There Wente yet another one: NGO funding

The Globe's Margaret Wente never lets facts and reason get in the way of a good contrarian argument.

Why are NGOs receiving government funding for what may be argued to be political activities? asks Margaret Wente. It should be stopped, she argues.

I look forward to Wente someday arguing the same for right-wing propaganda mill The Fraser Institute's tax-deductible and tax-exempt status. Any day now...

She raises the Kairos funding issue, accepting without question federal Conservative Minister Kenney's false assertions that Kairos was overly partisan, anti-semitic and not deserving of funding.

Advocacy should be left to private money, I suppose is Wente's end argument. Given the excesses of private advocacy, I think taxpayers should foot some of the bill to counter the propaganda numerous corporations, private 'institutes', governments and corporate media push. What excesses? You know, those corporations spending millions on PR campaigns and lobbyists arguing that smoking doesn't cause cancer, that it isn't addictive, that Global Warming isn't real, that neo-liberal economic policy is always right, global violence is a necessity which just happens to be great for the war hardware business...

And doesn't it ring false when someone like Kenney decries public money spent on alleged political advocacy when his government is spending tens of millions of our money on partisan advertising?