VRWC news: gonna be a long thread

[boutons_deux]

The Koch brothers have a surveillance programand staff—to spy on liberals



The Koch brothers are really going to have to kick their public relations efforts into high gear now to make the latest revelation about their nefarious efforts to acquire the U.S. system of governance in a hostile takeover look like politics as usual. They have a "secretive operation that conducts surveillance and intelligence-gathering on its liberal opponents, viewing it as a key strategic tool in its efforts to reshape American public life." No, it's not April Fool's Day. They're really doing this.

The operation, which is little-known even within the Koch network, gathers what Koch insiders refer to as "compe ive intelligence" that is used to try to thwart liberal groups and activists, and to identify potential threats to the expansive network.

The compe ive intelligence team has a staff of 25, including one former CIA analyst, and operates from one of the non-descript Koch network offices clustered near the Courthouse metro stop in suburban Arlington, Va.

It has provided network officials with do ents detailing confidential voter-mobilization plans by major Democrat-aligned groups.

It also sends regular "intelligence briefing" emails tracking the canvassing, phone-banking and voter-registration efforts of labor unions, environmental groups and their allies, according to do ents reviewed by POLITICO and interviews with a half-dozen sources with knowledge of the group.

The compe ive intelligence team has gathered on-the-ground intelligence from liberal groups' canvassing events in an effort to assess the technology and techniques of field efforts to boost Democrats, according to the sources.

And they say the team utilizes high-tech tactics to track the movements of liberal organizers, including culling geo-data embedded in their social media posts.

"While the Republican Party focuses on winning elections, the Kochs want to realign American politics, government and society around free enterprise philosophies that they hope to spread more broadly." They want to remake American society in their own image. Which, by the way, would be pretty ing profitable for them. So it's really nothing for them to drop several hundreds of millions to do so.

Koch surveillance team "tracks people deemed su ious outside the offices of Koch network groups, circulating be-on-the-lookout photos to internal network email lists, while keeping an eye on the network's own ranks for possible leakers or disloyal employees."


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/1...28Daily+Kos%29

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Join Occupy the SEC in Urging the Congress to Oppose H.R. 4002 (“Criminal Code Improvement Act of 2015”)!

Congress is currently considering several bills that would overhaul and improve our criminal justice system by reducing mandatory minimum sentences and promoting rehabilitation instead of punishment. The push for criminal justice reform enjoys both bipartisan support and popular support among the American populace.

Unfortunately, the Koch Brothers and their cronies are trying to latch onto this momentum for their own purposes. The House is currently considering the Koch-backed H.R. 4002 (sponsored byRep. James Sensenbrenner [R-WI-5]), a bill that which would serve as a “Get Out of Jail Free” card for white collar criminals.

The bill would require federal prosecutors to prove that a white collar defendant acted with intent in cases where federal law does not currently specify a required mental state. This means that white collar criminals would be able to evade punishment for a host of crimes, EVEN IF they acted with negligence, gross negligence, or recklessness.

H.R. 4002 would make it even more difficult for prosecutors to punish white collar crime. And criminals would be emboldened to take further advantage of shareholders, employees, consumers, and the public.

Even the Department of Justice, which has been notoriously lax in prosecuting white collar criminals, has lambasted H.R. 4002, observing that the bill would weaken countless federal statutes that currently protect the public from dangers like unsafe food and medicine.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/...+capitalism%29

Kock Bros got one of their WI (aka Kockistan) hatchet men to do their dirty work in another attack in the Kock Bros coup d'etat takeover of US govt.

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another take on letting white collar criminals escape punishment

Take a Wild Guess About Why Koch Brothers Got So Interested in 'Criminal Justice' Reform

A high-profile bipartisan effort contains fine print for helping corporate America face even less legal scrutiny.

House Republicans are ensuring that corporate America also will get what it wants: tougher legal hurdles for prosecutors to go after white-collar crimes.
An early draft of one bill in the House Judiciary Committee’s package of reforms would raise the legal threshold needed to prove a person committed a white-collar offense. In most instances today, a person cannot claim he didn’t know what he was doing was illegal. But the House’s proposal would require government to “prove that the defendant knew, or had reason to believe, the conduct was unlawful.”

“The House language violates the basic precept that ‘ignorance of the law is no defense,’” Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, told the Huffington Post. “There is absolutely no reason for the otherwise laudable criminal justice reform bill to contain any measure to weaken already feeble standards for corporate criminal prosecution.”

the anti-regulation Koch brothers have been doing what they’re paid to do—issuing papers urging Congress to toughen the requirements to get a white-collar conviction.

John Malcolm, Heritage Foundation’s judicial and legal studies director, wrote this fall. “However, if somebody or some en y unwittingly does something that results in harm, say, to the environment or to another person, there is no reason why it cannot be dealt with (even harshly) through the administrative or civil justice systems. This would help to remedy the problem and compensate victims without saddling morally blameless individuals and en ies for life with a criminal conviction.”

Making it harder for prosecutors to obtain convictions by changing the standard of proof required for governmental action is a strategy seen in many right-wing political fights. That tactic was exactly how the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act—they changed and raised the standard of proof that would justify federal intervention in new state laws curbing voting rights.

It “would create confusion and needless litigation, and significantly weaken, often unintentionally, countless federal statutes,” including “those that play an important role in protecting the public welfare... protecting consumers from unsafe food and medicine,” Carr said.

