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What Charles G. Koch Can Teach Us About Campaign Finance Data
Lasrick writes "Lee Drutman is a political scientist with the Sunlight Foundation who does terrific work. In this article, he attempts to trace campaign donations made by one of the Koch Brothers and discovers just how difficult it is to do: 'The case of Charles G. Koch is a nice lesson in just how hard it is to determine who is breaking and who is abiding by campaign finance limits. It's hard to make accurate tallies of individual aggregate campaign contributions when the Federal Elections Commission doesn't require donors to have a unique ID, and when campaigns don't always reliably report donor names. Given this, it is unclear how the FEC would even enforce its own aggregate limit rules. The FEC's spokesperson told me that while the FEC welcomes complaints, it does not typically take enforcement initiative."'
Obama is spying on every American with blanket data grabs and still fails to stop terrorist attacks
Obama has the IRS pry into the personal lives of anyone (and high school kids) who is trying to start a conservative non-profit
And you want to bitch about money from people supporting a candidate that DIDN'T WIN the election.
Step 1: Get the tyrant in power
Step 2: Keep the tyrant in power
Posting an article about people who are harassing conservatives for who they dare to support with their money... That's just special. I guess the IRS isn't doing a good enough job, we need to find other avenues to ensure Conservative/Republicans politicians don't get financial contributions to their campaign.
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Is it because the Koch is considered evil by the left while Soros is a saint?
Yet the irony is that the Koch brothers actually make something in the United States and their workforce is 80% unionized while Soros is a banker who makes money on devaluing countries currency.
Why would politicians that got elected enact laws to make it harder for them to be bribed? They specifically make the campaign finances difficult to track in order to hide the bribery.
Not only that, but we let the people being elected set their own paychecks as well.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
If you know who donates to which parties, politicians, and organizations, it can highlight what things you might want to give extra scrutiny to.
You don't have to use the information, but I would like it to be available for analysis.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
501(c)(4) organizations are for promoting social causes; donations are nondeductible but operations tax-exempt, aka "if we performed these activities as individuals we wouldn't get taxed again so why should we be taxed as a group?" -- they can engage in cause-oriented political spending. 501(c)(3) are charitable organizations and the donations are tax-deductible and the organization isn't supposed to do partisan political spending at all. Then of course there are 501(c)(5)'s, aka labor unions, a left-wing favorite who are given very broad discretion to engage in very overt political spending to the tune of billions of dollars... but that's its own rabbit hole, and I digress.
Anyway. Media Matters would make an okay 501(c)(4), as they clearly have some idea of a social cause, but they go above and beyond that to get outright all-contributions-deductible 501(c)(3) status while their political enemies were denied any tax exemptions at all.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Really strange - the lefts HATRED of brothers promoting freedom with their own money.
For the record - did you know that the Koch Brothers support:
Decriminalizing drugs,
Legalizing gay marriage,
Repealing the Patriot Act,
Ending the police state,
Cutting defense spending.
They call this being way right wing?
Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
The Supremes have repeatedly ruled that the enumerated rights in the constitution add up to an implied right to privacy, since you can't realistically have several of them (including the right to freedom of speech) without it. It is ignorant at best to utilize this argument. It is also highly disingenuous to ask this question in any case because the constitution was never intended to exhaustively enumerate the Human Rights of The People. Your one-liner amounts to nothing more than tired prevarication.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If the government has no power, the corporations will take over. That is a nightmare scenario because corporations have no interest whatsoever in maintaining society and ensuring quality of life (the very purpose of government). The corporation's only purpose for existence is to make as much money as possible, how do you think that is going to play out for everyone? Corporations need to be hobbled by taxes and regulation at all times to prevent them from becoming too powerful.
Money buys influence. Period.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Really strange - the lefts HATRED of brothers promoting freedom with their own money.
For the record - did you know that the Koch Brothers support:
Decriminalizing drugs,
Legalizing gay marriage,
Repealing the Patriot Act,
Ending the police state,
Cutting defense spending.
They call this being way right wing?
The problem is that even though they support Freedom and Liberty they don't support Liberalism. They're against big government, heavy taxes and heavy regulation. They tend to be individualists and not collectivists, ergo they are right wing extremists (or something).
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure, and the 9th Amendment which clearly says that just because a set of rights are enumerated doesn't mean those are the only ones you have, and the 10th Amendment which says that the only powers the Federal government has are those delegated to it, and that all others are reserved to the States (where not prohibited) or the People.
So, the real question which you should have asked is where in the Constitution was the government given the power to snoop through all your crap in the first place.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Should we all be paid the same per hour regardless of what we produce in that hour?
The Koch brothers employ 10's of thousands of people.
Obviously they're doing something for ordinary people.
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Whatever gives you that idea? Opposition to rent seeking is probably the primary defining characteristic of libertarianism, and the Koch brothers support numerous causes and organizations that strongly oppose rent seeking.
