grist for the mill

Salon.com News | Bad Moon on the rise: "The small success of Free Teens' government funding is just a small indication of the remarkable transformation of the billionaire Moon. A man who once inspired considerable public horror in the 1970s when his church faced a congressional inquiry and battled accusations of coercive recruitment and mind control, not to mention his own criminal conviction for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice, now goes about his business generally unnoticed. (The Unification Church would not return calls for this story.) Along the way, he has been able to gain acceptance by the most powerful people in the country, surely with the help of his media mini-empire -- including the UPI wire service and the right-wing newspapers Tiempos del Mundo, in South America, and the Washington Times, which he runs at losses well into the tens of millions every year. His exorbitant spending on politicians, largely conservative, hasn't hurt either; his Washington Times foundation gave $1 million to the George H.W. Bush presidential library and has paid the former president untold amounts in speaking fees. "