Tag: koch brothers

Occupy DC: Corporate-funded, corporate-controlled, corporate-aimed.

This ABC News article is correct enough, as it goes:

On the surface, the “Occupy the Koches: Guerilla Drive-In” event looked like any other “Occupy” movement protest against the proverbial 1 percent of the population who hold the nation’s wealth.

But a confederation of long-established progressive political advocacy groups — the Campaign for America’s Future, Campaign for Community Change, Common Cause, Health Care for America Now and the aptly named Other 98% — were behind Friday’s protest.

…but there’s something here that I want to focus on. Campaign for America’s Future is a 501(c)(4) corporation set up to agitate for the true organization (The Institute for America’s Future) without having to disclose the latter’s donor lists.  The Campaign for Community Change is a 501(c)(4) corporation set up to agitate for the true organization (The Center for Community Change) without having to disclose the latter’s donor lists.  Common Cause is a 501(c)(4) corporation that has set up The Center for Community Change as a 501(c)(3) in order to avoid having to reveal its true donor lists*. Health Care for America Now is a 501(c)(4) corporation set up to agitate for the true organization (Health Care for America Education Fund; more accurately, the Tides Center) without having to disclose the latter’s donor lists.  And then there’s professional antiwar activist Mario Ceglie‘s The Other 98%, which is the latest iteration of The Other 95%, which we at RedState pointed out last year as being an organization with ties to the professional Activist Left that could best be described as ‘shadowy.’

For an explanation of what the big deal is about a 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, anyway, see here.  Short version: a 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation, unlike a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation, does not have to disclose its donor lists; contributions to it are not tax-deductible.  501(c)(4) corporations are technically not supposed to be majority politically oriented; but there’s nothing stopping one from donating heavily to, say, a Super PAC that is politically oriented (see here and here).  Shorter Moe Lane: 501(c)(4) corporations are great for legally laundering political cash.  Which is fine by me – I’m a full transparency, full disclosure, no-limit free speech absolutist when it comes to political contributions – but it’s insanely hypocritical for group who supported the DISCLOSE Act to be using this system.  And, guess what?  Most of the professional Activist Left supported the DISCLOSE Act.

Continue reading Occupy DC: Corporate-funded, corporate-controlled, corporate-aimed.

#rsrh Will the Koch brothers require Mitt Romney to give up E-Verify?

Yeah, I know, I know: merely asking this question feeds into the entire weird (and sometimes sewage-tinged) false narrative that the Koch brothers run the Tea Party.  Blame Mitt Romney for that: after all, if this Examiner article is correct (via Ben Domenech’s Transom) then Mitt Romney seems to believe that the Koch brothers run the Tea Party, and he’s acting accordingly.  You tell me how to ignore a conspiracy theory when a Presidential candidate refuses to.

Seriously.  I spent a good part of the morning trying to come up with a way to do that, and failing.

But let’s backtrack a little and go over the background.  As you’ve probably heard, Team Romney is going gangbusters over Governor Rick Perry’s supposed weaknesses on immigration, particularly his opposition to a national E-Verify system.  See Ramparts 360 and RightWing News for Perry’s actual views on the subject (and immigration in general): to summarize, Perry is as about as impressed at the federal government’s current ability to run a country-wide identification database as he’s impressed at its ability to run pretty much anything else; which is to say, Perry is not particularly impressed.  Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is actually pretty hardline on E-Verify.

For the moment, at least.  Whether this survives the weekend may be an open question.  Because, again, comes this news that Mitt Romney – everybody put down their coffee cups, by the way – is planning to court the Tea Party – and the Koch brothers. Continue reading #rsrh Will the Koch brothers require Mitt Romney to give up E-Verify?

Today’s Bloomberg’s Two-Minute Hate: The Koch Brothers!

To give you an idea of just how laughably bad this Bloomberg hit piece (short version: the Koch Brothers are icky small-government people who have this big corporation that doesn’t give money to causes that the authors like is a evil lobbying corporation and here’s a list of bad things that they’ve done, including selling stuff to IranIranIranIRANIRANIRAN) was: not only did the notoriously neoconservative* house organ The Atlantic rip its allegations to shreds – Bloomberg probably didn’t want to see sentences like “Ironically, Koch Industries’ response to the article does a better job of laying out these allegations than the article itself.” – but the Bloomberg piece can’t even count on its own affiliates to have its back. To give just one example: Bloomberg Businessweek’s editorial board felt obligated to point out that the supposedly most damning portion of the original article – a subsidiary’s involvement in selling oil drilling equipment to Iran – concedes that Koch Industries was engaged in perfectly-legal activities that the company voluntarily ended when made aware about them. They also felt obligated to note that companies like General Electric – Hi, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt! Having fun working for the Obama administration? – and Caterpillar have also engaged in similar activities. Continue reading Today’s Bloomberg’s Two-Minute Hate: The Koch Brothers!

Koch Brothers Soviet Disco Madness!

Not much to say about this one, except: yup, this is exactly how all those duckspeakers freaking out over the Koch Brothers sound.  And look.  And act, except that the people in the video are at least happy.

Tells you a lot of about 1970s-era Soviet society, huh?  Disco looked good to those poor people.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Politico: Conservatives are pro-cancer!

Either that, or Politico hires some pretty sloppy writers.  Personally, I’m voting for the latter.

The background: Politico decided to write an article that attempts to answer the eternal question, For just how long will George Soros keep throwing money down the rathole which is the Activist Left*? It’s an interesting question in its own right – the article suggests that Soros is getting pretty darn tired of piling up his money in the policy equivalent of an empty field, then setting the pile on fire – but there was one throwaway line in the piece that made me roll my eyes at what fools these mortals be:

And — like Koch brothers’ philanthropy — the recipients of Soros’s largesse do not all fit into neat liberal-conservative constructs.

Soros’s Open Society Foundations, for instance, have contributed $431,000 since 1996 to the Cato Institute to fund its drug reform, civil liberties and anti-corruption programs. And the Kochs have contributed tens of millions to the arts and cancer research.

OK. Stop right there. Continue reading Politico: Conservatives are pro-cancer!

The Left’s Common Cause: “Lynch Clarence Thomas!”

Normally, there would be a temptation to get into the guts of this Big Government video showing Lefty and Democratic protesters at an anti-Koch brothers rally. For those who aren’t aware, the Koch brothers are the latest Two-Minute Hate object of choice among the netroots, who hate them for… giving money to conservative causes, apparently. Actually, I’m being kind: the netroots hate because the alternative involves too much self-reflection to be really comfortable.

Anyway, there would normally be a temptation to crack this video and extract the meat of the Left-wing Crazy inside, only: it’s all Crazy inside. These people were cheerfully advocating murder to anybody who asked them, in complete disregard of the fact that they were being filmed:

I know, I know: there is something kind of disturbing about seeing people relaxed enough to express sick and twisted rhetoric like this without fear of consequences – and it’s definitely infuriating that you and I have to watch and filter every word we say or write, or at least be aware that if those words can be twisted, they will be. But look on the bright side: if this crowd is any indication, being able to spout their racist filth freely has the side effect of gradually lowering their IQs to room-temperature levels. Given that the Left generally likes to sneer at the Right’s collective intelligence, well… karma: it’s what’s for dinner.

Still, I want to show you the worst person in this video. And let me tell you, she had some competition.

Continue reading The Left’s Common Cause: “Lynch Clarence Thomas!”