A few days ago the Public Broadcasting Service announced it was returning a $3.5-million grant it had received from a Texas billionaire to fund a series of documentaries about the “pension peril” — the costs to cities and states of their public employee retirement obligations. PBS took the action after a report in the tech news website PandoDaily exposed the conflict of interestunderlying the original donation.

That was the good news. The bad news was that PBS had accepted the funding from a self-interested billionaire in the first place. The worse news is that this sort of fundraising from the rich has undermined what originally set PBS apart — its independence from vested interests.

The $3.5-million grant had been made by John D. Arnold, a billionaire natural gas trader from Houston. The series of news segments on the PBS NewsHour it funded, “Pension Peril,” included an episode on California public pensions. That segment mentioned a ballot initiative being pushed in the state to roll back public employee pensions — an initiative campaign being partially funded by, yes, John D. Arnold (through something called the Action Now Initiative).

Most Californians don’t recognize John Arnold’s name. They should. Before setting up his own trading firm, he was an energy trader at Enron — a firm that ruthlessly manipulated the California energy market, leaving the state’s residents with costs they’re still paying.

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