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Writer Backing Bush Plan Had Gotten Federal Contra
Topic Started: Jan 26 2005, 04:54 PM (247 Views)
gvok
Unregistered

Writer Backing Bush Plan Had Gotten Federal Contract

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 26, 2005; 12:13 PM

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," Gallagher wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.

"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me." She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.

Later in the day, Gallagher filed a column in which she said that "I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers."

In the interview, Gallagher said her situation was "not really anything near" the recent controversy involving conservative commentator Armstrong Williams. Earlier this month Williams apologized for not disclosing a $241,000 contract with the Education Department, awarded through the Ketchum public relations firm, to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind law through advertising on his cable TV and syndicated radio shows and other efforts.

Gallagher received an additional $20,000 from the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003 for writing a report, titled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?", for a private organization called the National Fatherhood Initiative. That report, published last year, was funded by a Justice Department grant, said NFI spokesman Vincent DiCaro. Gallagher said she was "aware vaguely" that her work was federally funded.

President Bush, asked about the practice at a news conference this morning, acknowledged that his administration had made a mistake by awarding contracts to commentators who support his policies.

Bush said he expects his Cabinet secretaries to end the practice. "Mr. Armstrong Williams admitted he made a mistake," Bush said. "We didn't know about this in the White House. There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press, the administration and the press."

Bush said in response to a follow-up question that the Education Department had made a mistake as well.

"All our Cabinet secretaries must realize that we will not be paying commentators to advance our agenda," he said. "Our agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two feet."

Bush told reporters he was "confident" that the press would provide "an objective look" at his administration's policies, adding: "Won't you?"

Gallagher, in columns, television appearances and interviews with such newspapers as The Washington Post, last year defended Bush's proposal for a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage.

Wade Horn, HHS assistant secretary for children and families, said his division hired Gallagher as "a well-known national expert," along with other specialists in the field, to help devise the president's healthy marriage initiative. "It's not unusual in the federal government to do that," he said.

The essay Gallagher drafted appeared under Horn's byline -- with the headline "Closing the Marriage Gap" -- and ran in Crisis magazine, which promotes humanism rooted in Catholic Church teachings. Horn said most of the brochures written by Gallagher -- such as "The Top Ten Reasons Marriage Matters" -- were not used as the program evolved.

"I don't see any comparison between what has been alleged with Armstrong Williams and what we did with Maggie Gallagher," said Horn, who founded the National Fatherhood Initiative before entering government. "We didn't pay her to write columns. We didn't pay her to promote the president's healthy marriage initiative at all. What we wanted to do was use her expertise." The Education Department is now investigating the Williams contract.

The author of three books on marriage, Gallagher is president of the Washington-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, a frequent television guest and has written on the subject for such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard.

While she was being paid by HHS in 2002, Gallagher in her syndicated column dismissed the arguments against "President Bush's modest marriage initiative" as "nonsense," writing: "Bush plans to use a tiny fraction of surplus welfare dollars to fund marriage education services for at-risk couples."

In a column later that year that appeared in the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun News, Gallagher said Bush's welfare-revision bill would, among other things, encourage "stable marriages," and that it was a "scandal" for Democrats to reject the president's plan and fail to offer an alternative.

National Review Editor Rich Lowry said of the HHS contract: "We would have preferred that she told us, and we would have disclosed it in her bio."

Tribune Media Services dropped Williams's column after his administration contract was disclosed. Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Gallagher's column, plans no such action.

"We did not know about the contract," spokeswoman Kathie Kerr said. "We would have probably liked to have known." But, Kerr said, "this is what we hired Maggie to write about. It probably wouldn't have changed our mind to distribute it."

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WayneSTOSfan
Lieutenant
My take on this is :
SO WHAT?????

If you have ever read her columns

.................and from the UNexpected diversity of the political spectrum here I would NOT presume to assume who has and hasn't................

her opinions match what the program wanted LOONG before the program existed...So why NOT go to like minded individuals.................Now if James Carvel started backing BUSH on ANYTHING news of a grant would be relevent.....

