Koch Brothers thread

[AlicetheKurious]

Links in original:

11 November 11
Koch Brothers Behind Push To Dismantle EPA

During last week’s Americans For Prosperity (AFP) event, a common theme kept creeping into the speakers’ presentations: Dismantle the EPA. And as the major funders of AFP, Charles and David Koch are the ones pulling the strings of the American elected officials who keep clamoring for an end to all environmental protections.

Since the new Republican-controlled Congress took over earlier this year, calls for the EPA to be disbanded and general attacks on the agency have been constant. In the last 11 months, we have covered those stories here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Those in favor of saying goodbye to the EPA include presidential candidates like Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, elected officials like Republican Representatives Mike Rogers and David McKinley, and even media figures like Fox News’s John Stossel. The attacks include false claims that the agency is destroying jobs, or just general claims that the agency’s usefulness has run its course.

But when you look past those claims, the money from the Koch brothers and their organizations is all that you can see.

In addition to GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain pledging his loyalty to the Kochs at last week’s event, we were also privy to a rousing anti-EPA speech by Republican representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas. As Think Progress reports, Pompeo told the crowd the following about his efforts to completely strip the EPA of their funding:


“We’re trying. Indeed, I personally tried. … We’ve got a Senate that has a deeply different worldview, and there my bill sits. We won’t be able to slow down the growth of the EPA dramatically until we change the view of folks in Congress, and I speak mostly of the Senate here, and we get a new leader in the White House.”

Lee Fang from Think Progress has detailed Rep. Pompeo’s connections to the Kochs, who have personally been involved with helping Pompeo climb his way into the top 1% of income earners:


Pompeo developed much of his wealth from a firm he founded, Thayer Aerospace, which he ran with investment funds from Koch Industries. According to a December 11, 1998 article in the Wichita Business Journal, “[Pompeo's] company’s capital base is drawn in part from Wichita’s Koch Venture Capital, a division of Koch Industries.” Pompeo sold Thayer in 2006.

Pompeo still relies on Koch for his private wealth. After the sale of Thayer, Pompeo became the President of Sentry International, a business specializing in the manufacture and sale of equipment used in oilfields. Sentry International is a partner to Koch Industries through its Brazilian distributor, GTF Representacoes & Consultoria.

Pompeo won his Republican primary largely with the support of Koch Industries’ PAC, which gave him one of his largest endorsements in March. Despite the fact that Koch Industries is the recipient of tens of millions in federal contracts, Pompeo boasted about the endorsement: “The employees of the Koch Companies have jobs here in the Wichita because of their own hard work and creativity, not because a federal agency deemed it to be so.”

With $31,400 in contributions from KOCHPAC, Koch Industries is by far the greatest contributor to Pompeo’s campaign.

So to be clear, Congressman Pompeo owes not only his election but his personal fortune to the Koch brothers, and now that he is in a position of power, he is doing his best to push their agenda within the chambers of Congress.

The money in politics database organization Open Secrets has a lengthy list of specific legislation that Koch Industries has lobbied for and against. On the "against" list, you’ll find legislation such as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a bill that would have put Americans to work building a green energy infrastructure; the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act – again, a bill that would have created green energy jobs and infrastructure; and the Clean Air Protection Act – a bill that would limit the amount of acceptable emissions into our atmosphere.

The Koch brothers, through their PACs and other organizations, have funded numerous efforts to defeat legislation aimed at reducing pollution or protecting the environment. After all, their companies don't pay the real cost for the pollution they release.

That’s why it is important to follow the money on these stories, especially when dealing with Congress members who are attempting to dismantle the few environmental protections that are currently in place, like Mike Pompeo. Because more often than not, these efforts are supported by fat cat checks from a member of the Koch family. Link

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Wave of Restrictive Voting Laws Prompts Federal Probes,
Grassroots Activism Ahead of 2012 Elections
— Democracy Now! | December 15, 2011

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is vowing to ensure the protection of voting rights in more than a dozen states that have recently enacted controversial laws. Supporters of the laws, backed largely by Republicans, say they are meant to stamp out voter fraud. “When people move on their fears, they make bad law,” says NAACP CEO Ben Jealous, co-author of a new report that argues the new laws amount to a coordinated and comprehensive assault on minorities’ voting rights at a time when their numbers in the population and at the ballot box have increased. Students, former felons and elderly voters may also be impacted. On Saturday, the NAACP helped organize a voting rights march in New York, starting at the offices of Koch Industries in order to highlight how billionaire conservative financiers David and Charles Koch have financed the push for voter ID laws. We also speak with Bob Edgar, a former Pennsylvania congressman and the President and CEO of Common Cause. He supports pending legislation, the Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act, as a way to reaffirm the nation’s commitment to voting rights and free and open elections. “We’re the only nation in the world that has federal elections without federal rules for election,” Edgar says. [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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Numerous links in original. Highlights mine.

