Bill Berkowitz: Pharmaceutical executives fund new 527 attacking Obama

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Bill Berkowitz: Pharmaceutical executives fund new 527 attacking Obama
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 10/23/2008 - 9:18am. Guest Contribution



RightChange.com's 'advertisements that focus on taxes contain mostly half-truths or outright lies,' says a senior economist at the non-partisan Tax Foundation.

They are successful pharmaceutical company executives, and both have schools of pharmacy at prominent universities named after them. Between them, they have given nearly $4 million to a new North Carolina-based 527 group that is sponsoring ads attacking Sen. Barack Obama's tax policies. The ads are being run by RightChange.com, an organization that has been chiefly funded by Fred Eshleman, CEO of PPD (Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc.), a North Carolina-based pharmaceutical research firm, and Ernest Mario, chairman of PPD and also chairman, founder, and chief executive officer of the Palo Alto, California-based Capnia, Inc.

RightChange.com, which has already raised at least $4 million, recently spent nearly $600,000 on an ad that CQMOneyline described as "a thinly-veiled issue ad attacking Barack Obama for his tax policies, which the organization claims would contribute to the economic crisis." And more is in the pipeline. According to The Associated Press, RightChange.com will air "ads on national cable television criticizing Obama's tax policies and praising McCain's efforts to increase regulation over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant mortgage financing companies at the center of the financial crisis."

Gerald Prante, a senior economist at the Tax Foundation and a Ph.D. student (ABD) in economics at George Mason University, writing at The Tax Policy Blog, the official Weblog of the Tax Foundation -- a non-partisan, non-profit research organization that has monitored tax policy at the federal, state, and local levels since 1937 -- thoroughly examined four of RightChange.com ad's criticizing Obama's tax plan.

Prante told me that one ad, being aired on cable television, claims that Obama wants a 35 percent tax rate for Wall Street but wants small businesses to pay a tax rate of 62 percent, "contain mostly half-truths or outright lies." (The ads discussed here -- and more -- can be viewed here.)

Prante noted that the ad was filled with factual errors and outright lies:

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