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The Lobbying-Media Complex By Sebastian Jones This article appeared in the March 1, 2010 edition of The Nation. February 11, 2010 President Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state's former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were modest things the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to take his green agenda and blow it out of the box. The first step, Ridge explained, was to create nuclear power plants. Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an innovation setter that would create jobs, create exports. For an accompanying slideshow of the talking heads that are leading double lives as paid lobbyists for corporations, click here.       Slide Show: The Faces of the Lobbying-Media Complex       Democracy Now : Authors of The Death and Life of American Journalism propose the government grant subsidies to ensure that democracy and a thriving press survive. » More     *       The Lobbying-Media Complex       Corporate Media & Consolidation       Sebastian Jones: The talking heads of cable news are leading double lives as paid lobbyists for corporations As Ridge counseled the administration to put that package together, he sure seemed like an _object_ive commentator. But what viewers weren't told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation's largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings. Moments earlier, retired general and NBC Military Analyst Barry McCaffrey told viewers that the war in Afghanistan would require an additional three- to ten-year effort and a lot of money. Unmentioned was the fact that DynCorp paid McCaffrey $182,309 in 2009 alone. The government had just granted DynCorp a five-year deal worth an estimated $5.9 billion to aid American forces in Afghanistan. The first year is locked in at $644 million, but the additional four options are subject to renewal, contingent on military needs and political realities. In a single hour, two men with blatant, undisclosed conflicts of interest had appeared on MSNBC. The question is, was this an isolated oversight or business as usual? Evidence points to the latter. In 2003 The Nation exposed McCaffrey's financial ties to military contractors he had promoted on-air on several cable networks; in 2008 David Barstow wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the New York Times about the Pentagon's use of former military officers