That is exactly the goal of the Heritage Foundation and the Charles Koch Ins ute.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/it-suddenly-makes-lot-sense-why-koch-brothers-got-so-interested-criminal-justice?akid=13678.187590.wD01YV&rd=1&src=newslett er1046053&t=2

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A Wealthy Governor and His Friends Are Remaking Illinois

Last year, the families helped elect as governor Bruce Rauner, a Griffin friend and former private equity executive from the Chicago suburbs, who estimates his own fortune at more than $500 million. Now they are rallying behind Mr. Rauner’s agenda: to cut spending and overhaul the state’s pension system, impose term limits and weaken public employee unions.

The rich families remaking Illinois are among a small group around the country who have channeled their extraordinary wealth into political power, taking advantage of regulatory, legal and cultural shifts that have carved new paths for infusing money into campaigns. Economic winners in an age of rising inequality, operating largely out of public view, they are reshaping government with fortunes so large as to defy the ordinary financial scale of politics. In the 2016 presidential race, a New York Times analysis found last month, just 158 families had provided nearly half of the early campaign money.

Many of those giving, like Mr. Griffin, come from the world of finance, an industry that has yielded more of the new political wealth than any other. The Florida-based leveraged-buyout pioneer John Childs, the private equity investor Sam Zell and Paul Singer, a prominent New York hedge fund manager, all helped elect Mr. Rauner, as did Richard Uihlein, a conservative businessman from the Chicago suburbs.

Most of them lean Republican; some are Democrats. But to a remarkable degree, their philosophies are becoming part of a widely adopted blueprint for public officials around the country: Critical of the power of unions, many are also determined to reduce spending and taxation, and are skeptical of government-led efforts to mitigate the growing gap between the rich and everyone else.

“There was never so much money behind these efforts,”

It’s about social insurance, the social compact — who’s responsible for whom?”

“They’re not what you would call the traditional corporate world,” said William M. Daley, a Chicago hedge fund executive and former chief of staff to President Obama, who served on Mr. Rauner’s transition team. “They come with a very political and philosophical bent.”

Mr. Daley added, “I think they believe philosophically in that business mentality and that strong public unions are a root of all evil in governing places like Illinois or Chicago and New York and California.”

Freed of the restraints, supporters of Mr. Rauner poured millions more into his campaign, breaking state records. About half of the $65 million he spent through last year’s election came from himself and nine other individuals, families or companies they control. Mr. Quinn, the in bent, spent about $32 million, with many unions making mid-six-figure contributions.

“He didn’t have to play by the same rules as other candidates,” said Bill Hyers, the chief strategist to Mr. Quinn. “He just kept on spending.”

On the last day of December, shortly before inauguration, Mr. Rauner, Mr. Griffin and Mr. Uihlein poured an additional $20 million into Mr. Rauner’s campaign committee. The money was intended to help Mr. Rauner beat back union pressure on state lawmakers during the legislative session ahead.

All told, the Griffin family’s contributions to Mr. Rauner through the end of 2014 came to $13.6 million — more than the combined sum donated to Mr. Quinn by 244 labor unions.

an increase in the state’s minimum wage, something Mr. Rauner had told a candidate forum he was “adamantly, adamantly against raising.”

Another urged lawmakers to amend the Illinois Cons ution to allow a millionaires-only income tax increase, something Mr. Rauner had campaigned against.

Only by disempowering the unions and making the state more hospitable to business, they have argued, can revenue grow fast enough to fix its financial problems.

“I’ve been one who thought he misread his mandate,” said David Yepsen, the director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Ins ute. “People were ready for a change, but the emphasis on attacking the labor movement, that really poisoned the water here.”

The unexpected rift between Mr. Rauner and his cons uents echoes a greater divide between the political views of the very wealthy and those of the broader public, one that has taken on new significance as the rich invest more time and money in politics.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/30...uner.html?_r=0

Destroy the unions, destroy their pension contracts, etc, etc. Rauner and his friends essentially bought themselves Illinois as plaything.

America's 99% is ed by the 1%/BigCorp/VRWC, and is un able.

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totally ed TX extremist racist Repugs appear to be losing in challenging the Cons ution to suppress voters and rig elelctions.

U.S. justices question Texas 'one person, one vote' challenge

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday appeared skeptical toward a conservative challenge to the method Texas uses to draw state legislative districts in a case that could diminish the clout of Hispanic voters and boost the power of rural, often Republican voters.

During oral arguments in the case, a clear majority of the nine justices did not indicate how exactly the court will rule.

The plaintiffs, Texans Sue Evenwel and Edward Pfenninger, contend that the current process for counting voters, based not on the number of eligible voters but rather on total population, violates the long-established legal principle of "one person, one vote" endorsed by the Supreme Court in the 1960s.

At issue is whether state legislative districts should contain the same number of people or whether they instead should contain the same number of eligible voters.

It was unclear how conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often casts the deciding vote in close cases, would vote. Both he and conservative Chief Justice John Roberts questioned whether states could bridge the gap between using total population and the number of eligible voters when drawing districts.

The court’s liberals appeared eager to keep the existing system, with several questioning whether drawing districts based on eligible voters as the challengers argue would lead to non-voting residents getting proportionally less representation in the legislature.

Counting everyone and not just eligible voters magnifies the electoral influence of places, typically urban, with sizable populations of people ineligible to vote, including legal and illegal immigrants as well as children. Hispanic advocates say a broad win for the challengers would reduce Hispanic influence in elections and boost the power of rural, often Republican voters.

