A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network 406
An anonymous reader writes "The California attorney general and the state's top election watchdog named the 'Koch brothers network' of donors and dark-money nonprofits as the true source of $15 million in secret donations made last year to influence two bitterly fought ballot propositions in California. State officials unmasked the Kochs' network as part of a settlement deal that ends a nearly year-long investigation into the source of the secret donations that flowed in California last fall."
Re:damn philanthropists (Score:5, Informative)
You mean this guy?
On the morning of June 19, 2006, Haas was arrested by IRS agents for investigation of filing false tax returns, witness intimidation, and conspiracy.[12] Four others were indicted together with Haas.
Haas initially pled not guilty, but after all four of the co-indicted plead guilty and just before his case was to go to trial, a plea agreement was reached with Haas pleading guilty on one count.
Haas made full restitution to the IRS and has served a fraction of a 24-month sentence in federal prison. He was released to a halfway house in November 2008. Since February 2009, he has been living at his home and working at Haas Automation.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Informative)
Yes it does.
Powerful people are using the Citizens United case to funnel large amounts of money into local elections to F up the society that we are trying to build. One where technology is used for good and lets us work less, while living better lives. Not one where two people who control the big companies that people buy a lot of stuff from get to dictate what the public thinks about climate change, upper class taxes, voting rights, and other issues that they can buy people off on.
"Koch brother network"? (Score:5, Informative)
The "Koch link" seems to be that one of the guys running one of the foundations was described by Politico as a "Koch operative". The other Koch link was that there was an E-mail asking one of the Koch brothers for contributions to help get a proposition passed that would have limited the ability of unions to raise private money for political purposes. Consistent with his libertarian views, he says he does not support such restrictions and did not support the proposition directly or indirectly.
Can someone explain to me how this turns into a "Koch brother network"? I mean, perhaps the Koch brothers are more deeply involved in this, but nothing in the MJ article or the settlement seems to provide any evidence for any significant involvement by them.
Re:"Koch brother network"? (Score:5, Informative)
I have the same complaint when someone uses some high-tech acronym I don't recognize.
If this was the first article you had ever read that mentions the Koch Brothers, I could see where you might need such an explanation. By now, half a decade into their influencing the political system to enhance their fossil fuel and other natural resource holdings, most of the readers, especially the American readers, know who these guys are, who their father was (a big John Bircher and avowed racist and anti-semite) and what they're up to via mechanisms like FreedomWorks and ALEC and the Tea Party. They use their own billions as seed money to create a network of action committees that seek to influence politics from the level of local school boards thousands of miles away from where they live right on up to the President and the President's supervisor, the chairman of the Fed.
A famous story about one of the Koch Brothers recounts how someone called Wisconsin governor Scott Walker pretending to be David Koch and the governor slobbered all over the phone telling the pseudo-Koch Brother how he was gonna make sure - you bet - to get rid of all those unions who expect to actually get, you know, paid for working in Koch Industries facilities, and assured pseudo-Koch that there would be sufficient poor people taken off the state Badgercare rolls so that Koch's companies would get substantial tax subsidies in Wisconsin. It was a remarkable candid snapshot of just how much the name "Koch" reverberates through the precincts of the so-called "constitutional conservatives" and just how much it opens the doors to the treasury to these so-called "patriots".
Re:"Koch brother network"? (Score:5, Informative)
02: "One potential donor courted by an ally of Russo's was Charles Koch, the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries"
03: "Hi Charles
04: "AJS and its lawyers took precautions, choosing to funnel the money through the Center to Protect Patients Rights, which was run by Sean Noble, who was then the primary outside consultant and strategist to the Koch brothers' national donor network"
05: "Here, the money trail forks into two trails. In one direction, CPPR gave $7 million to a nonprofit called the American Future Fund, which in turn passed $4.08 million of that to a subsidiary in California. That subsidiary, the California Future Fund for Free Markets, finally spent the money on influencing Props. 30 and 32.
06: `In the second direction, CPPR directed $13 million to its Arizona neighbor, Americans for Responsible Leadership. ARL then passed $11 million of that money to the Small Business Action Committee in Sacramento, which spent the money influencing Props. 30 and 32.'
07: `Here's the bottom line: A California fundraiser raised a boatload of money. He shuffled it through a network of secretly funded nonprofit groups to hide the donors' identities. And when the money finally arrived in California in time to influence the 2012 elections, the fingerprints on the money had been thoroughly scrubbed off—and in the process, the operatives masterminding this scheme had broken the law. '
Re:blah blah blah (Score:5, Informative)
Koch bros does it, soros does it, both the neocons and liberal progressives do it,
What is "it"?
Let me summarize why the article is news. According to the California AG's office, the Koch brothers have set up a fraudulent scheme that allows them and their allies to illegally deduct money spent on political projects from their taxes.
I sympathize with your strong feelings about the excessive influence of money in democracy, but the story is about more than billionaires spending their money on politics. It's about the Koch brothers allegedly committing fraud while they do that.
Liberal / Conservative (Score:4, Informative)
No, it doesn't. You sound like you're regurgitating something you were spoon fed in college. I don't care what it meant at one point. I do care what it means today.
"Liberal" means lose, freely, without limitation, etc. "Conservative", means limited, restrained, cautious, etc. A true liberal sees no need to be hampered by bad decisions made in the past. Progress can be made, things can be fixed. A true conservative, on the other hand, sees no need to fix things that aren't broken. Why experiment if something is working? You might break it.
