corporate funders. This really isn't news per se; it's just how Washington works.

In the case of the Koch brothers, they have been outspoken philosophical libertarians for decades. Their support of free speech over onerous campaign laws is entirely consistent and should not be surprising. However, in the case of Wal-Mart Fang is also astoundingly hypocritical. Because you know who else is a "Walton-Funded Group"? Lee Fang's employer:

Wal-Mart — a donor of at least $500,000 and possibly as much as $999,999 to the Center for American Progress, which employs Yglesias and Fang — teamed up with CAP in 2009 to push for an employer mandate on health-care. This mandate threatens smaller retailers (and everyone is smaller than Wal-Mart), but Yglesias, celebrated it as “an important sign of change in the air.”

But this wasn’t a recent change for Wal-Mart. As I pointed out at the time, the company had backed climate legislation and minimum wage hikes for years.

So when Wal-mart supports health care mandates and climate change legislation, I presume the Center for American Progress thinks that's good? But step off the ideological reservation and some Think Progress hack will be dispatched to smear you as a creedy corporate plutocrat who wants corrupt elections.

And as if that's not enough hypocrisy to pack into one post, here's Fang decrying "secret money" on the right:

Of course, the disclosed foundation funds noted here may only be a fraction of the money received by the Institute for Justice and the Goldwater Institute. Both organizations accept secret donations from individuals and corporations.

Fang's on such a high horse here he must be getting acrophobic. You know who else accepts "secret donations from individuals and corporations"? That's right -- the Center for American Progress. So unless Fang is prepared to provide a list of all the people responsible for paying his salary, he should probably keep his mouth shut.