Hispanic U.S. voters tend to vote Democratic.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...e=domesticNews

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Defense Contractors Laud Themselves for Steering Candidates Toward Militarism

A group formed this year by executives and lobbyists for the defense contracting industry is taking credit for “driving the national debate on foreign policy during the 2016 presidential election,” and in particular for getting Republican presidential candidates to call for escalating military action in Syria.

In an email to supporters over the weekend, Mike Rogers, the founder of Americans for Peace, Prosperity, and Security, hailed the group for “pushing candidates on national security.”

He illustrated the group’s impact with “highlights from many of our Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire forums showcasing the candidates’ views on defeating ISIS.”As we’ve previously reported, APPS was formed by current and former officials from Raytheon, BAE Systems, SAIC, and other major defense contractors. Lobbyists who represent the defense industry are also involved. Rogers, the former House Intelligence Committee chairman who retired from Congress last year, also represents private clients, though he has refused to disclose them.

To “help elect a president who supports American engagement and a strong foreign policy,” the group spends money on public events in primary states and encourages presidential candidates to take hawkish positions.

https://theintercept.com/2015/12/11/...rd-militarism/

Like grifter pastors "saving souls for Christ", America's wars are above all a business, shifting taxpayer $Ts to the MIC and its investors.

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Report: Sheldon "Gollum" Adelson Behind Secret Purchase Of Nevada's Largest Paper




http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...+%28TPMNews%29

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Repugs providing evidence beyond a doubt that they are as pro-corruption as they are anti-woman

Political Dark Money Just Got Darker

As untold millions of dollars pour into the shadowy campaign troughs of the presidential candidates, voters need to be reminded of the rosy assumptions of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that legitimized the new spending frenzy.

In allowing unlimited spending on candidates by corporations and unions, the court’s decision, in 2010, blithely pronounced, “A campaign finance system that pairs corporate independent expenditures with effective disclosure has not existed before today.”

In the new budget bill, Republicans inserted a provision

blocking the Internal Revenue Service from creating rules to curb the growing abuse of the tax law by thinly veiled political machines posing as “social welfare” organizations.

These groups are financed by rich special-interest donors who do not have to reveal their iden ies under the tax law. So much for effective disclosure at the I.R.S.

In another move to keep the public blindfolded about who is writing big corporate checks for federal candidates, the

Republicans barred the Securities and Exchange Commission from finalizing rules requiring corporations to disclose their campaign spending to investors.

It was Citizens United that foolishly envisioned a world in which:

“Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”

In acting to seal that pocket and hobble the I.R.S., congressional Republicans are advancing what has become the dark age of plutocratic money in campaign spending. At every turn, they are veiling the truth about the special-interest ties they have with rich donors shopping for favors. Since the Citizens United decision in January 2010, politicians have collected more than $500 million in dark money from phantom donors,

For two years, President Obama has dithered and withheld the one blow he could easily strike for greater political transparency: the signing of an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose their campaign spending.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/12/26...ot-darker.html

Repugs are the most serious threat to America. America is ed and un able.

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Donald Trump’s Run Has Spooked Billionaires — So Now One Has an Insane Plan to Rig the Election System

One of those people is billionaire T. Boone Pickens, who has thrown money at Jeb Bush and other Republican candidates only to see them wither in the face of the Trump onslaught. This is not the return on investment that Pickens was looking for, so he’s written a LinkedIn post or blog or whatever laying out his “big idea” for making sure that in the future we don’t just allow any old person to run for president: a bipartisan committee that will pre-approve acceptable candidates for the presidency:

Certainly we can do better than what we’re doing. We now have a presidential election process that penalizes success and accomplishment and rewards those without battle scars from business or politics.You don’t have a record of achievement? Well, then the media shies from tough scrutiny.

My big idea for 2016 is to put together a bipartisan screening committee that vets presidential candidates like we do anyone else applying for a job and recommends the best candidates possible. We have people running for president now who don’t even have experience running a lemonade stand.

http://www.alternet.org/donald-trump...lection-system

The govt isn't a (profit-making) business so successful business experience is irrelevant.

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The Most Chilling Political Appointment That You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Unless you’re unusually familiar with libertarian legal activists (or you are a Republican presidential candidate) you probably have never heard the name “Clint Bolick.” But Mr. Bolick has spent the last quarter century working — at times quite successfully — to make the law more friendly to anti-government conservatives. Thanks to an appointment, announced Wednesday by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), Bolick will now bring this agenda to his state’s supreme court.

For people who care about the rights of workers in the workplace, this should be a chilling development, not just because of what incoming Justice Bolick is likely to say in his opinions, but because of what his appointment portends if Republicans have the opportunity to make appointments to the federal bench and, ultimately, the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 1991, Bolick co-founded the Ins ute for Justice (IJ), possibly the most savvy anti-government litigation shop in the country. One of IJ’s core strategies is to find genuinely sympathetic plaintiffswho are harmed by economic regulations that sound ridiculous on their face, and then use them as vehicles to push sweeping changes to legal doctrine that mirror limits on state power repudiated during the New Deal. As Bolick notes in his not-so-subtly named book Death Grip: Loosening the Law’s Stranglehold over Economic Liberty, one of his early cases involved a businessman who tried to start a cab company that served a low-income neighborhood, but then got tripped up by licensing regulations that are hard to defend as good policy.