Koch Brothers, Allies Pledge $100 Million
at Private Meeting To Beat Obama

WASHINGTON -- At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

The semi-annual, invitation-only meeting attracts wealthy donors, Republican politicians and conservative activists. Last year, hundreds of activists gathered outside the walled-off resort to protest the meeting. This year, however, the conference went off quietly.

"Conference organizers and their guests successfully slipped in and out of the Coachella Valley without being detected, by buying out nearly all of the 500-plus rooms at the Renaissance Esmeralda resort in Indian Wells," reported The Desert Sun. "The resort closed its restaurants, locked down the grounds with private security guards and sent many workers home."

This is the ninth straight year the Kochs have hosted the conference. As Politico reported last year, the meetings often adjourn "after soliciting pledges of support from the donors -- sometimes totaling as much as $50 million -- to nonprofit groups favored by the Kochs."

The fact that the wealthy conservative donors pledged $100 million for the 2012 elections shows how intent they are on trying to get Obama out of office -- and previews how intense, and likely nasty, the general election will be.

There are limits on how much an individual can give to a political candidate. Therefore, much of the money pledged at the recent gathering will likely go to super PACs or nonprofits that can spend and accept unlimited amounts of funds. GOP primary voters have already gotten a glimpse of how the political system looks with super PACs around: record amounts of money spent on a large number of negative ads in the early primary states.

The source told The Huffington Post that they lamented the direction the conference has taken over the years. They said it used to be about "conservative strategy" and building a movement, but now it was mostly an "alpha male" spectacle focused on fundraising to beat Obama.

The Koch brothers have been the major donors behind many Republican candidates, the Tea Party movement and efforts to discredit the science around man-made global warming. Democrats frequently highlight the brothers to fundraise, and the first TV ad of the Obama reelection campaign invoked them as "secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama with ads fact checkers say are not tethered to the facts."

Also at the conference was Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of the Citadel Investment Group. He supported Obama in 2008, leading his employees to contribute more than $205,000 to the campaign. By the time of the election, however, he had switched his allegiance to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Since the election, he has openly discussed his "frustration" with Obama's policies, stating that he is "greatly concerned about the fiscal instability of the U.S." In the fourth quarter of 2011, Citadel employees completely abandoned Obama, contributing nothing to his campaign while giving $120,500 to presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The Center for Public Integrity also reported that for the first time, Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson attended the conference. Adelson and his family are largely bankrolling Newt Gingrich's presidential run, with Adelson and his wife, Miriam, having given the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future $10 million just this year.

Koch Industries did not return a request for comment.

[seemslikeadream]

Slovakia Defies the Kochs and Cato
March 12, 2012
Exclusive: For the past decade, the people of the small central European nation of Slovakia have suffered under a harsh and corrupt “privatization” scheme devised by the Koch Brothers’ Cato Institute. However, in weekend elections, they defied their oligarchs by voting for a left-of-center “populist” party, reports Mark Ames.


By Mark Ames

On Saturday, the tiny EU nation Slovakia held parliamentary elections, and the results surprised the “experts”: The center-left party Smer, derisively described as “populist” in the American media, won in a record landslide, the first time a single party will control the majority in parliament in Slovakia’s post-Communist history.

The “populist” Smer won on an unexpectedly large turnout of 60 percent –the so-called experts had been assuring readers there’d be a low turnout of 40 percent.


Billionaires Charles and David Koch, who helped found the libertarian Cato Institute
The high turnout reflects real suffering for the people of Slovakia that goes well beyond mere cynicism — they’re suffering from real, mass impoverishment, brought on by a decade of brutal free-market reforms, which hit the privatized pensions especially hard. That’s where we Americans come in, specifically the Cato Institute — but I’ll get to that in a moment.

Although there’s been almost no coverage of Slovakia’s mass protest movement, the country has seen the largest demonstrations since the Velvet Revolution. The protests were sparked in part by the “Gorilla” scandal, leaked recordings of Slovakia’s free-market politicians negotiating their bribes with bankers from a top hedge fund, Penta, in exchange for Penta’s lucrative privatization deals.

