Enemies Of The State: The Kochs

By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

Never before in American history have we seen a pair of people more determined to take America backwards. Never before have we seen two people more determined to buy elections and seize control of government in an effort to control United States policy and turn the country into a corporate state. The Koch family has been trying to do this since the 1950′s and their plans are on the verge of being realized.

The year was 1958. America was in the middle of the Red Scare and the Cold War was in full swing. A man named Robert Welch, Jr. founded a new conservative group dedicated to accusing liberals of communism in an effort to use fear to convert people to conservatism, and seize control of the United States government. The John Birch Society began with 12 founding members. One of these members, Fred Koch, is the founder of Koch Industries, an oil refinery firm which is the second largest privately owned company in the United States.

The Kochs may be looked upon by conservatives as a normal wealthy American family but they have ties to one of the most evil regimes in world history. Fred Koch created his company, Winkler-Koch, here in America, and was sued for patent infringement because of his process for turning crude oil into gasoline. Litigation put Winkler-Koch out of business in the U.S. for several years. In other words, Koch was banned. Koch then turned his focus to foreign markets, including the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany with the help of Erich Koch. A high level Nazi official in charge of Prussia, Erich Koch invited Fred Koch to sell his oil in Nazi Germany after he was banned from doing business in the US. After the fall of Nazi Germany, Erich Koch and Fred expanded the oil empire to the Soviet Union. A few years later, the Soviets took Fred Koch’s oil and prosecuted Erich for war crimes. Fred Koch returned to the US as an anti-communist, and was allowed to do business in America once again. In 1963, Fred Koch gave a speech warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us”. Koch also “wrote admiringly of Benito Mussolini’s suppression of Communists in Italy, and disparagingly of the American civil-rights movement.” Fred Koch was a crazy right wing entrepreneur that was relegated to the extreme fringe of the Republican Party and as such, he had no real power. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of his sons.

Since the 1980′s, the Koch brothers, David and Charles Koch, have made it their mission to assault all of the aspects of American life and history that they hate or disagree with. To that end they have created a number of conservative think tanks and organizations dedicated to eliminating these aspects. Liberalism and virtually anything that has to do with government is their number one target. For example, when David Koch ran for the presidency on the Libertarian ticket in 1984 he was pretty blunt about his goals. According to David Koch, they would “like to abolish the Federal Elections Commission and all the limits on campaign spending.” The Koch ticket promised to abolish Social Security, the Federal Reserve Board, welfare, minimum-wage laws, corporate taxes, all price supports and subsidies for agriculture and business, and U.S. Federal agencies including the SEC, EPA, ICC, FTC, OSHA, FBI, CIA, and DOE.

Since this failed attempt, the Koch brothers have abandoned trying to control government through legal elections, and have instead opted to gain power through buying elections and the Republican politicians that run in them. As part of the strategy, the Kochs and their groups are using an old fear tactic. Scaring the voters into electing conservatives by accusing liberals of being secret communists. The Kochs should know all about that tactic. Their father helped invent it. And through their groups, the Kochs remain in the shadows of this movement all while still pulling the strings and providing the cash. The names of the various groups that the Koch brothers fund include Americans for Prosperity Foundation, FreedomWorks, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and have membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council, which allows them to actually write the legislation that they want to be enacted. The Koch brothers funnel millions of dollars into each of these groups for the purpose of buying elections and paying politicians to do what the Koch brothers want them to do.

After the Citizens United decision destroyed campaign finance laws, the Koch brothers unleashed millions upon millions of dollars and spent the great majority of that money buying elections for their Republican lackeys. For example, Koch groups were the largest oil and gas industry donors to Congressmen on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is responsible for legislation affecting the industry. Koch-backed groups donated $279,500 to 22 Republicans and $32,000 to five Democrats, including $20,000 to committee chairman Fred Upton. The Kochs have spent a lot on lobbying in Washington in recent years, from $857,000 in 2004 to $20 million in 2008. The Kochs then spent another $20.5 million over the next two years to influence federal policy, as the company’s lobbyists and officials sought to mold, gut or kill more than 100 prospective bills or regulations.