Yet these sympathetic plaintiffs are often cat’s paws for a much more sweeping agenda seeking to invalidate much of American law. In Death Grip (which, it’s worth noting, Bolick published after leaving IJ), the incoming justice praises the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Lochner v. New York, a 1905 case that is often taught in law schools as an example of how judges should never behave. “Lochner,” Bolick writes, “is a celebration of freedom of enterprise and freedom of contract, and a repudiation of government paternalism and excessive regulation. It reflects a careful and proper balancing of freedom and the state’s power.”

Lochner struck down a New York state law limiting bakery workers’ hours to 10 hours a day — prior to that law, the average workday was 13 to 14 hours, and some bakers worked even longer hours.

The majority opinion in Lochner claimed that the Cons ution protects an implicit “right of contract between the employer and employes [sic],” and thus there are strict limits on the state’s power to enact laws regulating the workplace. If a worker agrees to work 16 hour days in a sweltering basement bakery, that is their “right,” under Lochner, regardless of whether they had the bargaining power to seek better working conditions. Later decisions relied on Lochner‘s so-called right to contract to strike down minimum wage laws and laws protecting the right to organize.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/201...ever-heard-of/

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Repugs doing the dirty work for BigCorp by screwing citizens, just like they were hired, elected by BigCorp to do.

from a Public Citizen email:

Delivering big favors for Big Business is apparently how House Speaker Paul Ryan rings in the New Year.

This week, the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on bills that are a direct attack on the public’s power to combat predatory corporations.

Don’t let Congress weaken consumer rights.

Tell your representative to VOTE NO on H.R. 1927 and H.R. 712.

Both bills are a high priority for lobbyists seeking to radically expand corporate power and undermine the rights of the American people.

The Fairness in Class Action Litigation and Furthering Asbestos Claim Transparency Act (H.R. 1927) is a mashup of two extremely dangerous policies.

The first part of the bill would impose new limitations on class actions to eviscerate their effectiveness for challenging corporate wrongdoing.

The second part could stall compensation that asbestos poisoning victims might receive to offset medical or funeral expenses. It also would invade these victims’ privacy by publicizing claim amounts and waste funds meant to compensate victims on pointless additional paperwork.

The Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act (H.R. 712), meanwhile, is an attempt by right-wing lawmakers to block organizations like Public Citizen from spurring foot-dragging federal agencies into action.

When federal agencies miss congressionally mandated deadlines for releasing new health and safety regulations, Public Citizen or another organization can file a lawsuit to help push the agency to do the work it is required by law to do.

Agencies typically settle these suits simply by proceeding with the regulation. But H.R. 712 would add additional delays to our already delay-ridden regulatory system — where rules can sometimes take 10 or even 20 years to complete!

Congress should focus on addressing the real issues that the American people care about instead of pushing these bogus policies that are so beloved by the likes of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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Wall Street Journal Says $19,000 a Year Is Adequate Middle-Class Retirement Income

The right-wing war on Social Security increases.

in a Wall Street journal column by Andrew Biggs, an economist at the American Enterprise Ins ute and former Deputy Commissioner of the Social Security Administration under President George W. Bush.

Biggs looks at some recent evidence, most notably a new study from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and dismisses the idea that there is a retirement crisis. At the center of this assertion is the CBO projection that a typical household in the middle quintile, born in 1960, can expect to get $19,000 a year from Social Security. Biggs sees this $19,000 as replacing 56 percent of pre-retirement income and says this is not far from the 70-80 percent usually viewed as adequate. He then touts data on total retirement savings and pronounces everything as okay.

If we step back from replacement rates, we can ask a rhetorical question, is $19,000 a year a middle class income? Odds are that most people would not consider $19,000 a reasonable income for a middle class household, hence the basis for the claim about a retirement crisis. Biggs does point to the record amount of retirement savings. This is indeed good news for those who have these savings, but unfortunately most middle class households don't fall into this category.

According to the Federal Reserve Board's 2013 Survey of Consumer Finance, the average net worth outside of housing equity for the middle quintile of households between the ages of 55 and 64 was less than $55,000. This includes all IRAs, 401(k)s and other retirement accounts. This will translate into roughly $3,000 a year in additional retirement income, bringing this middle income household's income up to $22,000 a year.

Biggs looks at this and says everything is just fine and we should be looking to cut Social Security.

Those raising concerns about a retirement crisis do not see $22,000 a year as a middle class income. We are just arguing about adjectives here, there is not much disagreement on the situation.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/wall...ter1048519&t=8

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Now in the Republican privatizing crosshairs: Air traffic control

From schools to prisons to parking meters, the horror stories are hurting services, cutting jobs, and failing to deliver the cost savings the privatizers always promise. Now,as a new Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization comes up at the end of March, congressional Republicans have the air traffic control system in their crosshairs. Seriously, the system that keeps you safe when you fly. The largest and safest system of its kind in the world.

At issue—besides your general privatization fever—is the Federal Aviation Administration being slow to deliver NextGen, a satellite-based air traffic control system to replace the existing radar system. It’s true! The FAA has been slow. But could this have something to do with it?

First, in 2011, the authorization for FAA programs lapsed for two weeks due to a fight over the Essential Air Service program. [...] In the end, Congress would enact 23 short-term extensions before finally passing the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012.

Second, in 2013, the budget deal known as the sequester—which forced automatic spending cuts to programs that receive money from the general fund of the U.S. Treasury—disrupted aviation manufacturing, construction, aircraft registry and certification, and some aspects of safety oversight.

