Think Progress : The Koch Brothers' War on Mainstreet

Charles and David: The brothers Koch. Image from AlterNet.
The Kochs vs. Mainstreet:
The right-wing billionaires'
open war on everyday Americans

By Think Progress / AlterNet / March 2, 2011

Koch Industries, the private company of the billionaire Koch brothers Charles and David, is an oil and gas, chemicals, cattle, forestry, and synthetics giant -- and also a major force for punishing Main Street Americans. Charles and David Koch (pronounced "coke") have directed many millions of their shared $43 billion net worth into a vast propaganda machine that's corrupting American politics in order to reward their pollution-based enterprise.

The Koch brothers have played an integral role in provoking Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker's notorious attempt to crush Wisconsin's public sector unions. Koch Industries contributed $43,000 to Walker's gubernatorial campaign, and Koch political operatives encouraged the newly elected governor to take on the unions. Koch Industries is a major player in Wisconsin: Koch owns a coal company subsidiary with facilities in Green Bay, Manitowoc, Ashland, and Sheboygan; six timber plants throughout the state; and a large network of pipelines.

Since the showdown began two weeks ago, Koch-funded front groups like Americans for Prosperity (AFP) -- which is chaired by David Koch -- and the American Legislative Exchange Council have organized counter-protests, prepped GOP lawmakers with anti-labor legislative talking points, and even announced an anti-union advertising campaign. For now, however, the AFP message doesn't appear to be resonating: Koch-backed pro-Walker demonstrations have had low attendance and were dwarfed by pro-union supporters in Madison this week.


Knee-capping unions

In a speech earlier this month at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Americans For Prosperity-Michigan Executive Director Scott Hagerstrom revealed the true goal of his group and allies like Walker.

Speaking at CPAC's "Panel for Labor Policy," Hagerstrom said that even more than cutting taxes and regulations, AFP really wants to "take the unions out at the knees ." Knee-capping free labor has long been a goal of the Koch brothers and their many front groups. In the run-up to the 2010 elections, the Kochs worked with other anti-labor billionaires, corporations, and activists to fund conservative candidates and groups across the country.

Now after viciously opposing pro-middle class policies for years, Koch Industries is trying to eliminate the only organizations which serve as a counterweight to its well-oiled corporate machine. Believing he was talking with David Koch, Walker told a prankste about his plans to crush the unions. Koch's AFP operatives are now working with "state officials in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania to urge them to duplicate Walker's crusade in Wisconsin."


Pushing poison

According to EPA databases, Koch businesses are huge polluters, emitting thousands of pounds of toxic pollutants. As soon as he got into office, Walker started cutting environmental regulations and appointed a Republican known for her disregard for environmental regulations to lead the Department of Natural Resources. In addition, Walker has stated his opposition to clean energy jobs policies that might draw workers away from Koch-owned interests.

The Koch political poison has spread across the nation. Robocalls from Koch's Americans for Prosperity group flooded New Hampshire in support of a bill that would repeal participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which has cut greenhouse pollution and created 1,130 jobs as a result of energy efficiency benefits.

AFP climate deniers in New Jersey are trying to kill RGGI there as well. Koch's main man in Congress, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), inserted an amendment to slash EPA funding in the House GOP's already wildly anti-environment budget. Koch's many subsidiaries have filed challenges against health and environmental rules from toxic chemical disclosure to dumping in streams.


Rich Fink defends Kochs

Even while local business leaders have called for Walker to end his assault on Wisconsin unions, Koch executives have said that they "will not step back at all" and have pointed to the importance of their "grassroots" group, saying, "it is good to have them on the ground, in the battle, trying to help out." Rich Fink, the executive vice president of Koch Industries who oversees their ideological campaigns, defended the billionaire brothers in an interview with the National Review Online by blaming "the Left."

With the Left trying to intimidate the Koch brothers to back off of their support for freedom and signaling to others that this is what happens if you oppose the administration and its allies, we have no choice but to continue to fight.

The Koch brothers, who have been increasing their personal wealth by billions even as they have fired thousands of workers, are really just victims of a vast left-wing conspiracy, Fink claims.

This is part of an orchestrated campaign that has been going on for many months. It involves the Obama administration, the Center for American Progress, aligned left-wing groups, and their friends in the media. This is just the latest salvo in their attacks on the Koch brothers and Koch Industries. But it is an escalation -- they're now bringing in some labor groups, which they have not done before.

Somehow, Rich Fink seems unaware that his own operatives have declared open war on American workers.

[This story was originally published by Think Progress and was distributed by AlterNet.]

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Stephen Payne : Hotshot Lobbyist Can Get You Into White House

Lobbyist Stephen Payne shown shooting with VP Dick Cheney. (Careful, dude.)
Offered access to Dick Cheney and others in return for donation to Bush library
By Daniel Foggo / July 13, 2008

A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.

Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m for the president’s Republican party in recent years, said he would arrange meetings with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and other senior officials in return for a payment of $250,000 (£126,000) towards the library in Texas.

Payne, who has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, also said he would try to secure a meeting with the president himself.

The revelation confirms long-held suspicions that favours are being offered in return for donations to the libraries which outgoing presidents set up to house their archives and safeguard their political legacies.

Unlike campaign donations, there is no requirement to disclose the donors to the libraries, no limit on the amount that can be pledged and no restrictions on foreigners contributing.

During an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times, Payne was asked to arrange meetings in Washington for an exiled former central Asian president. He outlined the cost of facilitating such access.

“The exact budget I will come up with, but it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library,” said Payne, who sits on the US homeland security advisory council.

