Kline paid for running "improperly functioning" tax scam

What do Cheri Pierson Yecke, State Sen. Michele Bachmann, and John Kline have in common? Yes, they're Republicans. And yes they're all current or former government employees... but there's something else.

They've all been paid employees of the Center Of The American Experiment.

Notably, John Kline was an Executive Vice President of the group, giving him a job inbetween the times he ran unsuccessfully against Bill Luther for Congress.

The Star Tribune reports:

The center has its share of moderate and liberal critics, but few have been as doggedly watchful as Rob Levine, a Twin Cities writer and founder of the media watchdog website cursor.org. Levine has written several detailed critiques arguing that the center is a poorly disguised arm of the Republican Party and that it is improperly functioning as a 501(c)(3) organization, which allows donors to get tax deductions.

"The center is part of a huge, well-funded national movement pursuing the interests of corporations and inherited wealth, and they have a natural bottomless pool of capital to draw from," Levine said.

The center was one of the first state-based conservative think tanks and it has been a model for others. Now all but a half-dozen states have think tanks linked to a national group called the State Policy Network, based in Virginia.

The center purports to be a serious nonpartisan policy analyst but invariably supports conservative dogma ranging from school choice to privatizing Social Security, Levine contends, and says the media too often parrot the center's propaganda because it's packaged in a sophisticated wrapper.

"The CAE has played its role perfectly by inviting dozens of the [conservative] movement's political, ideological and media figures to speak. Often, these speakers have their voices amplified, without rebuttal, by media outlets such as public television and radio, and local newspapers," Levine wrote on the website mediatransparency.org.

Rob Levine, a longtime critic of the center, contends that it's an arm of the Republican Party and shouldn't have nonprofit status, which lets donors take tax deductions. Even though it portrays its work as nonpartisan policy analysis, the organization reliably supports orthodox conservative positions such as school choice and Social Security privatization, he added.

"The center is part of a huge, well-funded national movement pursuing the interests of corporations and inherited wealth, and they have a natural bottomless pool of capital to draw from,'' said Levine, a Twin Cities writer who founded the media watchdog web site cursor.org.