It’s a classic Republican strategy to break the government and then advocate for cutting or privatizing said government because it’s broken, so no surprises there.

And what about the funding for this big new NextGen system? According to Kevin DeGood at the Center for American Progress:

Privatization represents a bold attempt by the aviation industry to carve out operations and procurement activities along with most or all of AATF funding, while dumping responsibility for remaining FAA functions onto taxpayers. [...] In short, privatization would provide the aviation industry with the operational control it wants while also offloading a major funding responsibility.

Surprised? Don’t be.

The airlines, which would substantially control the new Air Navigation Service Provider, don’t intend to pay for this. They intend for us to pay for it even though they’ll control it and reap the benefits.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...28Daily+Kos%29

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How Republicans Convinced White America That Government Was Out to Get Them

They howl about the overreach of the federal government, but they are among the biggest beneficiaries of government programs. For 150 years, their brand of logic has pitted individuals against an activist government, Western cowboys against black Americans, and the West against the East. Behind their protest is a uniquely American story that welds racism to anti-government sentiment. It comes from a peculiar coincidence of timing: that Reconstruction after the Civil War coincided with U.S. expansion into the American West.

Real “patriots,” the Bundys claim, stand against a behemoth government that has grasped their lands and their rights. America, after all, is made by ambitious individuals working their way up. A government that promotes social welfare or regulates business destroys the American system because it both limits a man’s ability to make money and requires tax revenue. Those taxes strike at the very heart of individualism because they redistribute money from hard workers to lazy people.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-an...s-out-get-them

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How Illinois’ millionaire GOP governor plans to bust Chicago’s largest teacher union



iLlinois Republicans, led by multi-millionaire Governor Bruce Rauner, are pushing a state takeover of Chicago’s public school system.The Chicago Tribune reported that “Republican legislative leaders on Wednesday proposed a state takeover of Chicago Public Schools [CPS] and permitting the troubled district to declare bankruptcy to get its finances in order”. According to the paper, officials describe the drastic move as a “lifeline”.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has presided over the closure of numerous schools that were mostly in black and brown neighborhoods. However, he opposes Rauner’s plan. A spokesperson for Emanuel said, “The mayor is 100 percent opposed to Gov Rauner’s ‘plan’ to drive CPS bankrupt. If the governor was serious about helping Chicago students, he should start by proposing – and passing – a budget that fully funds education and treats CPS students like every other child in the state.”

Rauner has vowed to take on the city’s teachers union in his effort to seize control of CPS, which is grappling with a $1 billion budget deficit. Currently, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is negotiating a new contract with the city, and Rauner hopes to damage CTU in the process. Last year the governor accused CTU of having “dictatorial powers” over such negotiations.

Chicago Public Schools, the fourth largest in the country, serves nearly 400,000 students.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/how-...e+Raw+Story%29

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Kocktopus news

The Kochs' secret agenda not so secret anymore as even local media starts investigating

A Western Carolina University professor with ties to the ultra-conservative Koch brothers political network worked behind the scenes with outside donors to devise a coordinated strategy that would influence the hiring of professors and use WCU to further conservative economic theory in society, according to a review of university email communications.

"lf things do go the faculty's way with these hires, then WCU would be poised to emerge as a powerhouse of student development and research in the areas of economic freedom and free market policy analysis," wrote Dr. Ed Lopez, an economics professor, in an email to the Koch Foundation in July.

At the time, Lopez was laying the groundwork for a $2 million gift from the Koch Foundation. In exchange, the Koch Foundation could advance its own mission of cultivating "a pipeline of students" trained in free enterprise theory and seeing free-enterprise "thought-leaders," Lopez wrote in the email. […]

[S]trategy communications between Lopez and the Koch Foundation—obtained through a public records request by The Smoky Mountain News—suggest part of Lopez's goal is to stack the economics department faculty with professors who support conservative economic theory. Lopez described what he called "the hiring possibilities and my proposed strategy for successfully navigating them" in the planning do ent sent to the Koch Foundation in July.

The goal is clearly not just Lopez's. He's the puppet for the Koch brothers and this is just one example of the network the Kochs have created throughout universities in the country loosely based on the Nazi model for indoctrinating the next generations of leaders.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/0...28Daily+Kos%29

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Trade groups to top corporations: Resist political disclosure

U.S. Chamber and allies say transparency efforts 'used to attack companies'

Three of the nation’s leading trade associations have a message for their member corporations: Resist activists who demand you disclose more details about your politicking than the law requires.

“The strategy of pressuring companies to voluntarily disclose the details of their spending on public policy engagement for the purpose of reducing that engagement is, in fact, their ultimate goal,” wrote U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue, Business Roundtable President John Engler and National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons in a letter dated Oct. 13 and obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

They added: “As these activists continue efforts to silence the business community’s voice, we will continue to engage on your behalf.”

The trade association leaders reserved particular criticism for the Center for Political Accountability and the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, which in early Octoberpublished an annual index ranking large companies on their political disclosure practices and policies.

Companies earn points on more than two-dozen measures, such as revealing money spent to influence state-level ballot initiatives and voluntarily disclosing contributions to politically active trade associations and other nonprofit groups.

Such politically active nonprofit groups — including the U.S. Chamber itself — sometimes directly advocate for and against political candidates and may spend into the millions of dollars to do so.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/...eid=3b8f64cce8

Corporate-Americans want to keep their dirty spending secret as they spend $Bs to buy politicians and disenfranchise Human-Americans.