But what’s sustained the protests, and what brought people out to vote in droves for the “populists,” is the mass impoverishment that’s worsened life for most of Slovakia’s citizens — and first to suffer have been Slovakia’s pensioners, who are forced to subsist on roughly $400 per month.

Here’s where the Cato Institute, the libertarian think-tank founded by the Koch brothers, comes in — and where Slovakia’s problems become our problems.

In the early 2000’s, the co-chairman of the Cato Institute’s Project on Social Security Privatization, José Piñera, played a key role advising and overseeing Slovakia’s mass pension privatization, which passed in 2003 under the free-market government of Mikulas Dzurinda. Today, Slovakia’s retirees are groaning under the austerity pain administered to them by the Cato Institute.

José Piñera, who has led Cato’s Social Security Privatization Project since the 1990s, has a dark history of administering pain on a nationwide scale: Piñera served in the military junta under Chile’s Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet, first as Pinochet’s Minister for Labor, helping suppress unions in one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world; later, Piñera oversaw Pinochet’s radical privatization of Chile’s pension program.

Today, Chile suffers one of the worst wealth inequality problems in the developed world. And for the past two decades, José Piñera, working at the Cato Institute, has been trying to impose the same pension austerity on Americans.

It’s a match made in Hell: Cato and the Koch brothers have been pushing to dismantle Social Security since the Kochs up the Cato Institute in the late 1970s. Thanks to the Cato Institute’s tireless efforts, today dismantling Social Security is practically gospel in the Republican Party — and not far off the top of the “To Do” list for some “centrist” Democrats either.

Sacking Slovakia

Cato’s José Piñera was brought in to oversee Slovakia’s pension privatization only after the 2002 elections put in power the free-market rightwing Democratic and Christian Union Party, led by Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda. The pensions were privatized in 2003, along with a free-market program that lowered the top tax rate to a flat 19 percent, eliminated inheritance taxes, and generally shifted the burden down the economic scale.

The reforms were wildly unpopular with Slovaks, to the same degree that they were popular with Western bankers and banking institutions like the World Bank, which named Slovakia the world’s top economic reformer in 2004, and one of the top 20 business-friendly nations in the world.

In 2005, Bush’s ambassador to Slovakia co-authored a glowing article with Cato’s Marian Tupy, praising Dzurinda’s pension privatization, and noting Cato’s José Piñera’s role in making Slovakia’s pension reforms happen. In their article, they ominously compared Slovakia’s pre-reform pension “crisis” to America’s “crisis” in Social Security.

The timing of the joint Cato-Bush praise for Slovakia’s pension privatization was interesting for a couple of reasons:

First, because the same free-market government that Cato advised and Cato-Bush praised has now been implicated in cutting secret kickback deals with leading hedge fund to sell off Slovakia’s state assets in exchange for millions in bribes; and secondly, that year, 2005, was the year President Bush made his big push to privatize America’s Social Security program, with the Cato Institute as both the lead adviser and promoter.

The Bush-Cato plan to privatize Social Security began over dinner in 1997, when Bush was still governor of Texas. Ed Crane, the president of Cato, and José Piñera, Cato’s co-chair of the Social Security Privatization Project, flew to Austin to sell the future president on their plan to privatize Social Security.

According to the Washington Post: “Crane said that after Pinera’s presentation, Bush declared, ‘This is the most important policy issue facing the United States today.’”

As soon as Bush was elected President, he set up a commission to privatize Social Security, and staffed it with the Cato Institute’s free-market zealots. Unfortunately for them, the 9/11 attacks distracted the Administration. But in 2005, Bush made Social Security privatization his top priority for his second term — and once again, he put the Cato Institute in charge.

By the end of 2005, however, Bush’s presidency was practically in tatters as the country turned against his wars, and Hurricane Katrina made privatizing Social Security politically impossible. The project to do to America what Cato did to Slovakia was essentially abandoned, and the Cato Institute turned critic of Bush’s war on terror policies.

A Family Project

Lately, Cato’s José Piñera has seen his younger brother, billionaire Sebastian Piñera, making international news as Chile’s most unpopular president since democracy replaced the free-market military junta of Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet in 1990.

Thanks to younger brother Sebastian’s free-market privatization of Chile’s education system, the country has erupted in nationwide protests and violence on a level not seen since, well, Generalissimo Pinochet overthrew Chile’s democratically elected government in 1973, and installed a brutal regime that crushed dissent and murdered and tortured thousands — handing the economy over to free-market fanatics including Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Sebastian’s brother, José Piñera.