With the backing of the Koch brothers, the Heritage Foundation recently provided Republican Darryl Issa a wish list of regulations they want to see repealed, including environmental regulations, consumer protections, and worker protections. Without these important protections and regulations, the Koch brothers would be free to screw over consumers, treat their workforce like slaves, and pollute the environment as much as they want. And we are seeing these attempts to eliminate protective policies play out in the halls of Congress as we speak. But it is just not in Congress, its in individual states as well.

Over the course of the 2010 elections, the Kochs poured hundreds of millions of dollars into elections around the country. Many Republicans that were swept into office are beholden to the Koch brothers. One of these Governors, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, has slammed a bill through the state legislature that effectively destroys unions in the state. The Kochs are all for this maneuver. They hate organized labor, and have a strong belief that workers have no rights and have no purpose other than to work at whatever price an owner wants them to work for. Koch Industries does not employ union workers for this reason. This anti-labor belief stems directly from the Koch familial ties in Nazi Germany. Erich Koch was a high ranking Nazi official in the Ukraine, who, in addition to having control of the Gestapo and the police, worked together with the General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment, to provide the Reich with forced labor. Erich Koch faced charges of war crimes for the extermination of 400,000 Poles.

Another family member, Karl Koch, was a colonel in the German SS and the first commandant of the Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald.

The Koch brothers have taken it upon themselves to make sure that our government is their puppet. They have bought and paid for many Republican politicians and since they created the Tea Party, they have sent a message, that if they can’t take the government legally, they are willing to buy it and overthrow it and take control that way. This family is dangerous. They have a deep hatred of the United States government because the United States government makes them act responsible for the environment and makes them treat their workers and consumers fairly. They absolutely hate unions as well, being a big contributor to and supporter of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The Kochs refuse to hire any worker that is in a union and are now in the process of telling their workers who to vote for. This kind of tactic is spreading as well. Employers across the country are now beginning to tell their workers how they should vote.

The Kochs assault on the United States must be stopped. They are nothing more than treasonous enemies of the state that stand in the shadows, pulling the strings of the people they help elect to power. Corporations were never supposed to get involved in the political process for this very reason. We must rise up as Americans and forever ban corporate involvement in politics. The Kochs never gained political power for a reason. People rejected their platform because it was too extreme. The American people didn’t like it then, they don’t like it now. But the Kochs are more dangerous now than ever before, because they have chosen to buy politicians as a way to control government. Democracy doesn’t work that way. But when a corporation like Koch Industries can dictate policy, that is called fascism, something the Nazi Kochs knew all about. And we can either stand by and let them get away with it. Or we can cut the roots of this conservative extremist movement by hunting down these enemies of the state and sending them to a country where their style of government is accepted. I suggest China, Venezuela, or Iran.

How to Cut Corporate Power

Occupy Corporations
by BILL QUIGLEY

“Corporations are people, my friend.”

– Mitt Romney at Iowa State Fair

Corporations are obviously not people. But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing corporations. This means we must radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations. We must strip them of corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work. People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and actions of corporations.

One of the most basic roles of society is to protect the people from harm. The massive size of many international corporations makes democratic control over them nearly impossible.

Corporate crime is widespread. The New York Times, ProPublica and others have revealed Wall Street giants like JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have been charged with fraud many times only to get off by paying hundreds of millions in fines. Professors at University of Virginia have documented hundreds of corporations which have been found guilty or pled guilty in federal courts.

Corporate abuse is even more widespread. For example, Corporate Accountability International named six to its Corporate Hall of Shame, including: Koch Industries for spending over $50 million to fund climate change denial; Monsanto the devil for mass producing cancer causing chemicals; Chevron for dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon; Exxon Mobil for being the worst polluter; Blackwater (now Xe) for killing unarmed Iraqi civilians and hiring paramilitaries; and Halliburton, the nation’s leading war profiteer.

Making corporations responsible to democracy of the people is challenging considering Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest corporation, does more business itself annually than all but two dozen of the two hundred plus countries in the world. Without dramatic changes, how can we expect people in small or even big countries to force corporations like Wal-Mart, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, BP, Toyota or Chevron to live by the same rules all the people have to?

Justice demands we make sure corporations do not harm people. Democracy must require that they operate for the common good.

In order to cut corporations down to size, the people must strip corporations of the special artificial legal protections they have created for themselves.

