Rightwing financial angel Richard Mellon Scaife dead at 82: The billionaire banking and oil heir Richard Mellon Scaife has died. Two months ago he announced that he had untreatable cancer along with the remark "Some who dislike me may rejoice at the news. Naturally, I can't share their enthusiasm."
As of March 2013, he was worth $1.4 billion. Over the years, he provided tens of millions to right-wing organizations through his control of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Alleghany Foundation and, until 2001, the Scaife Family Foundation, which his son and daughter now control. He also promoted his point of view through his newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Scaife's money has established or supported "activist think tanks that have created and marketed conservative ideas from welfare reform to enhanced missile defense; public interest law firms that have won important court cases on affirmative action, property rights and how to conduct the national census; organizations and publications that have nurtured conservatism on American campuses; academic institutions that have employed and promoted the work of conservative intellectuals; watchdog groups that have critiqued and harassed media organizations, and many more."
One of his targets in the 1990s was President Bill Clinton, his attacks being a big part of what Hillary Clinton famously labeled a "vast right-wing conspiracy." He claimed in 1998 that the Clintons might be tied to the deaths of numerous administration officials and associates, a point of view that the Tribune-Review pounded on for years. He also accused Republican Kenneth Starr—the independent counsel whose investigation refuted the murder claims and led to Clinton's impeachment over the Monica Lewinsky scandal—to be a "mole working for the Democrats."