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:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And how is this any different... (Score:3, Insightful)
For one thing, the Koch brothers actually exist while this "gang of socialists" does not.
Chill out! (Score:5, Insightful)
the true source of $15 million in secret donations made last year to influence two bitterly fought ballot propositions in California
The Koch's have been shafting the political process for years, nobody cared before. What is this? Some sort of fo-public Koch exposure? We all know that the Koch's will remain hidden until the heat dies off then they'll come and fuck something else up.
Slashdot Conservatives (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And how is this any different... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would a centre right president have a gang of socialists?
There are very few socialists in the USA. The politics are so distorted that some people assume that "liberal" means left wing. It doesn't. It means politically right in the middle.
If right in the middle is way to your left, where does that mean you are?
Since when is money laundering a "loophole"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Once again there are no criminal prosecutions of the rich and powerful who choose to deliberately violate the law. A one million dollar fine is nothing to these people, they will recover from that minor "inconvenience" in less than a month. When are the American people going to get fed up with these shenanigans enough to start throwing these people in prison? That's the only thing that will make others think twice about doing the same thing again next year.
So California can only throw them in prison for a year. Make it general population and not one of those country club prisons for the rich and actually fine them the double-the-amount part. A thirty million dollar fine might take them more than a few weeks to recover from.
Re:blah blah blah (Score:2, Insightful)
So grab a gun and do it
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Good, we need an article about how Bloomberg and another billionaire tried to derail the grassroots effort to recall those two Colorado anti-gun rights state senators.
Re:And how is this any different... (Score:5, Insightful)
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, not because I support their politics (full disclosure: I'm decidedly to the right and reckon Edmund Burke one of your finest political writers) but because I appreciate their clarity.
The ACA was little more than mandating the purchase of a corporate product, centralizing its sales, and offering subsidies to folks with lower income who don't qualify for the medicare expansion (which is to say, indirectly subsidizing the insurance companies). What we have here are the problems of capitalism combined with the problems of central planning in one system.
Socialists offer a real alternative to this system, and an alternative which is rooted in specific moral principles. I do not agree with all those principles (but chiefly I have a different view of human nature, which is why I'm a conservative) but I can at least come to an understanding with a socialist based upon what principles we share. Our current political landscape seems to be dominated instead by centrist politicians whose chief principles consist in ensuring reelection by satisfying corporate donors. If we had real socialists, at least we could have a real conversation. Since the liberals in this country co-opted the right's plan and passed the ACA, the right has been devoid of any real ideas. The most interesting ideas I've seen on the right have come from distributists [distributistreview.com], but such get no play in our current political environment.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
This comment of "I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS TOPIC" does not belong on this site.
Also, vote in the fucking firehose and stop complaining.
Re:blah blah blah (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, all of those seem kinda true, but fall apart when you examine them closely:
1. George Soros doesn't attempt to hide what he does with his money. David and Charles Koch do.
2. I don't think you know what "kleptocratic" and "fascist" really mean:
- In a kleptocracy, the primary purpose of government is personally enriching the officials in it. The US doesn't really operate that way: The politicians get paid well and get paid off, but they aren't really getting all that rich themselves (by the standards of rich people), they're more carrying water for billionaires like Soros, Koch, and Koch, which makes the US more of a plutocracy than a kleptocracy. By contrast, a kleptocrat like Jean-Claude Duvalier snagged something like $500 million, making (for example) Bill Clinton's $80 million in book sales and speaking fees look like peanuts by comparison.
- If the US were really full-blown fascist, you'd see a much larger percentage of economic activity geared towards funding a war of conquest somewhere, mass executions of citizens without trial, open and legalized discrimination in the streets, and people shipped off to labor camps based solely on their parentage. We've had some of that at various points in our history, but there's a lot of steps between modern American and Mussolini's Italy that simply aren't happening right now.
3. The ones really losing are not the middle class, they're the people in those ghettos already who have no good way out. You mention Detroit: As bad as it would be if you were used to living in a nice suburb and then ended up in something kind of like Detroit, how much worse would it suck if you were born and raised in Detroit and never acquired the net worth or job skills to be able to viably move somewhere else. Another factor in all this, that I'm not positive the upper class really understands: If the middle class goes completely under, it takes the upper class with them, because the upper class's investment income depends ultimately on the consumer spending of everyone else.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:1, Insightful)
Disregard that. I suck cock.
--Ethanol-fueled
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
"Please, stop this madness, and stick to real news for nerds.
This story does not belong on this site."
Yeah like the hard right and corporate world were FOR social security, perhaps if nerd wannabe's like yourself were not so fucking historically illiterate you'd understand the danger of extremist capitalist ideology to the stability of societies historically speaking. Hard left ideologies like communism didn't appear in a vaccum, they were birthed by the extreme exploitation of real people by the types of extreme right wing ideologues that are now rampaging across the US. Despite what capitalism's ignorant cheerleaders tell you, it took two world wars and the cold war to get a 'middle class' not capitalism. People had to bleed in the streets to fight for better wages you just assume fall out of the sky from right wing econ 101. Americans are just so historically illiterate it's shocking.
Re:Slashdot Conservatives (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Exciting prospect (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And how is this any different... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's all about perspective to be honest. Probably because Obama generally looks favorably upon redistribution, which most people in America aren't in favor of. To us, that is socialist.