The story of how corporations took the full rights of legal persons in one of the great perverse tragedies in legal history. Corporations have worked the courts mercilessly since 1819 to take a wide variety of constitutional rights that were designed to cover only people. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment was passed in 1868 to make sure all citizens, particularly freed slaves and people of color, had full rights. There was no mention of protecting corporations. But corporations jumped on this opportunity resulting in a questionable Supreme Court decision that granted them legal personhood. At roughly the same time, the Supreme Court approved “separate but equal” racial segregation. Thus in thirty years, African Americans lost their legal personhood, while corporations acquired theirs.

Corporations now claim: 1st amendment free speech rights to advertise and influence elections: 4th amendment search and seizure rights to resist subpoenas and challenges to their criminal actions; 5th amendment rights to due process; 14th amendment rights to due process where corporations took the rights of former slaves and used them for corporate protection; plus rights under the Commerce and Contracts clauses of the constitution.

The most recent corporate judicial takeover of constitutional rights is the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission. The court ruled that corporations are protected by the First Amendment so they can use their money to influence elections.

Because of the bad Supreme Court decisions, it takes a constitutional amendment by the people to change the laws back. An amendment requires two-thirds of both houses of Congress to agree then three-quarters of the states must vote to ratify. This will take real work. But despite the growing size and unrestricted power of corporations, people are fighting back.

Dozens of groups are working to reverse Citizens United and restore limits on corporate election advocacy. In January 2011, groups delivered petitions signed by over 750,000 people calling on Congress to amend the Constitution and reverse the decision. More than 350 local events were held in late January 2012 to challenge the Citizens United decision.

Groups challenging this injustice include Code Pink, Common Cause, Free Speech for People, Moveon.org, Move to Amend, National Lawyers Guild, POCLAD, Public Citizen, People for American Way, The Center for Media and Democracy, and Women’s League for Peace and Freedom.

Many groups are asking for a broad constitutional amendment that makes it clear that corporations are not people and should not be given any constitutional rights. Representatives Ted Deutsch of Florida, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont have sponsored bills in Congress to start the process for a constitutional amendment to make it clear that corporations are not people, are not entitled to the rights of people, and cannot contribute to political campaigns.

There are also many energetic actions at the state level. People for the American Way list organizational efforts in nearly all 50 states to end corporate influence in elections or amend the constitution.

Massive corporations now rule the earth. But they are recent arrivals which can and should be dispatched. It is time for people to again take control. The legal fiction of corporate personhood and the constitutional rights taken by corporations must cease. Join the efforts to cut them down to size and restore the right of the people to govern.

How Koch Industries Makes Billions Corrupting Government

The Koch's Tea Party libertarianism is actually a thin veneer for the company's long-running history of manipulating the market to pad Koch profits.
By Lee Fang, Think Progress
Posted on March 2, 2011,

Koch Industries, the international conglomerate owned by Charles and David Koch, is not only the second largest private company in America, it is the most politically active. As ThinkProgress has carefully documented over the last three years, Koch groups have spent tens of millions to influence government policy — from financing the Tea Parties, to funding junk academic studies, to undisclosed attack ads against Democrats, to groups promoting climate change denial, to a large network of state-based and national think tanks. In an opinion column for the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch fired back at his critics, who have grown more vocal as it has become clear that Koch groups are providing the political muscle for Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) union-busting power grab.

In his piece, Charles portrays himself as simply an ideological advocate, and says his money to political groups is only meant to “enhance true economic freedom.” He chides special interests that have “successfully lobbied for special favors,” claiming “crony capitalism is much easier than competing in an open market.” But in reality, the focus of the Koch political machine is geared towards “crony capitalism” — corrupting government to make Charles and his brother David Koch richer. Koch’s Tea Party libertarianism is actually a thin veneer for the company’s long running history of winning special deals from the government and manipulating the market to pad Koch profits:

– The dirty secret of Koch Industries is its birth under the centrally planned Soviet Union. Fred Koch, the founder of the company and father of David and Charles, helped construct fifteen oil refineries for Joseph Stalin before expanding the business in the United States.

– As Yasha Levine has reported, Koch exploits a number of government programs for profit. For instance, Georgia Pacific, a timber company subsidiary of Koch Industries, uses taxpayer money provided by the U.S. Forestry Service to provide their loggers with taxpayer-funded roads and access to virgin growth forests. “Logging companies such as Georgia-Pacific strip lands bare, destroy vast acreages and pay only a small fee to the federal government in proportion to what they take from the public,” according to the Institute for Public Accuracy. Levine also notes that Koch’s cattle ranching company, Matador Cattle Company, uses a New Deal program to profit off federal land for free.

