[Crossposted from Daily Kos]

"Facts don't really matter. In politics, perception is reality."

   -- Ron Arnold, Vice President of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise

"We're out to kill the f**kers. We're simply trying to eliminate them. Our goal is to eliminate environmentalism once and for all."

   -- Arnold in a 1992 interview. Arnold's "Wise Use" movement has been linked to right-wing militia groups.

The website Daily Kos highlighted this story from BusinessWeek's Earnon Javers on Saturday:

Asked about the payments, Fumento says, "I'm just extremely pro-biotech." He says he solicited several agribusiness companies to finance his book, which was published by Encounter Books. "I went after everybody, I've got to be honest," Fumento says of his fund-raising effort. "I told them that if I tell the truth in this book, the biotech industry is going to look really good, and you should contribute." [...]

Fumento insists that disclosure of financial transactions between op-ed columnists and the companies they cover wouldn't be practical.

So here's a stunner. A senior fellow at the Hudson Institute -- one of those right-wing think tanks founded in order to provide haven for truthiness-based, business-friendly "science" that no actual scientific or knowledgeable policy institution would touch with a sterile, non-conductive ten foot science pole -- solicited money from a biotech company in the process of writing a book that would make them "look really good". And sure enough, Monsanto "contributed" $60,000 to get the book written.