Neither age, nor time, nor working at the American-based Cato Institute, dining with future presidents and convincing them to gut the population’s Social Security, has mellowed this former Pinochet sidekick’s distaste for democracy. As Piñera wrote in 2003,

“To hand over a blank check to inherently unstable majorities concerning virtually all the major economic, social, and political issues of a society is to institutionalize instability, open the way to more serious abuses, and condemn a country to underdevelopment. How is anyone to make rational decisions about work, savings, and investment if key variables — such as taxes, labor legislation, and regulations — can be altered by 50.01 percent of the citizens through a vote that, in countries with low levels of education, can almost never be said to show the characteristics of an ‘informed vote’?”

On Saturday, the Slovaks voted overwhelmingly to reject the damage and plunder that the Cato Institute’s advisers wreaked on that tiny country’s citizens. Naturally, to free-market zealots like the Piñeras, the Kochs, the Cato Institute and the rest of the oligarchy’s minions, this only proves their point about why democracy must be “limited.”

The people can’t be relied on to vote the way oligarchs want them to — they can’t be relied on to react with cynicism and defeatism to all the news of political and corporate corruption.

The hope among the elites in Slovakia and elsewhere was that the voters’ mass impoverishment and anger would lead to a withdrawal from politics — but the high voter turnout turned out to be perhaps the greatest victory for the people of Slovakia. The politicians are to be expected to sell out and disappoint — but the more engaged in their democracy the people are, the more power they’ll have to eventually change their politics for the better, and finally bring an end to the rotten politics of oligarchy and plunder that mark our age.

Citadel of Libertarian Advocacy or Whore for the Republican Party?
Cato’s Amazing Hypocrisy as It Battles the Kochtopus
by PAM MARTENS
Public relations experts understand one thing about a messy legal battle: the side that triumphs in public perception from the outset can leverage the momentum.

Right now, that momentum is clearly with the Cato Institute in its court fight to prevent the oil billionaires, Charles and David Koch, from gaining majority control of the libertarian think tank through a shareholder lawsuit. Yes, I said “shareholder.” This nonprofit, subsidized by taxpayers, is currently 50 percent owned by the Koch brothers and if they win in court, they will become majority owners as a result of a tricked up contract and the death of a 25 percent owner last October.

The Cato Institute, in a week’s time, has transformed its image from a pro deregulation, pro Social Security privatization, anti Federal school lunch, anti minimum wage, anti collective bargaining think tank taking tens of millions from corporate foundation coffers to that of a cherished endangered species – a freedom-seeking beached whale struggling for survival in a tightening net cast by a villainous predator.

Cato’s crisis management team has set up a web page titled “Save Cato.” Its survival plea is for a public outcry against Kochs’ attempted takeover to prevent Cato from becoming an auxiliary of the Republican party or an “intellectual ammo-shop for Americans for Prosperity” – the Koch money funnel to the Tea Party.

The strategy has worked miracles. Cato’s craven acts of the past have melted away faster than snow cones in July and media fans are springing up daily to herald its independent voice, its venerable platform for libertarian ideals. This is the specter of mass hypnosis that derives from the enemy of my enemy is my friend. If the Kochtopus is out to strangle Cato, by golly, we need to save it. But what, exactly, are we out to save?

Officials on the Cato side — President Ed Crane and Chairman Robert Levy — are not telling us everything we need to know – by a long shot. For starters, why was this so-called venerable libertarian institution stacked with Republican Party donors instead of Libertarian Party donors long before the Kochs started their takeover effort?

According to the Cato Institute web site, there were 16 members on its Board of Directors and a Director Emeritus prior to the Koch coup on March 1 when the Koch brothers installed four new Koch operatives to replace four Cato loyalists. Of the 16 members, according to Federal Election Commission records, only three have given money to the Libertarian National Committee since 1997. Those three are William A. Dunn, Lewis E. Randall, and Jeffrey Yass. All together, the funds totaled $42,250 over 15 years.

That small sum is dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to Republican candidates and Republican Committees by the other Cato Board members from 1997 to the present. Again, what are we saving Cato from?

Ethelmae Humphreys, a long serving Cato Board member, gave over $30,000 to state Republican committees from 1997 to 2010 and $50,000 in 2010 to the New Prosperity Foundation. New Prosperity is a PAC that placed attack ads in the Midwest against Democrats and supported the election of Republicans in the 2010 midterms.

Humphreys is the daughter of the founder of TAMKO Building Products, where she currently serves as Chairman. The company is one of the largest independent manufacturers in the U.S. and has sprawling business interests throughout the Midwest.