– Koch Industries won massive government contracts using their close relationship with the Bush administration. The Bush administration, in a deal even conservatives alleged was a quid pro quo because of Koch’s campaign donations, handed Koch Industries a lucrative contract to supply the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve with 8 million barrels of crude oil. The SPR deal, done initially in 2002, was renewed in 2004 by Bush administration officials. During the occupation of Iraq, Koch won significant contracts to buy Iraqi crude oil.

– Although Koch campaigned vigorously against health reform — running attack ads, sponsoring anti-health reform Tea Parties, and comparing health reform to the Holocaust — Koch Industries applied for health reform subsidies made possible by the Obama administration.

– The Koch brothers have claimed that they oppose government intervention in the market, but Koch Industries lobbies aggressively for taxpayer handouts. In Alaska, blogger Andrew Halcro reported that a Koch subsidiary in Fairbanks asked Gov. Sarah Palin’s administration to use taxpayer money to bail out one of their failing refineries.

– SolveClimate recently reported that Koch Industries will reap huge profits from the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which runs from Koch-owned tar sands mining centers in Canada to Koch-owned refineries in Texas. To build the pipeline, politicians throughout the Midwest, many of whom have received large Koch campaign donations, have used eminent domain — government seizures of private land. In Kansas, where Koch-funded officials advise Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and the Republican legislature, the Keystone XL Pipeline is likely to receive a property tax exemption of ten years, a special loophole that will cost Kansas taxpayers about $50 million.

– Koch Industries has been the recipient of about $85 million in federal government contracts mostly from the Department of Defense. Koch also benefits directly from billions in taxpayer subsidies for oil companies and ethanol production.

Charles has compared himself to a libertarian “Martin Luther,” evangelizing to the world for their supply side cause. However, the tens of millions in campaign donations and the dozens of front groups funded by Koch work in tandem to promoting the business interests of Koch Industries.

Koch funds both socially conservative groups and socially liberal groups. However, Koch’s financing of front groups and political organizations all have one thing in common: every single Koch group attacks workers’ rights, promotes deregulation, and argues for radical supply side economics. Not only do the Kochs' front groups pad Koch Industries’ bottom line, they supply the Koch brother’s talking points. In fact, for his opinion piece, Charles heavily relied on front groups he finances for statistics. The “freedom index” cited by Charles is a creation of the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation, and the erroneous “unfunded liabilities” claim was supplied by the Koch-funded National Center for Policy Analysis.

The bigger Clarence Thomas scandal

Sunday, Feb 20, 2011   By Ben Adler

It's been a rough few months for Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginny.

First, in October, Ginny left a bizarre, early morning phone message for Anita Hill asking her to apologize for the sexual harassment accusations she leveled at Thomas 20 years ago. Then, in January, the good government group Common Cause revealed that Thomas claimed "none" for "spousal noninvestment income" on a disclosure form during years where his wife pulled in six figures working for two conservative organizations, the Heritage Foundation and Liberty Central. Having a wife who worked for a group that opposed healthcare reform raised the question of whether Thomas should recuse himself in future cases on the law's constitutionality. (74 House Democrats think so and they sent Thomas a letter saying as much).

Now Common Cause has just revealed that Thomas took an all expenses paid trip in 2008 to Palm Springs for four days to make a speech with money that he says came from a conservative legal group but that may have actually come from the controversial company Koch Industries. In 2010 the Supreme Court overturned limitations on corporate political spending in Citizens United v. FEC. The Koches -- staunch fiscal conservatives who own an energy conglomerate -- have run wild with that new freedom, so Common Cause argues that Thomas should have disqualified himself from ruling in Citizens United. (If Thomas had recused himself the 5-4 decision would have been tied 4-4 and the lower court ruling upholding the spending limits would have stood.)

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Experts on legal ethics don't all agree on whether Thomas should have recused himself in Citizens United and whether he will be honor bound to do so for healthcare reform. But they are unanimous in their condemnation of Thomas' dishonest filings on his disclosure forms. "Since it went on for six years [2003-2007 and 2009] it's especially troublesome," says Stephen Gillers, a prominent expert on legal ethics at NYU law school. "It's impossible to claim it's an oversight."