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The Conservative Playbook for Keeping ‘Dark Money’ Dark

In internal memos, groups opposing tighter state campaign finance rules coach their local supporters on how to battle disclosure of political donors.

How do you stop states and cities from forcing more disclosure of so-called dark money in politics? Get the debate to focus on an “average Joe,” not a wealthy person.

Find examples of “inconsequential donation amounts.” Point out that naming donors would be a threat to “innocents,” including their children, families and co-workers.

And never call it dark money. “Private giving” sounds better.


These and other suggestions appear in internal do ents from conservative groups that are coaching activists to fight state legislation that would impose more transparency on the secretive nonprofit groups reshaping U.S. campaign finance.

The do ents obtained by ProPublica were prepared by the State Policy Network, which helps conservative think tanks in 50 states supply legislators with research friendly to their causes, and the Conservative Action Project (CAP), a Washington policy group founded by Edwin Meese, a Reagan-era attorney general.

Dark money is the term for funds that flow into politics from nonprofit groups, which can accept donations of any size but, unlike political action committees, are not required by federal law to reveal the iden ies of their donors. The anonymity has been upheld by courts that cite as precedent a 1958 Supreme Court ruling that the state of Alabama could not demand that the NAACP turn over a list of its members.

Since 2008, dark money groups have spent more than $690 million in federal races, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A single group aligned with Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio helped buoy his standing in Iowa before Monday’s caucuses with $1.3 million in ads.

The same story is playing out on the state level. During the 2014 election cycle, 40 nonprofits spent $25 million on TV ads about state races, according to an analysis by theCenter for Public Integrity. That represented 3 percent of total ad buys, almost double the proportion that dark money paid for in 2010.

This year, 38 states are considering bills relating to disclosure, according to a database compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. Some have already adopted rules. In 2014, California began requiring nonprofits that engage in campaign activity to live by many of the same disclosure regulations as traditional political committees. Montana decided last year that politically active nonprofits would have to disclose donors, and report any electioneering communications within 60 days of votes being cast.

A memo distributed by CAP in January to conservative activists highlighted new disclosure rules being considered in Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington, as well as ethics bills in South Carolina and Texas that contain disclosure provisions.

Groups that are throwing their resources behind stricter campaign finance regulation include Common Cause, which has offices in 36 states, and the Democracy Alliance, an invitation-only organization composed of wealthy liberal donors. According to CAP, though, the initiatives to require disclosure not only pose a threat to free speech but also to the very existence of the nonprofits.



A flyer distributed to members of the State Policy Network, which helps conservative think tanks in 50 states supply legislators with research friendly to their causes.

“This well-coordinated, well-funded effort to require conservative nonprofits like yours to divulge the names and addresses of your donors is all part of a plan to choke off our air supply of funding,” the group said in the memo.

The memo was signed by many leading voices on the political right, including anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist; top officials at Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group backed by the Koch brothers political network; the Family Research Council; the Council for National Policy; and Heritage Action for America. It describes conservatives as “a persecuted class” and compares labeling private donations “dark money” to calling private ballots “dark voting.”

The State Policy Network, which on its website calls pro-regulation activists "enemies of debate," distributed its do ents at a conference held last fall in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The material includes a map of cities and states considering measures to “force disclosure of charitable giving” and a set of “questions that help people see the consequences of public disclosure.” Among them: “Do you think the government should be able to take down names and addresses of Americans and who they donate to? Do you think people should be targeted for expressing their opinions?”

The organization also urges its supporters to choose the right phrases to color the debate, shunning terms such as “activist,” “anonymous” or “dark money” in favor of “private giving,” “censor” and “silencing dissent.” Under the header “Framing the Issue,” a man is pictured with tape over his mouth.

Other do ents give conservative activists tips on where to look for “efforts to stifle free speech,” for example in bills that deal with corruption or ethics, or that define electoral activity. “More than a dozen states have considered or passed legislation that changes the definition of electioneering communications to include the everyday activity of non-profit groups, like issuing a non-partisan voter guide,” one briefing says.

Meredith Turney, a spokeswoman for the State Policy Network, said in an interview that along with the materials provided to members, the organization is alerting nonprofits regardless of political orientation that the proposals would interfere with privacy and free speech.

“These laws will impact groups from Planned Parenthood to The Heritage Foundation and start-up movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter,” Turney said.

Arizona Democratic state senator Martin Quezada, who has been pushing dark money disclosure legislation since last year, said his goal is to let voters know which special interests might have influence over a candidate.

“My bill in no way limits anyone’s free speech. It doesn’t say they can’t spend that money. They’re free to spend that money all they want. It only requires that if you’re going to spend that money, you have to tell us who you are,” Quezada said.

The CAP memo also warns activists to snuff out a burgeoning alliance in some states between liberal groups seeking more disclosure and Tea Party-like conservatives who often oppose the Republican establishment. “The Left has turned the transparency concept on its head to dupe conservative legislators and well-meaning Tea Party groups to help advance their initiatives,” the memo said, citing a 2014 Tallahassee voter campaign finance initiative that capped contributions in city races at $250 and established an ethics office.

“Transparency is for government,” the group reminded conservative activists. “Privacy is for people.”

Dan Backer, a lawyer who signed the CAP memo, said the group’s organizing should be a warning to advocates of stricter campaign finance rules that his side will use “a variety of means” including litigation to preserve the privacy of donors.