John Malone, another long tenured Cato Board member is Chairman of Liberty Media Corporation. Liberty Media owns interests in a broad range of media, including SiriusXM, Live Nation, and minority investments in Time Warner and Viacom. In just the past three years, Malone has given over $39,000 to national Republican committees.

David Koch, who has sat for many years without complaint until now on the Board of Cato, has given over $1 million to Republican committees and candidates since 1997 according to the FEC.

The deep-pocketed Republican party spending by members of the Cato Board was enhanced by the Supreme Court’s decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010. In 2009, the Cato Institute hired the powerful corporate law and lobbyist firm, Patton Boggs, to file its Amicus brief in the Citizens United case, arguing in favor of loosening restrictions on corporate spending in campaigns. Paton Boggs has spent $390 million lobbying Congress on behalf of corporations since 2000 according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Cato has consistently, for more than 30 years, been a serial plotter to kill Social Security and set up private accounts to be managed by the same financial institutions which have brought the country to the brink.

Cato’s cynicism toward “we the people” was on display in this policy plot it unveiled in the Cato Journal in 1983. Titled “Achieving a Leninist Strategy”, Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis wrote:

“First, we must recognize that there is a firm coalition behind the present Social Security system, and that this coalition has been very effective in winning political concessions for many years. Before Social Security can be reformed, we must begin to divide this coalition and cast doubt on the picture of reality it presents to the general public.

“Second, we must recognize that we need more than a manifesto — even one as cogent and persuasive as that provided by Peter Ferrara. What we must do is construct a coalition around the Ferrara plan, a coalition that will gain directly from its implementation. That coalition should consist of not only those who will reap benefits from the IRA-based private system Ferrara has proposed but also the banks, insurance companies, and other institutions that will gain from providing such plans to the public.”

Cato currently employs José Piñera as a senior fellow and co-chairman of its benignly renamed “Social Security Choice.” Cato’s web site describes Piñera as “formerly Chile’s Secretary of Labor” and “architect of the country’s successful reform of its pension system.” In reality, Piñera served in Chile under the murderous military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Rather than being a “successful reform” of the pension system, actuarial studies of the plans in Chile describe them as an asset stripping operation that allowed Wall Street firms to grab as much as 20 to 25 per cent of the workers’ wages in fees to “manage” the money. Piñera’s billionaire brother, Sebastian, is currently President of Chile.

Killing Social Security is just the start. The freedom-lovers at Cato want to also kill federally subsidized school lunches, the minimum wage, and collective bargaining.

On June 15, 2010, Daniel J. Mitchell, a senior fellow at Cato, posted the following: “In a free society, there should be no minimum wage law. From a philosophical perspective, such requirements interfere with the freedom of contract.” Mitchell was previously Director of Tax and Budget Policy for Citizens for a Sound Economy, which was founded in 1984 by the Koch brothers, Richard Fink, a current executive of Koch, and Jay Humphreys, deceased husband of Ethelmae Humphreys, a long-tenured member of the Cato board.

Chris Edwards, Director of Tax Policy Studies at Cato, wrote the following in Cato’s “Tax and Budget Bulletin” of March 2010. “Collective bargaining is a misguided labor policy because it violates civil liberties and gives unions excessive power to block needed reforms. To provide policymakers with greater flexibility and to improve government efficiency, states should follow the lead of Virginia and ban collective bargaining in the public sector.”

Edwards wrote again in May of 2010, in an analysis of how to slash the budget of the Department of Agriculture, that “The department’s food subsidy activities—food stamps, school lunches, and WIC—are properly local and private functions. They should be devolved to the states, with each state determining appropriate policies for its own residents. Such reforms would save federal taxpayers about $98 billion annually. Some states may decide to fund food subsidies on their own, but competition between the states would likely result in smaller, more innovative programs.” There are currently 16.4 million children, one in every five, living in poverty in Cato’s America.

Both Edwards and Mitchell obtained their graduate degrees in economics from George Mason University, where Koch foundations have given over $30 million. In fact, as this search of the Cato web site starkly illustrates, the Cato Institute and George Mason University – both funded by the Kochs – have become their own self reinforcing echo chamber.

Jason Kuznicki, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, offered this take on the stakes involved in the Cato-Koch battle. “What we are witnessing here is a very important moment in the history of conservative-libertarian fusionism. Possibly its death knell.”