He said initially that the “family” of the Asian politician should make the donation. He later added that if all the money was paid to him he would make the payment to the Bush library. Publicly, it would appear to have been made in the politician’s name “unless he wants to be anonymous for some reason”.

Payne said the balance of the $750,000 would go to his own lobbying company, Worldwide Strategic Partners (WSP).

Asked by an undercover reporter who the politician would be able to meet for that price, Payne said: “Cheney’s possible, definitely the national security adviser [Stephen Hadley], definitely either Dr Rice or . . . I think a meeting with Dr Rice or the deputy secretary [John Negroponte] is possible . . .

“The main thing is that he [the Asian politician] comes, and he’s well received, that he meets with high-level people . . . and we send positive statements made back from the administration about ‘This guy wasn’t such a bad guy, many people have done worse’.”

Payne said that he would use the services of Mark Pritchard, a Conservative MP who chairs the House of Commons all-party Russia group and was last week on the brink of signing as a paid “adviser” to WSP. Pritchard issued a statement saying that he had not done any work for WSP.

When confronted, Payne said that there would be “no quid pro quo” for any donation and added that his firm was “always above board”.

The White House said it would not be influenced by such donations.

Source. / The Sunday Times, UK / The Huffington Post

Click here for a brochure on Stephen Payne's company Worldwide Strategic Partners.

See video here.

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Telecom Donations Tied to FISA Vote

Supporters of the spying bill received twice
the contributions as those against it.
By Mike Lillis / June 24, 2008

When scores of House Democrats joined Republicans last week to reauthorize a controversial White House spying program, many critics attributed that support to election-year jitters. But as liberal voters continue to bash Democrats on the issue, some campaign finance reformers charge that political contributions from the telecom industry, which benefited handsomely under the bill, probably also swayed votes

In an analysis released Tuesday, Maplight.org, a nonprofit campaign finance watchdog group, found that lawmakers voting Friday in support of the wiretap deal averaged roughly twice the donations from the nation's leading telecoms - Verizon, Sprint and AT&T - over the last three years as those voting against it.

The figures might not have raised eyebrows except that the proposal contained a gift for the industry, effectively granting retroactive legal immunity to the telecoms that enabled the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program. The immunity provision - blasted by civil libertarians for putting industry concerns above Fourth Amendment rights against search and seizure - rescues the companies from the roughly 40 lawsuits pending against them. Some money-in-politics watchdogs say the connection between the contributions and votes is no accident.

The money-in-politics debate is hardly new to Washington, but it has taken on greater urgency as both political contributions and federal budgets grow larger with each passing year. Under the current system, lawmakers have become ever more reliant on campaign coffers to maintain their hold on power. Industry, meanwhile, is under constant pressure to be at the negotiation table when related legislation is being crafted on Capitol Hill. Money is often the quickest way to gain that seat. This combination of factors has created a near symbiotic relationship between Congress and industry, often lending a sense that business interests take priority over citizens' concerns.

"It's not a dollar given and a vote bought," said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit campaign finance reform advocate, "but it is a system where large industries can gain influence and direct how policy is decided."

The shame, McGehee said, is that the campaign-finance system leads to conflict-of-interest questions even when none exist. "That undermines confidence in the legislative process," she stated.

Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman with Common Cause, echoed the message. "We certainly know that contributions go a long way to gaining access and influence," she said. "The appearance is that money buys votes."

Maplight's analysis, crunched using contribution data from the Center for Responsive Politics, found that the 293 House members voting last week in favor of the wiretapping compromise received, on average, more than double the amount of money as those who voted against it. They got $9,659 from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint between January 2005 and March 2008, while those voting against got $4,810.

But some campaign finance experts warned against linking campaign donations to votes. "It's way too simplistic just to look at money given to a candidate and claim it's affected a particular vote," said Richard L. Hasen, an election specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "It's something that's often alleged, but much harder to prove."

"There does seem to be a correlation between telecom money and the way people voted," Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, said in an email, "but as in all cases when you're following the money, causation is nearly impossible to establish."

Indeed, in the case of the spying proposal, 94 of the 105 Democrats voting for the bill had supported an earlier House proposal to renew the spying law without granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.), one of those 94, made clear that she opposed telecom immunity, but was forced to accept a compromise for the sake of passing a bill. The immunity language was a concession to the White House, which threatened to veto any bill without it.

"I do not believe that Congress should be in the business of interfering with ongoing lawsuits and attempting to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that allegedly violated the law," Pelosi said on the chamber floor last week. "Those companies have not lived up to the standards expected by the American people ... They come out of this with a taint."

In return, Democrats included language previously opposed by the administration, including a clarification that the president has no authority outside the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to collect foreign-to-domestic communications, even in times of war.

The Senate is expected to pass the bill on Wednesday.

Not all Democrats felt the compromise language was worth the sacrifice of civil liberties.

"I have consistently said that it is not appropriate for Congress to grant these companies immunity for their actions without having an understanding of what it is that they did," said Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. "This is not only because it will hold the telecommunications companies accountable for their actions, but because it is the only way of finding out just how extensive the president's illegal wiretapping program really was."

Liberal voters have lit up the blogosphere in agreement, charging that Democrats caved to White House demands at the expense of constitutional rights. Some civil liberties advocates also placed blame on the congressional leaders.

"This is all part of the abuse of power that we've seen out of this White House, as well as Congress' refusal to stand up and perform its constitutional duty to check the executive branch," said Boyle of Common Cause. "Congress is complicit here."

Source. / Washington Independent / truthout

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