It would be comforting to think that Thomas' shady behavior was an anomaly, but it's actually just the most egregious example of trends that have made Supreme Court justices seem more like hypocritical and partisan politicians than disinterested jurists. If left unchecked, the court will seriously damage its public image.

The problem has two roots: changing social norms and lax ethical rules governing the Supremes. The former is beyond the scope of our government but the latter isn't, and Congress should act.

Supreme Court justices work in a weird, gray area, with virtually none of the ethical or legal impositions that most similarly powerful people are subjected to. The Code of Judicial Conduct that governs the behavior of federal district and appeals court judges does not apply to the Supreme Court. If it did there would be a bunch of regulations on justices, such as a rule against speaking at fundraisers for advocacy groups, which they are currently free from. The Supreme Court says it follows the principles of the code, but there is currently no way to force it to.

The only binding rules for justices are the laws governing conflict of interest. And even they have no enforcement mechanism: If a justice decides not to recuse himself, the aggrieved party is out of luck because there is nowhere to appeal.

Just ask the Sierra Club, which in 2004 filed a motion asking Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself from hearing their effort to make Dick Cheney reveal the members of his secret energy task force. Scalia had just been on a hunting trip with Cheney, and the case had the potential to embarrass Cheney just before the 2004 election, but Scalia refused to recuse himself. Short of impeachment, which is incredibly rare, there is no way to discipline a justice who does not follow the law on recusal, which says that a judge should recuse if his or her "impartiality might reasonably be questioned." Many experts, such as Gillers, think Scalia should have recused himself in the energy task force case, but -- in violation of the principle that no one can be his own judge -- Scalia got to decide that he thinks he's perfectly impartial, thank you very much. And that was that.

With no penalty for breaking the law, it is more likely to happen. "There is no effective deterrent," says Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University's law school. "You have a significant violation by [Thomas] and virtually no accountability."

Public disapproval is one way to impose accountability, but that seems to not exert the pull it once did. Whereas justices were once wary of speaking out on controversial matters, they have become more comfortable speaking their mind, even on matters before the Court, and often in front of partisan audiences. Just the day before the first revelations about Thomas broke, Turley published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post lamenting this trend of "celebrity justices," and criticizing Scalia for recently speaking at the congressional Tea Party Caucus' Conservative Constitutional Seminars. "It allows justices to merge their role in cases with the broader political debate, robbing the Court of the appearance of neutrality," says Turley. (Case in point: Earlier this month Thomas, speaking at a Florida college, vociferously defended the Court's decision in Citizens United and attacked specific newspapers whose editorial boards disagreed with the ruling.)

Other experts caution that engaging with and educating the public on constitutional law is a good role for justices to play. But there is widespread agreement that without any rules placed on speaking engagements, questionable situations like Thomas' free trip will arise.

So, if justices were following the Code of Judicial Conduct, would Thomas have broken the rules? Some would argue that being reimbursed for travel is not the same as accepting a speaking fee, which would clearly be forbidden. Critics like Common Cause counter that four free days in an expensive resort town is a form of payment. And what about ruling on healthcare reform in light of his wife's work? That would depend on how much of Ginny's work is focused on that law and how she might benefit from him overturning it.

It's hard to figure out the answer to those questions when you don't have access to all the relevant information. That's part of the problem with our current system. "Justices aren't required to disclose as much as they should be," says Bill Yeomans, a former Department of Justice official who teaches at American University's law school.

These problems are not limited to conservative jurists. In December, the Senate removed Thomas Porteous, a district judge in Louisiana appointed by Bill Clinton, for a number of ethics violations. Some of Porteous' actions that led to his impeachment included filling out forms during his confirmation process and personal bankruptcy proceedings with false information -- an awfully similar transgression to Thomas'. Will Congress uphold the same principles where Thomas is concerned?

There's some reason to be optimistic. This past week, Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill to create an inspector general for the judiciary who would have authority over the Supreme Court. That -- combined with a law that would impose the important elements of the Code of Judicial Conduct on the Supreme Court and create a mechanism to enforce it -- could help save the Court from itself.