The 19th century robber barons weren't unfettered free marketeers, they were people who translated a high level of political influence and corruption into personal fortunes. This is exactly what libertarianism opposes.
Do have even the slightest idea what you're saying? Do you really think anybody who is rich is affected by income taxes at all? Rich people don't have income, they mostly just own untaxable assets. Income tax is primarily a burden on the middle class and professionals, not "the rich".
Furthermore, the 19th century was a period of great improvement in the standard of living for everybody, not a period of economic and social decline the way you falsely portray it.
What does any of that have to do with being far-left? Harassing Fox News is just political partisanship, not leftism. Abolishing capitalism and private property and promoting communism: now that would be a far-left organization. Media Matters are just Democratic partisans who don't appear to have any interest in actual leftism, just in attacking Republicans.
That's more about how fervent you are in approaching politics as team sports, than about position on the left/right spectrum. You can be a hardcore partisan and be anywhere on the spectrum; even some very centrist politicos in terms of their actual political ideology are hardcore partisans, in both parties.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
How is trying to find out how our elected officials are beholden to wealthy contributors the same thing as our government snooping through all our crap?
For the most part it isn't, but then again I didn't say it was. The person I was replying to asked where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy which showed they were falling into the classic trap of presuming that if there isn't an enumerated right to something then that right doesn't exist which isn't true.
Or to rephrase the problem another way, they were looking at the world as if Government must give them permission to do things as oppose to the way it is supposed to be which is that we gave Government permission to exist.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Where in the Constitution is there a right to privacy for individuals?
The right to privacy is the cornerstone of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton
It's interesting that the Affordable Health Care Act requires the government to know more and more about your health and health care decisions. Either these are contrary to Roe v. Wade or they are undermining the principles that RvW is founded upon.
I'm outta mod points anyway so I'll just clear up this lie right here. It was _not_ a 90% tax rate. It was a graduating rate where you paid the same tax on the first $50k as someone making only $50k, then you paid the same tax on the _next_ $50k as someone making $100k, and so on so forth. When you got to $1 mil/yr+ you paid 90% on the amount between $900k and $1 mil. I'm simplifying it so my numbers might be off, but that's the gist of it.
Basically at one point in time we said there ought to be limits on how much of societies limited resources we dedicate to 1 person.
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This would have more validity if the the title was "What Charles Koch & George Soros can teach use about campaign finance data"
I see an aristocracy as the inevitable outcome of a system that concentrates power into the hands of those that already have resources and prevents others from having much say in how the place is run. Once you take more than naive overview and consider actual implications of a system designed to remove political power from all but a few (ie. "the weak majority is bringing the strong individuals down" rant from "libertarians") it becomes very clear.
If you want something to really rub it in, consider the building collapse in Bangladesh where there was the "libertarian" wet dream of no government enforcing safety standards on the building owner.
One amusing practice is to ask a "libertarian" what they think of indentured servitude, although you need to describe it in detail instead of using the name or they'll catch on before they tell you that if people are willing to sign up then they are all for it. You'll see from that why I've described it as "fuck you, I've got mine" instead of anything to do with Liberty of other people. It's also amusing to see some of them play at colonial dressup without understanding that they direct opposing the ideals of Washington's revolution.
FFS!
WTF is wrong with you stupid fucking americans?
How do you get to believe that kind of bullshit? are you just born stupid or is it brainwashed into you?
"the government" is *NOT* the source of all evil. There are plenty of other sources that have nothing at all to do with government, and there are plenty of things that governments can and do do that aren't in the least bit evil.
why the fuck, when you hear a rich and poweful man telling you that "government and regulation is evil and bad for you" that you never, ever, not even for one moment stop to think and ask yourself "what's in it for him to say that? why does he want me to believe that?"
have you no natural suspicion? or cynicism? or has it all been channeled and misdirected via propaganda into anti-government theology?
rent-seeking, for instance, is completely unrelated to government or 'government powers'. it is what happens when a private individual or organisation uses their monopoly or near-monopoly of supply to charge whatever they think they can get away without an angry mob with pitchforks burning them down.
and that means a lot...far more than you might expect because most people will take a hell of a lot of shit from businessmen parasites and exploiters before getting angry enough to even think about doing something about it. rebellion only occurs when conditions become completely and relentlessly unbearable.
it's got nothing at all to do with governments or governmental powers.
No - I just have to point out that people like Koch are selfish pricks and that some of their useful idiots are anarchists. Wrapping it all up in a flag doesn't make it right, especially the bunch that act just like the Royalists that Washington was fighting against. It would all be funny if it wasn't taken too seriously, but people really are talking about overthrowing a system that's worked for a couple of hundred years just because of some of the inequality that's become more severe over the last thirty.
I've tried to be polite, but I really do see you as the enemy of a free society since you're a useful tool for those that want to restore the Aristocracy.