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A Look at the Koch Brothers Dark-Money Network
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."
Actually politics is one of the most 'nerdist' topics. Nerds tend to obsess over topics most would rather ignore.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
For one thing, the Koch brothers actually exist while this "gang of socialists" does not.
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.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
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.
Well, I guess we know who the conservatives are on Slashdot, now. It amazing to see how much they complain when criticism is aimed at rich people who are swaying elections in directions that they appreciate.
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.
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.
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?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
George Soros makes his money from currency arbitrage. You think he's above attempting to influence the factors that affect the relative value of currency?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
If right in the middle is way to your left, where does that mean you are?
Hopefully a padded cell.
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.
We could probably balance the budget in no time!
It is amazing how an article like this gets so many responses that say it should not be posted yet Slashdot has so much pseudo libertarian crap posted that it sounds like a Ron Paul commercial. I doubt that two thirds of these people them have any real idea of what libertarianism is. The worst part is that these so called libertarians are being manipulated by people that are no more libertarian than Wilhelm Keppler or Orval Faubus.
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.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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, but such get no play in our current political environment.
Please, stop this madness, and stick to clicking on stories that interest you.
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.
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.
I am officially gone from
"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.
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)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
So two billionaires should be able to effectively have more free speech than hundreds of thousands of union members?
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.
Point taken. I guess this sums it up (from the horses mouth): https://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-and-citizens-united
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?
That is the most twisted pile of crap i've heard in years.
Sounds like a bad case of cognitive dissonance to me.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
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.
Disregard that. I suck Koch.
--Ethanol-fueled
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I've been to Boulder Colorado. I'm pretty sure most of the folks there are suffering from Hypoxia.
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.
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.
is assuming the politicians are the ruling class. Make no mistake, the ultra-rich are the rulers. The folks in the House/Senate are, like you said, water carriers. But the actual, practical effect is that the Koch bros. and their ilk call the shots. So from a practical standpoint we have a Kleptocracy.
,it doesn't really matter what happens. This is why the economy keeps getting worse for Labor but the stock market keeps hitting record highs.
The middle class are still losing. We all are. I've always hated this logic: Things are continuously getting worse, but since they could get even worser it's all OK. It doesn't change the fact that the middle class is going away...
Also, the point of the upper class Kleptocracy is to take everything. If they have everything
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See Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer to get a truer sense of the depth and breadth of the machinations.
Like a good neighbor, fsck is there
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.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It would be amusing if not tragic that Unions decry others' political contributions and want to make them illegal while committing vast treasure to the same arena, often against the wishes of many members forced to contribute via dues and assessments.
Sort of like the same place from which American libertarianism comes. You know the never-never land where the magic "free market" is never manipulated by greedy corporations and everyone lives by "enlightened self-interest." That way everyone lives in peace and harmony. (That is if you have several billion dollars.) Libertarianism - sociopathy massaged into a political philosophy.
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.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
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.
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.
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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)
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