The Billionaires Are Coming

Koch brothers to host rightwing politicians and business leaders at California resort to discuss how to influence politics

Friday, January 28, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

by Ed Pilkington in New York

Amid great secrecy, about 200 of America's wealthiest and most powerful individuals from the worlds of finance, big business and rightwing politics are expected to come together on Sunday in the sun-drenched California desert near Palm Springs, for what has been billed as a gathering of the billionaires. They will have the chance to enjoy the Rancho Mirage resort's many pools, spa treatments and tennis courts, as well as walk in its 240 acres away from the prying eyes of TV cameras.

But the organisers have made clear that the two-day event is not just "fun in the sun". This will be a meeting of "doers", men and women willing to fight the Obama administration and its perceived attack on US free enterprise and unfettered wealth.

As the invitation says: "Our goal must be to beat back the unrelenting attacks and hold elected leaders accountable."

The reference to the accountability of America's elected leaders is ironic, bearing in mind that the gathering has been convened by two brothers who have never been elected to public office and are among the most unaccountable and secretive political players in the country.

David and Charles Koch enjoy a combined fortune of $35 billion (£22bn), run the second largest private company in the US, Koch Industries, and are increasingly using their fabulous riches to push their special interests within America's political process.

Yet they do so largely behind closed doors. Nobody knows precisely how much they spend on influencing elections and lobbying Congress, but it is thought to be in the scores of millions of dollars.

By similar vein, the guestlist for their gathering on Sunday is unknown, though those who in the past have attended this twice-yearly event include supreme court judges, rightwing media celebrities such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, prominent governors of southern states such as Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) and Haley Barbour (Mississippi), as well as leading figures from Wall Street and energy companies, and titans of industry.

The format of the gathering will be similar to past Koch events, the last of which was held in Aspen, Colorado, in June. The assembled tycoons will talk about some of the Koch brothers' pet horrors — the growth of government and state regulations, what they call climate change "alarmism" and "socialized" healthcare.

Then they will share ideas about how to tighten their grip on politics and the judiciary by shaping election campaigns.

But this year's reception will differ in one important regard: it will have an opposition. For the first time, a coalition of progressive and liberal groups has formed to try to counter the power of the Koch brothers.

The anti-Koch gathering will be staged just down the road from the Rancho Mirage resort. It will hold its own — open as opposed to secretive — panel discussion and a rally designed to highlight what its organizers see as the pernicious impact of the Kochs on the democratic process.

"We want to raise public awareness of the harmful influence of corporate money. The Koch gathering embodies all that we consider damaging to our democracy," said Mary Boyle of Common Cause, a campaign group that has spearheaded the opposition.

Among the panel speakers will be Robert Reich, former US labour secretary under Bill Clinton. He believes the Kochs represent what he calls a perfect storm that is battering American democracy. "This is the worst I've seen it in my lifetime. In the late 19th century, robber barons would deposit bags of silver and gold on the desks of legislators. We've progressed significantly since then, but once again big business is engaging in politics."

The reach of corporate agitators personified by the Kochs has been greatly extended by Citizens United, a landmark ruling by the supreme court in January 2010 that opened the door to corporate spending on political campaigns for the first time since 1947. The ruling led to a splurge of secret outside funding in the 2010 midterm elections in which about $300m was spent, a three-fold increase on 2006.

The Koch brothers made good use of the ruling. Again, how much they invested in the elections is not known, but Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party-alligned movement founded and funded by the Kochs, has put its own spending at $45m.

Common Cause this week called on the US attorney general to investigate a possible conflict of interest. The group pointed out that two supreme court judges had taken part in strategy sessions in a previous Koch gathering — Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Both ruled in favour of lifting the ban on corporate political spending, a move that directly forwarded the Koch brothers' political aspirations.

"What we are seeing is a form of legalized bribery," said Rick Jacobs, founder of the Courage Campaign that is participating in Sunday's counter-gathering. "Here are the Koch brothers with their unbridled wealth, using it to shape society as they see fit. It's our obligation to do everything we can to stop them."

Critics of the brothers point out that many of the ways they seek to influence politics serves their own personal and corporate interests. They lobby for lower personal and corporate taxes, which doubly benefits them as individual taxpayers and as owners of a company with an annual turnover of about $100bn.

Since 2006, the Kochs have been the largest political funders of any energy company in the US. They have backed thinktanks and campaigns that have spread doubts about climate change, which suits their purposes as oil and coal magnates who have been named among the top 10 air polluters in the country.