Kuznicki points out that Cato has spoken out for civil rights. That could be lost under a Koch regime. I would argue that Cato’s advocacy for corporate rights is incompatible with both human rights and civil rights. I think that the free market, creative destruction so beloved by the faux libertarians has at last found a worthy target in Cato.

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Consider this essay a bump
since it contains little new information.
Links in original; highlights mine.

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How The Koch Brothers Spent at least $3.9 Million in Unreported Partisan Attack Efforts During the 2010 Election

— David or Charles Koch don’t write big checks to superPACs. That’s because the brothers prefer using nonprofit organizations to hide their donations—and their political spending.
— By Lee Fang | March 28, 2012 | Sourced Republic Report

Republic Report has obtained financial audits showing that the billionaire Koch brothers supported at least $3.9 million in unreported election-related activity in 2010. The documents, reported here for the first time, provide a window into an otherwise secret campaign infrastructure that will likely be reactivated this year.

David and Charles Koch, the billionaire brothers of the Koch Industries business empire, are big election spenders: They dumped millions into negative advertisements against Democrats in the last election, and control a political action committees that has distributed well over $5.2 million in checks to favored politicians over the last two campaign cycles (Koch PAC). But the petrochemical plutocrats spent way more than what has been previously disclosed. Documents obtained by Republic Report shed light on the 2010 midterm election strategies of the Koch political machine, including secret money used to harness Tea Party activists into defeating Democrats.

On the Federal Election Commission disclosure website, you won’t find any big checks written to super PACs by David or Charles Koch. That’s because the brothers prefer nonprofit 501(c) organizations to hide their donations and their political spending. By evading the spirit of campaign disclosure laws, the attacks go on with little accountability from the public.

In 2010, the Koch political network set up multiple bus tours to caravan across the country promoting candidates supported by big business. Former Republican operatives, like Ben Marchi, who had previously worked for the congressional campaign arm of the GOP, were hired to staff these events, which were designed to gain “earned media” for candidates through rallies.

Here’s how it would work. During the election, a bus tour from one of several roving Koch groups (with names like “November is Coming” and “Spending Revolt”) would drive into a city with a competitive congressional election and host the Republican candidate for office. Speakers would denounce the Democratic opponent and President Obama. The Koch operatives at the event, usually employed by the Koch-founded front group Americans for Prosperity, would collect names of the attendees and enter them into a database for get out the vote efforts in the election. So the bus tours would garner positive media in the local press for the candidate, while building up a network to generate votes. Call centers were set up to divert volunteers into Republican campaigns. The most active volunteers were rewarded with $250 Visa gift cards.

The elaborate operation—which hit dozens of congressional races with over a hundred political rallies—was never disclosed as political electioneering, and was hardly noticed by the press as an effort to influence the entire shape of Congress by a few billionaires. But Republic Report recovered two financial audits of the Koch-controlled organization that sponsored these bus tours. The documents show earmarked grants to fund these activities. (View the first document here, and the second here).

View a screenshot below, which shows November is Coming received $3.3 million in restricted grants, and Spending Revolt received $600,000. To be sure, these grants show the minimum of the bus tour budgets—not the maximum. The real amount could be much higher: [see image on original page]

A leaked audiotape last year revealed that an executive at Koch’s lobbying office in D.C., Kevin Gentry, said that the bus tours were “designed to help in the Congressional races” as part of their “get out the vote” efforts. Gentry, speaking at a resort filled with billionaire hedge fund managers and oilmen, referred to the tours as “Tea Party.”

The documents also uncover the large amount spent attempting to lobby against clean energy and health reform. These two Koch nonprofits spent at least $2,680,878 fighting health reform (with rallies that featured Democratic lawmakers hung in effigy and speakers comparing the Affordable Care Act to the Holocaust).

This year, it’s likely we’ll see a repeat of many of the strategies deployed during the midterm elections. As Mother Jones reported, the Koch nonprofits are quietly paying Tea Party organizers a hefty sum to collect personal information about voters in the Republican primary. Once the nomination is settled, we’ll see the Koch machine kick into gear to defeat President Obama—and it’s quite possible that, like two years ago, almost nothing will be disclosed.

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REFER ALEC and #Occupy Wall Street

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ALEC Exposed: The Koch Connection
— The Nation | Lisa Graves | July 12, 2011

This article is part of a Nation series exposing the American Legislative Exchange Council, in collaboration with the Center For Media and Democracy. John Nichols introduces the series.
 

