Today, flat-earthers within the Bush Administration--aided by right-wing allies who have produced assorted hired guns and conservative think tanks to further their goals--are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own. Meanwhile, the Bush White House is purging, censoring and blacklisting scientists and engineers whose work threatens the profits of the Administration's corporate paymasters or challenges the ideological underpinnings of their radical anti-environmental agenda. Indeed, so extreme is this campaign that more than sixty scientists, including Nobel laureates and medical experts, released a statement on February 18 that accuses the Bush Administration of deliberately distorting scientific fact "for partisan political ends."

In the report, Bush Campaign Ads: Brought to You by . . . Special Interests, Public Citizen details how much money representatives from key industries – including finance, real estate, communications, energy, health care, and insurance – have helped raise and lists the tax breaks, regulatory changes, legislative favors and plum appointments Bush has given his backers. Many of the beneficiaries of his policies are Rangers and Pioneers, terms Bush gives donors who bundle contributions that total at least $200,000 and $100,000 respectively.

The ads will run on cable networks and will target voters in 17 battleground states. Bush had spent at least $41 million of his campaign money by the end of January; his war chest holds another $110 million. He is expected to raise another $50 million before September’s nominating convention and accept $75 million in public financing for the two months before Election Day.

Public Citizen’s report finds that the 416 Bush Rangers and Pioneers have bundled together at least $58.1 million for the 2004 campaign and that 90 percent of them (374) represent the special interests of America’s corporations.

Public Citizen’s report details how Bush has given tax breaks that benefit the finance industry, made it easier for real estate developers to build on wetlands and in the Florida Everglades, reneged on a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions (pleasing the electric utility and mining industries), increased the amount of public land available for oil and gas exploration and coal mining, filled top Interior Department positions with executives from the mining industry, and aided the pharmaceutical industry by pushing pro-industry Medicare drug legislation.

"When people watch TV this week and see the ads touting President Bush and his record, they should know that major corporations helped pay for those ads," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. "More important, they should know that these industries got their money’s worth from Bush administration decisions worth billions of dollars."