Clearly this nothing more than a smear campaign............not unlike the lefts equating Bush to Hitler right before the election....

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Dr. Noah
Sistertrek's Asian Correspondant
So we shouldn't investigate wrongdoing?
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WayneSTOSfan
Lieutenant
I DO NOT buy the premise that it IS wrongdoing!!
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Dr. Noah
Sistertrek's Asian Correspondant
Gallagher received an additional $20,000 from the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003 for writing a report, titled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?", for a private organization called the National Fatherhood Initiative. That report, published last year, was funded by a Justice Department grant, said NFI spokesman Vincent DiCaro. Gallagher said she was "aware vaguely" that her work was federally funded.

^^^^

Why would something like this be federally funded? I wish someone would give me $20,000 for writing a report. :thud:
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gvok
Unregistered

I found this paragraph interesting:

Quote:
 
In the interview, Gallagher said her situation was "not really anything near" the recent controversy involving conservative commentator Armstrong Williams. Earlier this month Williams apologized for not disclosing a $241,000 contract with the Education Department, awarded through the Ketchum public relations firm, to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind law through advertising on his cable TV and syndicated radio shows and other efforts.

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WayneSTOSfan
Lieutenant
Sisko;
NOW I'm confused :shrug: :shrug:

I was under the impression the Wpost article was trying to make the case that what Gallagher did was wrong...............Which is BS.. (its SIMPLE, governement comes out with a bill that echoes what a columnist has said for years, OF COURSE that column would enlisted to shill for the bill!!)


YOU on the other hand SEEM to be making the case that what the GOVERNMENT did was wrong................by paying her...

NOW THAT may be/possibly is a different kettle of fish........
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Dr. Noah
Sistertrek's Asian Correspondant
Why did he lie about federal funding? Obviously some thing is fishy.
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gvok
Unregistered

If nothing is wrong with this practice then why did the President order his Cabinet secretaries not to hire columnists to promote their agendas in response to this revelation.

A Fair and Balanced Link
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WayneSTOSfan
Lieutenant
MUCH after the fact, YES???

Oh, I don't know to MAYbe give the left one less stick to hit him with...........GOD, knows all the left needs is a hint of something and it become fact and the most evil thing since Hilter..
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Dr. Noah
Sistertrek's Asian Correspondant
Knock it off. Nobody here made such a claim. You're talking to the wrong people about calling Bush Hitler.
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gvok
Unregistered

Nice to see you guys are recruiting new members. Welcome aboard Wayne! :D
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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
The Sisko
Jan 26 2005, 04:16 PM
Gallagher received an additional $20,000 from the Bush administration in 2002 and 2003 for writing a report, titled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?", for a private organization called the National Fatherhood Initiative. That report, published last year, was funded by a Justice Department grant, said NFI spokesman Vincent DiCaro. Gallagher said she was "aware vaguely" that her work was federally funded.

^^^^

Why would something like this be federally funded? I wish someone would give me $20,000 for writing a report. :thud:

I thought it was supplied by the Education department?

I don't think that President Bush and Karl Rove are sitting in a huddle at the White House say, "I like so-and-so, let's see if they'll say something nice about us for money!"

On the other hand, I'd be more than willing to bet that this isn't the first time this happend (i.e., this happened in previous administrations).
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Admiralbill_gomec
UberAdmiral
gvok
Jan 26 2005, 04:29 PM
If nothing is wrong with this practice then why did the President order  his Cabinet secretaries not to hire columnists to promote their agendas in response to this revelation.

A Fair and Balanced Link

See previous comment.

This was interesting:

Quote:
 
Bush also said the White House had been unaware that the Education Department paid commentator and columnist Armstrong Williams (search) $240,000 to plug its policies. That contract came to light two weeks ago.


So was this:

Quote:
 
Gallagher got another $20,000 -- part of which was approved while President Clinton was still in office -- from a private organization called the National Fatherhood Initiative (search), using money from a Justice Department grant. For that 2001 grant, she wrote a report on the institution of marriage, entitled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?"


So, end of story.
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gvok
Unregistered

I posted it because I thought it was interesting.

Nice to see you again AB. :P
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