Flow of Funds

The Telecoms industry is apparently even more insidious than I thought:

Via some outfit called VoIP News, I'm intrigued to learn that my insidious paymasters at Cato number among the 15 greatest enemies of net neutrality. Scary!  Turns out Cato is a "hired voice of reason" which, along with CEI "seems to draw its funding from a smattering of every major corporation ever to fund lobbyists." Damning stuff!  And these guys are Totally Serious Journalists, so they did some kind of due diligence and fact checking, rather than just pulling this stuff out of their asses, right?

<crickets>

Well, hey, no, I mean, I'm sure Cato is totally shady about its funding sources--how could they possibly check this stuff?

What's that? Annual report? Freely available online, you say? Well, and so we get tons of our budget from... Huh? One percent from corporations? None from telecoms in 2008?

Now, obviously serious reporters wouldn't just utterly fail grade-school level fact checking. Clearly, some devious ISP must have blocked them from reaching this easily accessible information!  Further demonstrating the need for Net Neutrality!

The fact that all free market, small government efforts are entirely funded by a combination of three scary billionaires, and a bunch of big self-interested corporations, is a sort of stylized fact among a certain portion of the progressive media.  Apparently, checking this theory would be like trying to get three separate sourcs to tell you that the sky is blue.