This is as opposed to say Francois Hollande, who wants a 75% tax rate in France. Does him being more socialist make Obama less socialist? Absolutely not. A Hollande supporter would say Obama isn't a socialist, but that doesn't make him any less socialist either.
And honestly, I hate the terms left and right because they don't do anything to describe a persons view on issues like personal liberties and economics. Often you have strange mixes of either. For example the left claim to be pro freedom, yet the most hardcore of them want to ban firearms and soft drinks. Right wing is supposedly closer to being Fascist/Nazi all about control, yet they're derided by the left for wanting a government with fewer laws, regulations, and taxes.
Re:And how is this any different... (Score:5, Insightful)
As any good Marxist will tell you, unions will not get you to socialism (unless they rather suddenly go revolutionary). They will get you to neoliberalism. The problem is that their interests are tied to those of their industrialist employers. They want a bigger slice of the pie but, ultimately, they also want to maintain the system that keeps them fed.
Unions take a rather conservative (in the looser sense of the term) approach to the labor issue. They're content to have the capitalist own the capital. They only ask that labor get a more equitable share of the revenue. This is not the case with a genuine socialist.
Re:And how is this any different... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is the most twisted pile of crap i've heard in years.
Sounds like a bad case of cognitive dissonance to me.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:2, Insightful)
chicken/egg syndrome much? Every side points to the others and labels them 'extreme.' It's called an ad hominem attack. Communism sprung from the minds of ivy league utopianism, and capitalism was an extrapolation of barter, both of which are enabled by human nature at work. One did not 'cause' the other.
It's not like whatever country you hail from has an unbiased educational system. If it's state sponsored, which is likely, it's definitely not. It's going to spin the narrative to its benefit so that young minds like yours grow up and hurl its agenda out into the open as the truth, calling everyone else ignorant.
Try thinking for yourself. You won't have the peace of mind that comes from thinking you were taught everything you need to know, but at least you'll know what you've verified yourself, and perhaps more importantly, what you don't know as well.
Re:blah blah blah (Score:5, Insightful)
That Chinese or Indian citizen has something that the citizen of Detroit does not. A decent start in life as a middle class citizen of their own country, with the education that goes with it and from there grows hopes and aspirations.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
ivy league universities whose cultures are loaded with marxist philosophy
I was going to parody this comrade, but I couldn't think of any way to make it funnier.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually politics is one of the most 'nerdist' topics. Nerds tend to obsess over topics most would rather ignore.
Agreed. This article should not be here, not because it is political, but because it is garbage. The author claims there is a "Koch Brothers Network" right in the title, but has no evidence that the Koch brothers are involved, other than the fact that they were asked to donated (and apparently declined). It is absurd to claim the Kochs somehow control or own a political network that has no links to them, even as a donor. Koch Industries made an official statement that they never donated "either directly or indirectly". Since donating is perfectly legal, but issuing false corporate statements is not, why would they make a denial if it wasn't true? This article is just unsupported conjecture, and even if the insinuations were true, the activities would be perfectly legal. Political stories on Slashdot are okay with me, but garbage journalism is not.
Re:Since when is money laundering a "loophole"? (Score:4, Insightful)
The article is confusing, but it seems like the fine is actually $16.03 million. What is infuriating is this is a settlement agreement so that the state will not release the names of the donors. It looks as if they are basically paying off the state so they don't have the deal with the public fallout.
Re:blah blah blah (Score:2, Insightful)
George Soros doesn't attempt to hide what he does with his money.
That is too funny! Remember this little gem? - Discredited Lancet study gets even more discredited [hotair.com]
That must have been some of the best propaganda money Soros ever spent. That "club" he paid for kept giving, and giving, and giving.
There is far more than goes on with him and his money than meets the eye.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Since when is money laundering a "loophole"? (Score:5, Insightful)
... I have a real problem with criminalizing, regulating or punishing people for political speech...
If they want to speak, they should just go ahead and speak. Absolutely no one is stopping them. Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Adelman, the whole lot of them, can buy all the air time, print pages, billboards, Internet marketing, etc. they want and say anything they like all day and all night, without breaking one d*mn law.
So why don't they? Why all this hiding behind one shell organization after another to falsify the source of the money they pump into local elections? What are men, like the Koch Brothers, who with their personal assets and ownership of Koch Industries, are worth more than $100 billion a piece, afraid of? No one can touch them for using their immense wealth for public speech. Why the army of sock puppets?
Sorry, pumping rivers of money through one false organization after another to influence elections through sock puppets throughout the country is not "political speech". It is political corruption.
Re:damn philanthropists (Score:5, Insightful)
Regarding your statement, "But this is typical of the Progressives, they don't mind when it is THEIR guy mucking up the politics."
It's typical of _everyone_ in politics, _everyone_ in the media, and _everyone_ with an agenda. Don't blame just one party when _everyone_ is doing it. It's human nature to deny the guilt of yourself and the people you associate with when the goal is to discredit or disarm a group with opposing views.
Re:News For Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
Before we can make the world we want, we need to be honest with ourselves about the world (and people) as it is (they are)
Re: News For Nerds (Score:0, Insightful)
What really bugs me about the holier than thou liberal types who love to froth at the mouth over the Koch Brothers is how they completely ignore and dismiss similar ties to folks like George Soros. And what of buying votes directly from the White House in the form of private meetings with MSNBC anchors and waivers for unions and preferred corporate supporters? Shine the spotlight on corruption, by all means, but recognize there is just as much if not more coming from the left and from this administration.