Hundreds of ALEC’s model bills and resolutions bear traces of Koch DNA: raw ideas that were once at the fringes but that have been carved into “mainstream” policy through the wealth and will of Charles and David Koch. Of all the Kochs’ investments in right-wing organizations, ALEC provides some of the best returns: it gives the Kochs a way to make their brand of free-market fundamentalism legally binding.

No one knows how much the Kochs have given ALEC in total, but the amount likely exceeds $1 million—not including a half-million loaned to ALEC when the group was floundering. ALEC gave the Kochs its Adam Smith Free Enterprise Award, and Koch Industries has been one of the select members of ALEC’s corporate board for almost twenty years. The company’s top lobbyist was once ALEC’s chairman. As a result, the Kochs have shaped legislation touching every state in the country. Like ideological venture capitalists, the Kochs have used ALEC as a way to invest in radical ideas and fertilize them with tons of cash.

Take environmental protections. The Kochs have a penchant for paying their way out of serious violations and coming out ahead. Helped by Koch Industries’ lobbying efforts, one of the first measures George W. Bush signed into law as governor of Texas was an ALEC model bill giving corporations immunity from penalties if they tell regulators about their own violation of environmental rules. Dozens of other ALEC bills would limit environmental regulations or litigation in ways that would benefit Koch.

ALEC’s model legislation reflects parts of the Kochs’ agenda that have little to do with oil profits. Long before ALEC started pushing taxpayer-subsidized school vouchers, for example, the Koch fortune was already underwriting attacks on public education. David Koch helped inject the idea of privatizing public schools into the national debate as a candidate for vice president in 1980. A cornerstone of the Libertarian Party platform, which he bankrolled, was the call for “educational tax credits to encourage alternatives to public education,” a plan to the right of Ronald Reagan. Several pieces of ALEC’s model legislation echo this plan.

The Kochs’ mistrust of public education can be traced to their father, Fred, who ranted and raved that the National Education Association was a communist group and public-school books were filled with “communist propaganda,” paranoia that extended to all unions, President Eisenhower and the “pro-communist” Supreme Court. Such redbaiting might be ancient history if fifty years later David were not calling President Obama a “hard-core socialist” who is “scary.”

The Kochs have not just multiplied the wealth of their dad; they’ve repackaged and amplified his worldview. David’s latest venture, Americans for Prosperity, subsidizes the Tea Party movement, which repeats this “socialist” smear. Charles is a member of the exclusive Mount Pelerin Society, inspired by Frederic von Hayek’s antisocialist polemic The Road to Serfdom. Through the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies administers the Hayek Fund for Scholars and sister programs to fund academics and staffers for like-minded groups across the country. “Charles G. Koch Fellows” and interns stock ALEC, and have gone on to direct ALEC task forces.

Another David Koch project, Citizens for a Sound Economy—which launched the effort to repeal Glass-Steagall protections keeping banks from gambling in securities—helped fuel the fight for “free trade,” an unpopular policy in the 1980s. The North American Free Trade Agreement passed with help from CSE and its corporate allies. ALEC resolutions for state legislators have long supported such trade agreements in the face of local concerns about job losses, and today the Koch free-market fantasy is reflected in ALEC’s support for free trade pacts with Korea, Georgia, Colombia and other countries. On just about every issue taken on by Koch’s CSE, ALEC has provided legislative tools to carry them through to state legislatures, from privatizing “federal and state services and assets,” as CSE put it, to blocking common-sense caps on unlimited credit card interest rates.

ALEC and the Kochs often pursue parallel tracks. Just as ALEC “educates” legislators, Koch funding has helped “tutor” hundreds of judges with all-expenses-paid junkets at fancy resorts, where they learn about the “free market” impact of their rulings. But ALEC also operates like an arm of the Koch agenda, circulating bills that make their vision of the world concrete. For a mere $25,000 a year, Koch Industries sits as an “equal” board member with state legislators, influencing bills that serve as a wish list for its financial or ideological interests.

It’s a pittance for the Kochs but far out of the reach of working Americans. Ordinary citizens rely on our elected representatives’ efforts to restore what’s left of the American Dream. But through ALEC, billionaire industrialists are purchasing a version that seems like a real nightmare for most Americans.

POST 2146

[AhabsOtherLeg]

"Elect to Prosper!"

Btw, did you know the word "prosperity" appears 36 times in this short thread, in direct connection to the Koch Bros? Even if these are articles tearing apart their Americans for Prosperity organisation, such repetition still forges cognitive links in the unwary readers' brain, and this is how they win.