Backer helped bring the 2014 McCutcheon case in which the U.S. Supreme Court removed aggregate limits on direct contributions, which along with the 2010 Citizens United decision set the stage for a new flood of money into politics.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-conservative-playbook-for-keeping-dark-money-dark

Of course! It's a conspiracy, VRWC aka "movement conservatism", nothing but the ancient capital versus labor

[boutons_deux]

Peter Thiel’s Revenge Campaign Is a Wakeup Call

The multibillionaire is spending a fortune to destroy Gawker in court. It will be catastrophic to democracy if he gets away with it.

This week, the world learned of Thiel’s latest expensive, crazy idea: destroying Gawker Media. As Forbes first reported, Thiel secretly bankrolled a lawsuit against Gawker Media brought by the wrestler Hulk Hogan, spending a reported $10 million on his plot, in addition to the funding of other lawsuits.

(In 2012, Gawker posted an excerpt of a homemade sex tape featuring Hogan—who from 2005 to 2007 starred in a reality TV series called Hogan Knows Best that portrayed him as a devoted family man—in flagrante with a woman who was not his wife.)

The lawsuit has been successful: In March, a jury handed down a $140.1 million verdict that will bankrupt Gawker Media if it stands.

On Wednesday, a Florida judge upheld that verdict.

And on Thursday, multiple outlets reported that Gawker Media founder Nick Denton may be seeking to sell the company—though it’s unlikely that anyone would want to buy the company before the Hogan suit is ultimately resolved.

What made Thiel so upset with Gawker Media? In 2007, the Gawker Media siteValleywag ran a story reporting that Thiel “is totally gay, people.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/05/peter_thiel_wants_to_destroy_gawker_it_will_be_cat astrophic_if_he_does.html

Combined with the militarized, unrestrained police/NatSec state, a compliant judiciary, billionaires, I expect, will follow Thiel's example to use their $Bs to intimidate, to death, any media they don't like.

How is theb stopped? It's not stoppable. Americans, America, America's long-dead democracy are ed and un able.

[boutons_deux]

Business Makes Senate Push

U.S. Chamber of Commerce hopes to keep the GOP from losing control of the Senate in November

By KRISTINA PETERSON

May 30, 2016 7:27 p.m. ETWASHINGTON—The country’s biggest business lobby will launch an initiative Tuesday to deploy influential Republicans to raise funds for tight Senate races, hoping to keep the GOP from losing control of the chamber in November.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/business...ushpmg00000003


...BigCorp wants to keep those Citizen-United decisions coming, and continue strict obstructionism

[boutons_deux]

The far-right’s 50-year project to transform American values with a clandestine ‘counterrevolution’

Since the 1970s, presidential candidates running under the Republican ticket have successively shifted further and further to the political right. How many times have we heard—or said—that George W. Bush made Richard Nixon look like a liberal?

The rightward political shift is no accident. Since the end of World War II, far-right conservatives and libertarians have patiently laid the groundwork for a national climate receptive to their ideals of weak government and a strong corporate presence.

In the 1950s, a time when Congress had recently made affordable housing the law of the land, when expansion of Social Security and creation of federally-funded health care were on the table, and when unionized workers made up a third of the U.S. workforce, the conservative agenda appeared moribund.

Yet just beneath the surface of a seemingly ever-expanding social welfare state, far-right conservatives and libertarians were strategizing what some of them called a “50-year project” to take the country back.

Initially coined by conservative intellectual Frank Chodorov in 1950 to describe the effort to uproot “socialism” from college campuses, the “50-year project” moniker became a far-right conservative mantra describing the effort to undo what Chodorov called “the socialization of the American character”—that is, New Deal-era laws and regulations that prioritized the welfare of consumers and workers.

Mid-century Milwaukee foundry owner William Grede is emblematic. Before the Koch brothers, William Grede was among a core of far-right economic conservatives around the country who sought, in short, to Make America Great Again.

In a 1955 letter, Grede congratulated a fellow Milwaukee businessman on his efforts to promote among his employees the philosophy of far-right radio broadcaster Clarence Manion.

“As someone said to me recently,” Grede wrote, “ ‘The revolution of 1933 was possible only because of the revolution that took place among the so-called intelligentsia at the turn of the century.’ Our job is to start a revolution in the other direction, like that of the early 1900s and hope that in the next 50 years we can swing it back.”

Across the country, an array of wealthy business leaders and industrialists like Grede—who took national stage in numerous roles, including as president of the National Association of Manufacturers, director on the Chicago Federal Reserve and head of the YMCA—financially supported an array of far-right and libertarian endeavors.

Along with his peers, some of whom, like Fred C. Koch, joined him as founding members of the John Birch Society, Grede’s goal in funding far-right organizations was not to create a new political party but to turn the political winds slowly their way.

“There is nothing more autocratic than majority rule,” Grede asserted. “There are people in our country who would like to establish a true democracy—where majority rules. But majority rule would destroy our society of personalities and the dynamic spirit that has made us great.”

Grede and others like him sought to create a nation that reflected their beliefs. The tactics they used to do so were a forerunner of those employed today by those like Fred Koch’s sons.

They raised vast amounts of money for extreme conservative causes. They used public forums to win Americans’ hearts and minds. They utilized the media. And they specifically targeted impressionable young people.

When Manion sought to make the leap from radio to television, Dallas Bedford Lewis, the millionaire president of Lewis Food Company, which manufactured Skippy brand pet foods, was there to support him. From Texas, multi-millionaire oilman Haroldson Lafayette (H.L.) Hunt bankrolled a media operation, Facts Forum, which included a nationally distributed newspaper and television and radio broadcasts.

