If there is anything I have learned in my nearly six years of researching and writing about Barack Obama and his various nefarious connections, it is that there is ALWAYS more to the story.

Joel Gehrke, commentary writer at the Washington Examiner, reports that the “nonpartisan” Tax Policy Center — which after the first presidential debate last week disputed Mitt Romney’s tax proposal claims — is a “joint-venture of two liberal organizations — the Brookings Institute and the Urban Institute.”

FEC records show that individuals associated with the two groups — ranging from low-ranking staff to current Obama aides such as Gene Sperling, a Brookings Fellow when he donated to Rahm Emanuel’s 2001 House campaign — have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic candidates and liberal political outfits.

FEC records show that donors who listed the Urban Institute as their employer have given over $81,000 in recent election cycles to Democratic and liberal groups. A similar review of records for donors who listed the Brookings Institute as an employer gave over $122,000 to liberals, compared to just $3,300 to Republicans candidates or conservative organizations.

The Brookings Institute, by the way, is ranked as the number one think tank by ThinkTankWatch (and identified as the “leading Democratic think tank” by David Horowitz’s Discover the Networks), while the Tax Policy Center and the Urban Institute don’t make it into the top fifty.

As I stated above, there is always more. Gehrke should have dug a wee bit deeper. In fact, he needed look no further than the readily-available Discover the Networks online database for a full profile on the Urban Institute, from which two key bullet points stand out:

. Favors socialized health care, expansion of federal welfare bureaucracy, and tax hikes for higher income-earners

. Ascribed the 1992 Los Angeles riots to the rioters’ justified rage at society’s economic and racial inequities

Regarding the parentage of the Tax Policy Center, Discover the Networks reports:

In 2001, UI and the Brookings Institution began collaboration on a Tax Policy Center (TPC) to discredit President George W. Bush’s tax cut plans, which UI claimed disproportionately and unjustly favored “the wealthy.”

Plus, as DTN reports, the list of Urban Institute donors includes a slew of progressive funders and foundations, among which we find the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute in addition to the Woods Fund of Chicago and the Joyce Foundation, on the boards of which Barack Obama once served.

The Urban Institute is not alone in its funding sources. The Tax Policy Center has also received funding from the Open Society Institute, as these 2003 and 2005 Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center reports — and any number of other similar reports — reveal.

Moreover, the Brookings Institute has also been a recipient of Open Society Institute largesse.

Still want to think that the Tax Policy Center is “nonpartisan”? I’d characterize it more as bought and paid for.