Their sustained fight through the Tea Party movements against government regulations also benefits their multiple concerns, that range from oil pipelines to paper cups, wood, carpets and Lycra.

"I don't want to demonize the Koch brothers personally," Reich said. "But they demonstrate how vast wealth is now being funneled into the political process in secret, undermining our democracy."

Attendees of past Koch gatherings

Justice Clarence Thomas: A member of the US supreme court since 1991, he tends to vote with the majority conservative wing of America's highest judicial panel.

Virginia Thomas, the judge's wife: A lawyer active in rightwing politics, having founded Liberty Central, a group that opposes what it sees as the "tyranny" of the Obama administration.

Glenn Beck: The notorious Fox News commentator is also a successful businessman, earning $32 million last year from his empire of TV and radio shows and books. This week he was the subject of an open letter from 400 rabbis who protested against his persistent references to Nazis and the Holocaust as terms of abuse against left-wing opponents.

Senator Jim DeMint: The senator for South Carolina is one of the most consistently rightwing members of the Senate and a darling of the Tea Party movement. Koch singled out DeMint for praise after the politician vowed to destroy Obama's healthcare reforms.

Fred Malek: A former aide to George Bush, Malek was one of the top fundraisers for the $56m ad campaign that senior Bush adviser Karl Rove unleashed in the 2010 midterm elections, directed against Democratic candidates.

Steve and Betty Bechtel: Some of the many industrialists who have attended past Koch events, they own the largest engineering company in the US, the Bechtel Group.

David Chavern: No 2 at the US Chamber of Commerce, a business coalition that spent up to $75m launching attack ads largely against Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, twice the amount it spent on the 2008 elections.

Supreme Court Justices ‘Participated in Political Strategy Sessions’ Before Citizens United

Thursday, January 20, 2011 by Raw Story
by Daniel Tencer

On the first anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, which overturned nearly a century of restrictions on campaign spending, a progressive group has asked the Department of Justice to look into "conflicts of interest" two justices may have had when issuing the ruling.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from the campaign finance decision because of their involvement with Koch Industries, a corporation run by two conservative activists who many say directly benefited from Citizens United.

"It appears both justices have participated in political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the decision," the letter alleges, as quoted at Politico.

The group will urge the department to disqualify Scalia and Thomas from the ruling. If that were to happen, the Supreme Court could vacate the ruling, effectively returning the campaign finance restrictions that existed until 2010. But, the odds are against it.

At the center of the group's claims is a document from Koch Industries unearthed last fall by ThinkProgress and the New York Times. In an invitation to a Palm Springs retreat to be held this month, Charles Koch boasted that previous events were attended by Scalia and Thomas.

If Scalia or Thomas attended a Koch event between 2008 and 2010, when the court was dealing with issues affecting Citizens United, "it would certainly raise serious issues of the appearance of impropriety and bias," the Commons Cause petition states, as quoted in the New York Times.

Since the Citizens United ruling, many critics have focused on the role of the Koch brothers in US politics, arguing that the oil-business billionaires have placed themselves at the nexus of big business and conservative politics.

The Koch brothers are generally believed to be behind Americans for Prosperity, a group that has been accused of distorting facts in campaigning against health care reform and climate change legislation. President Obama last fall referred to the group as an example of how Citizens United has allowed large corporations to use political groups to funnel unlimited amounts of money into campaigns.

"They don't have to say who, exactly, Americans for Prosperity are," Obama said. "You don't know if it's a foreign-controlled corporation [or even] a big oil company."

Steven Gillers, a legal ethics professor at NYU, told the Times that the campaign to vacate the ruling is "a steep uphill climb ... but not an insurmountable one." He suggested that even if the effort failed, it would still allow for a "public airing" of concerns surrounding the Supreme Court's impartiality.

But Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UC-Irvine, had far less faith in the effort.

"I am a big critic of the Citizens United case. I would love to see it reversed," Hasen told Politico. "But this approach seems both unlikely to yield the desired result of seeing the case overturned and appears to be an unwarranted attack on the ethics of the Justices."

Hasen noted, "Justice Scalia has refused to recuse himself from cases involving a far closer relationship."

Arn H. Pearson, a Common Cause vice president, made it clear that the group doesn't see its effort as an open-and-shut case.

"We're treading in new territory here for us," he told the Times. "But a situation like this raises fundamental questions about public confidence in the Supreme Court."