They're Not Even Trying Anymore

The incestuous relation between right wing politicians and right wing money tanks has been shown time and time again.  But now they're not even trying to be subtle about it any more.

Charlie Sykes, who is owned paid by the Bradley Foundation, an extremist bunch of right wingers known for publishing the racist "The Bell Curve," to be the "editor" of WPRI (Worms Promoting Republican Ideology) sat down to interview David "Chokehold" Prosser.  One line says it all (emphasis mine):

Because that incident was still under investigation by the state Judicial Commission at the time of this interview, we did not address that issue in what was otherwise a wide-ranging discussion on the campaign and the state’s high court. I sat down with Justice Prosser in mid-October at the offices of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in downtown Milwaukee. ...

Keep in mind these things:

• The Bradley Foundation gave a ton of money to Prosser's campaign
• The Bradley Foundation gives a ton of money to WPRI
• Sykes' current (third) wife works as the Bradley Foundation's Director of Communication

To sum it up, the Bradley Foundation is merely using Sykes as a puppet to produce their propaganda to protect and promote the politicians they have purchased.

This is simply how corrupt the right wing has become.

The Future Of Journalism Is Doomed!

The world has gone mad. Absolutely, stark raving, completely off its rocker, insane.

An alert reader sent this in:

from Jessica McBride's facebook page....

__________________

Jessica McBride is very happy today because the Chancellor officially approved her indefinite status! (the academic staff equivalent of tenure). This was the final step, and comes after a 7-0 positive vote from the review committee and a positive recommendation from the Dean. Thank you Chancellor Santiago and UWM!!!!! I am one of the ...fortunate people in that I love my job and love working with the students. Celebration time!!!!!

February 5 at 4:03pm

This was further confirmed in a tweet by James Wigderson.

I can't even imagine what would make the committee or Santiago think that this was a good idea.

Perhaps it was her catastrophically poor command of the English language.

Perhaps it was her not so high journalistic ethics standards.

But if I were a betting man, I would have to say that if you consider all the work she's been doing for WPRI lately, I would look for a very large monetary gift from the Bradley Foundation to UWM.

What A Tangled Web They Weave

Ed Garvey has a column in The Cap Times which highlights an unholy alliance between UW and WPRI:

In Wisconsin, St. Norbert’s College polling is used by public radio and public TV. And now we also have the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute/University of Wisconsin-Madison poll -- a “partnership” between right-wing WPRI and our great state university’s political science department. Whoa, Nelly! The institute apparently needed credibility to persuade people to pay attention to the Bradley Foundation poll, so it is easy to figure out its goal in creating this “partnership”: instant credibility. (No one has ever accused WPRI of neutrality on issues of importance to the Bradley Foundation.) In essence the institute rents the good name of the UW.

Garvey details how they did an open records requests and found that, basically, all of the WPRI - UW polls are tainted and only go to push the neoconservative agenda of the Bradley Foundation.

As Garvey and others points out, it throws doubt on anything that this group produces. Garvey et alia have also raised questions about the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel publishing WPRI's reports like they are gospel truth. That is easily explained, since I've already shown the incestuous relationships with the Bradley Foundation's Michael Grebe, Journal Communication's Steve Smith and wannabe governor Scott "It's my turn, dammit" Walker.

And to deepen the ties to Charlie Sykes, who already has been shown to be in the midst of this mess, is the fact that old Chuckles is a member of WPRI's brigade of propagandists.

In summary, WPRI is a front for the Bradley Foundation. The Bradley Foundation and WPRI, lacking credibility on their own, are using UW as their beard. And as for Sykes and Walker, they each of an arm of the Bradley Foundation so far up their posteriors, their resembles to Mortimer Snerd is more than coincidental.

In other words, you can't believe a word from the lot of them.

ADDENDUM: As Xoff points out in the comments, OWN was the first one to break the story of their skullduggery.

Cross posted at Cog Dis.

An Embarrassment To The Bradley Foundation

I must admit, I am a bit perplexed.

While reviewing the previous post, I was reading the JSOnline blog post about the subject and found this comment:

On top of everything else, Flynn has really embarrassed the Bradley Foundation.

Bad strategy.

I'm just wondering if the commenter meant Flynn, or if they really meant Charlie Sykes.