Most of us are not one, nor the other. We're a bit of both, some more to one side or the other.
Here's the important bit that you need to wrap your head around: Liberal and Conservative aren't points on the political spectrum. They're directions. (Most people overlook this, including most professors.)
The common usage of these terms has varied wildly over the years. The fundamental definition of the words hasn't changed, but the tyrants, liars, and impostors over the years have all used them to prop up their own brand of crazy. Today, those words depend almost entirely on which country you're in. In the US, they mean "acceptable to Democrats" and "acceptable to Republicans". No, those aren't the actual definitions of those words, but no other country in the world uses strictly correct definitions for them either. Remember, they're directions, not destinations. (pointing towards change, and away from change)
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Informative)
Point taken. I guess this sums it up (from the horses mouth): https://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-and-citizens-united [aclu.org]
Re:News For Nerds (Score:4, Informative)
Some background (Score:5, Informative)
See Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer [newyorker.com] to get a truer sense of the depth and breadth of the machinations.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:4, Informative)
It is absurd to claim the Kochs somehow control or own a political network that has no links to them, even as a donor.
[Emphasis mine.] Absurd? No. Irrelevant? Yes. From the article:
As part of the deal, two Arizona-based nonprofits, the Koch-linked Center to Protect Patients Rights and Americans for Responsible Leadership, admitted violating [California] state election law.
And yet you claim:
Koch Industries made an official statement that they never donated "either directly or indirectly".
That does not appear to square with the facts.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:2, Informative)
In that LA Times link, immediately after the part you quoted: "We have not contributed to any group with the intent of helping Proposition 32 or defeating Proposition 30 in California," Melissa Cohlmia said. (emphasis added). But if the money they gave went that way, I'm sure they didn't complain.
Look, this is called 'dark money' for a reason. The direct links have been deliberately scrubbed, but they are there. And the Koch brothers are keeping quiet about their involvement because the campaigns are more effective without their names attached.
I'm not too sure why you're getting so animated about the issue.
Re:George Soros (Score:5, Informative)
You have Soros, on the left with his money, and the Koch brothers, on the right with their money, and "we the people" in the middle getting screwed from both ends.
Lets see. The Koch Brothers. Charles and David Koch each have personal assets of $36 billion each, in addition they each own 42% of Koch Industries that does $100 billion of business each year. A petrochemical company is valued at about three times annual revenue, so 42% of $300 billion is $126 billion that each of them owns*. Plus their $36 billion each in holding outside Koch Industries and each of them is worth $162 billion, or $324 billion for the set.
George Soros, is worth $20 billion, a 16-1 one disadvantage in wealth. Also note that he is the only liberal billionaire that the right-wingers seem able to find, whereas on the right the list goes on forever (Sheldon Adelman, Pete Peterson, etc.. etc.) . And finally it helps to do a little reality checking to find out how much Soros has actually contributed over time to liberal causes. The total amount seems to be about $30 million, mostly spent during the early Bush years.
Sorry, despite the fevered efforts by the right to try to whip Soros up into a bogeyman, his contributions to political causes over time are tiny compared to the money machine that the Kochs and company have built up over the years, and keeps running with billions in annual funding without pause.
You are getting screwed from only one end, the corporatist end. And it is rich men on the right who are successfully buying our political system so that the screwing will continue.
*Odd, isn't it, that Forbes doesn't count business ownership in its calculation of wealth. You may object "But that's not real wealth, they can't spend it", which is nonsense. They could borrow against it for cash whenever they chose, or put their ownership on the market and cash out. They can tap that money whenever they like.
Socialist party (Score:5, Informative)
If you want an understanding of what "socialist" means in American political discourse (I'm guessing you're from the old country, given your sig and your spelling conventions), then search sometime for "AM talk radio" and listen in for a few hours. "Socialist" is little more than a pejorative. I truly wish we had some genuine socialists in the US...
Right. The current President of France is from the Socialist Party, which is one of the two big parties in France. France has universal socialized medical care - everyone legally resident in France is covered. France has free abortion on demand. France has a 35 hour work week and 5 weeks of vacation a year, enforced by law. Productivity per hour worked is one of the highest in the world, above US levels. The median wage per hour worked is one of the highest in Europe. France has energy independence, with 80% of electricity coming from nuclear power. Most education through college is Government-funded. Current tuition at French universities is about 200EUR/year.
France is a "social democracy". The French government doesn't own most businesses. Most employment is private. There's a lot of regulation, some of it petty, some of it historical going back to Napoleon. It's more annoying than serious.
That's what socialism looks like.
Re:Your hypocricy is astonishing. (Score:4, Informative)
Totally off topic, but can't resist.
Tell that to the hundreds of thousands who use firearms in defense every year. Mass shootings are used to whip up hysteria, while the defensive use of firearms in deadly situations is conveniently ignored.
I think a lot of people would argue that the vast majority of "defensive use of firearms in deadly situations" would not even be necessary in a country where it is even slightly difficult to get your hands on automatic firearms.
Toss out suicides and criminal-on-criminal violence, and the US numbers start to look a whole lot like those of other industrialized nations.
No, actually it doesn't. Toss out suicides and criminal-on-criminal violence and you're still left with outrageous numbers of cases of "defensive use of firearms" (which you mentioned in the first paragraph but had forgotten in the second?). Cases which in most other countries would wind up a fistfight or not even that.