More than 600 radio stations and 50 television stations carried Facts Forum programs in the mid-1950s, with a regular listening and viewing audience of at least 5 million. Facts Forum encouraged its audience to form neighborhood discussion groups, and gave cash incentives to those writing letters to the editor of their local newspapers on Facts Forum topics, such as repealing the income tax.

Popular education outreach involved endeavors like the Colorado-based Freedom School, launched in 1957 by former radio host and anti-New Dealer Robert LeFevre. The school provided short-term courses steeped in economic conservatism, and business executives funded attendance by college students and middle managers. The school attracted deep-pocketed textile industrialist Michael Milliken, who rejected LeFevre’s $5,000 training fee in favor of a check for $100,000 (the equivalent of $850,768 today).

The Freedom School’s libertarian curriculum promoted opposition to all government, including publicly funded police, firefighters, schools, and even national defense. The Freedom School flew only its own flag—and not that of the United States.

Contemporary observers did not dismiss these individuals and movements and, in fact, pinpointed a trend toward far-right extremism they found deeply disturbing. Classifying 20 percent of the population as “radical right extremists” or “extreme conservatives,” the Anti-Defamation League in 1964 asserted that between 20 percent and 25 percent of the U.S. public strongly opposed such extremists, with “the remaining 50 percent or 55 percent of American citizens the prize to be won.”

The intervening social upheaval of the 1960s, LBJ’s Great Society and Barry Goldwater’s trouncing in the 1964 presidential elections seemingly confirmed the New Deal revolution and further muffled the voices of William Grede and his fellow travelers. But the far-right had laid the groundwork in the 1950s.

These progenitors of today’s far-right had the patience—and the foresight—to undertake the slow process involved in reorienting an American public away from its support of the programs and goals of the New Deal. They sought to create an environment in which a presidential candidate like Ted Cruz became a 2016 frontrunner with a platform promising to eliminate the IRS, the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

As journalist Thomas Stokes perceptively stated in 1948: “We went through a peaceful revolution in this country in 1933. We are now in the counterrevolution.”

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/the-far-rights-50-year-project-to-transform-american-values-with-a-clandestine-counterrevolution/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaig n=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story%29

The VRWC conspiracy is a synonym for Capital vs Labor. The VRWC is winning, ing America into un ability.

[boutons_deux]

ExxonMobil Top Sponsor at ALEC's Upcoming Annual Meeting

The agenda of the corporate-backed group includes discussion of a new “model” bill, designed to block implementation of the Obama administration Clean Power Plan

ExxonMobil, facing multiple state investigations connected to its funding of climate change denial, is listed as a top corporate sponsor of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annual meeting, taking place this week in Indianapolis, Indiana.

ALEC has long promoted climate change denial to state legislators, and promotes a legislative agenda of “model” bills designed to protect the interests of its oil, gas and coal funders.

The ALEC meeting agenda includes discussion of a new “model” bill, designed to block implementation of the Obama administration Clean Power Plan aimed at reducing carbon pollution.

Republican Vice-Presidential nominee, Mike Pence is due to speak at the ALEC event on Friday.

Exxon is represented on the ALEC corporate board, and has funded ALEC since as early as 1981, providing at least $1,730, 200 between 1998 and 2014 based on publicly available disclosures.

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/27/1229865...ixon-watergate

[boutons_deux]

Mike Pence Set To Strengthen Ties To ALEC And Corporate-Driven Education Reform






http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/07...rica+-+Blog%29

[boutons_deux]

Koch Brothers Move to Influence Congressional and State Races

Charles Koch, joined by at least 300 donors who had each committed at least $100,000 annually to the network, reportedly outlined plans to get those with similar political ideologies elected to office and to “cultivat[e] conservative leaders at the state level,”

“The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach,” explained Gold in another article. “Members of the coalition target different cons uencies but together have mounted attacks on the new health-care law, federal spending and environmental regulations.”

the Koch network is nevertheless on track to spend almost $750 million this election cycle, with about $250 million going to politics and the Koch groups that work on policy issues, including Americans for Prosperity and the Freedom Partners Action Fund.






https://rewire.news/article/2016/08/...l-state-races/

[boutons_deux]

Koch Brothers Are Behind a Plot to Open Up the Grand Canyon Watershed to Toxic Uranium Mining

calls are out to President Obama to make the “greater” Grand Canyon a national monument. This would encompass approximately 1.7 million acres of public lands surrounding the park.

Why? It is a response to potential encroachment on the gateway to the Grand Canyon.

Unsurprisingly, the issue at hand involves revenue, big power brokers, ramifications of Citizens United, and a familiar actor in the anti-environmental space—the Koch Brothers.

“These efforts are being driven by wealthy, ultra-conservative industrialists who are committed to rolling back over a century of land protections across the American West, including at the Grand Canyon.

Mining at the gateway of the Grand Canyon remains incredibly unpopular among Arizonans and Americans alike, but it’s not stopping these individuals from undermining our outdoor legacy.”

A poll of Arizona residents who expect to vote in November 2016 confirmed Zimmerman’s assertion of support for monument status.

The numbers showed that statewide, 80 percent favored the establishment of the Greater Grand Canyon National Heritage Monument.

When asked if a candidate’s stance on the issue would impact their choice, they answered in the affirmative by a “three times as likely” ratio.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/...uranium-mining