[Stephen Morgan]

They are prosperous.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

That's true. Can't deny it. I wish I could find their 2010 midterm elections brochure, though, it was a classic. "Elect to Prosper" was actually a slogan they used in it. The Nation had the whole thing on their site as a .pdf, but now you have to sign in to see it:

On the eve of the November midterm elections, Koch Industries sent an urgent letter to most of its 50,000 employees advising them on whom to vote for and warning them about the dire consequences to their families, their jobs and their country should they choose to vote otherwise.

The Nation obtained the Koch Industries election packet for Washington State—which included a cover letter from its president and COO, David Robertson; a list of Koch-endorsed state and federal candidates; and an issue of the company newsletter, Discovery, full of alarmist right-wing propaganda.

Legal experts interviewed for this story called the blatant corporate politicking highly unusual, although no longer skirting the edge of legality, thanks to last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which granted free speech rights to corporations.

“Before Citizens United, federal election law allowed a company like Koch Industries to talk to officers and shareholders about whom to vote for, but not to talk with employees about whom to vote for,” explains Paul M. Secunda, associate professor of law at Marquette University. But according to Secunda, who recently wrote in The Yale Law Journal Online about the effects of Citizens United on political coercion in the workplace, the decision knocked down those regulations. “Now, companies like Koch Industries are free to send out newsletters persuading their employees how to vote. They can even intimidate their employees into voting for their candidates.” Secunda adds, “It’s a very troubling situation.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/160062 ... ntrol-koch

Elect to Prosper! Live Long And Prosp....If you Can Afford Private Medical Coverage!

Or vote otherwise, and lose your job, and your medical insurance plan, and then die, and your whole clan with you.

That was the gist of it.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

.
Woo hoo! Koch Bros haters - read only this, and your hatred will last for a thousand years!

http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/ ... d-2-WM.pdf

As it should, of course.

[NeonLX]

.
Woo hoo! Koch Bros haters - read only this, and your hatred will last for a thousand years!

http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/ ... d-2-WM.pdf

As it should, of course.

Heh. Saved to my hard drive. Not sure why yet, but...saved anyway.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

It's probably not as exciting as I was making out NeonLX, but it does show how deeply invested in politics they are, and that they have no problems with dictating how their workers should vote. There's also a funny article by Charles Koch about how Calvin Coolidge was the awesomest guy ever and FDR's New Deal just made the Great Depression last longer.

[NeonLX]

There's also a funny article by Charles Koch about how Calvin Coolidge was the awesomest guy ever and FDR's New Deal just made the Great Depression last longer.

Funny you should mention that...the teabagger maximus where I work keeps saying that, over and over again (the FDR part of it). I've noticed that it's his style: keep repeating those "talking points" until they're forced into reality. I guess it's one method of keeping that Overton Window sliding.

[Nordic]

The enemies are all domestic.

[Allegro]

.
Thanks, wintler2!

Related ..

McDonald's Says It Has Dumped ALEC
Add another name to the list of corporations who've ditched the American Legislative Exchange Council: McDonald's.

The fast food giant tells Mother Jones that it recently decided to cut ties with ALEC, the corporate-backed group that drafts pro-free-market legislation for state lawmakers around the country. ..

McDonald's sought to clarify its relationship with ALEC after a coalition of progressive groups with members in all 50 states, including Common Cause and Color of Change, announced plans on Tuesday to target McDonald's for its ongoing membership in ALEC. Rashad Robinson, Color of Change's executive director, said groups in the coalition were "flooding" McDonald's, Johnson & Johnson, and State Farm with phone calls demanding they stop backing ALEC.

"Major corporations like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Kraft understand that supporting voter suppression efforts and dangerous 'Stand Your Ground' legislation puts their brands at great risk in the black community," Robinson said. "We hope that McDonald's, Johnson & Johnson, and State Farm also get that message. Today, our members are flooding these companies with phone calls to demand that they stop supporting ALEC." ..

I'm suggesting that #Occupiers might not have been the entirety of forces, yet perhaps they were, helping along a decision made by McDonald’s, and Coke and Pepsi and Kraft, and others.

Follow the bouncing ball.

((1))
ALEC: #F29 Occupy Day of Action Against Corporate Greed
((2))
ALEC: #Occupy Coordinated Actions as of February 29, 2012
((3))
#Occupy What Corporations to Target? as of February 29, 2012
((4))
ALEC Corporations listed at Source Watch

I’d also suggest that maybe, just maybe, the Koch’s are being thwarted just a little bit—for what that’s worth. But we will see.

_________________
Also, wrt Koch, see Another ALEC trick at Federal Level EXPOSED.