Lee Fang, in a cross-post of a TP exclusive.
Last October, ThinkProgress helped break the story about the secretive twice annual meetings convened by Koch Industries owners Charles and David Koch. The meetings “” which have been attended by top bankers, oil industry executives, two Supreme Court justices, Republican leaders, conservative fundraisers, and hate talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck “” have been forums for election-related coordination and political strategy. In addition to judges, “journalists” like Tim Carney, Stephen Moore, and Michael Barone have attended the meetings and received funding from the Koch donors. The next event is this weekend in Rancho Mirage, California.
Earlier today, the National Review reported that Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) will address the meeting on Republican legislative strategy.
Notably, Cantor has taken an active role in Republican efforts to defund financial reform “” specifically the new regulations designed to oversee the trillion-dollar derivatives market (Koch Industries speculates on a number of commodities using complex derivatives, and other Koch attendee members represent hedge funds and other financial industries opposed to new Dodd-Frank regulations). ThinkProgress has exclusively obtained further details about the Koch meeting this weekend:
- At last year’s Koch fundraiser, Charles Koch promised to match every dollar committed by attendees. He raised $30 million dollars at the Aspen meeting in 2010, and hopes to do better this year, again matching every dollar raised with one of his own.
- The Koch meeting this year expects a larger group of donors, with 40% of the attendees as first time participants.
- Several key Republican donors who have attended in the past will again be in Rancho Mirage this weekend. Billionaire Diane Hendricks, of the country’s largest roofing and window supply company, and Richard DeVos, founder of the “direct selling” business Amway and owner of the Orlando Magic basketball team, will be in attendance. According to documents obtained by ThinkProgress, DeVos gave $250,000 to FreedomWorks in 2009 as the group was organizing the very first anti-Obama Tea Party rallies.
- Several longtime Koch lobbyists will be giving presentations this weekend. Alan Cobb, a Koch Industries lobbyist who now helps run Koch’s front group Americans for Prosperity, will lead a discussion along with officials from the Koch-funded academic institute at George Mason University, “the Mercatus Center.” After Koch fronts helped elect President Bush, academics from Mercatus successfully recommended, according to the Wall Street Journal, the majority of the Bush administration’s deregulation policies, particularly on environmental issues. In addition, longtime Republican pundit and Koch lobbyist Nancy Pfotenhauer will be presenting. Pfotenhauer, who is currently working as a “Koch spokeswoman,” planted a hit-piece against the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer after her story about the Koch brothers last year.
- Officials from the neoconservative consulting firm Orion Strategies will give a presentation this weekend. Weekly Standard contributor and Orion Strategies vice president Michael Goldfarb will be there.
The Politico reported this morning that, at the Koch meeting in January of 2009, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) debated Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) over whether to support ideologically pure Republican candidates or “electable” moderates. According to a source familiar with the panel, DeMint won over the “establishment crowd” of wealthy donors with his argument to support far right candidates, presumably ones like Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), and Sharron Angle.
Notably, the strategy of bringing together wealthy business leaders to fund efforts to push both the country and the Republican Party to the far right was pioneered by Fred Koch, the founder of Koch Industries and the father of David and Charles Koch. Fred worked to recruit Barry Goldwater to run for president in 1960, paving the way for him to win the nomination in 1964, and was a founding financier of the John Birch Society.
– Lee Fang, in a ThinkProgress cross-post.
Related Post:
- Koch Industries outspends Exxon Mobil on climate and clean energy disinformation
- From promoting acid rain to climate denial “” over 20 years of David Koch’s polluter front groups
- What we’re up against: Polluter-funded Tea Party climate zombie astroturfing
- Must-see video: Polluter-funded Smithsonian exhibit whitewashes danger of human-caused climate change
- Tea party pollutocrat David Koch denies climate change, shrugs off his carbon pollution
- Pollutocrat Kochs sue: Claim that Koch Industries believes in global warming damaged our reputation
- Rolling Stone names 12 politicians and executives blocking progress on global warming
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Economist magazine’s online debate/vote which has developed essentially into a pro/anti renewables debate is one of the most high profile in recent times. IT TAKES 5 SECONDS TO VOTE. Please do so!
http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/193
The Koch gathering is a essentially a collection of gangsters, intent on hijacking democracy in order to increase the pauperization of middle America in the service of their further wealth accumulation. Promoting tar sands oil use and fighting climate legislation will lead to ecological disaster, threatening our grandchildren’s survival. Koch and their friends don’t care, since the amount of money in their bank accounts is the only thing that governs their actions. This would be pitiful were it not so destructive.
Friends and I will be protesting this event in person, wearing skeleton masks and carrying signs. It’s time that the horror of the whole Far Right program is communicated to America.
Oh, for a well placed bug…
Think Progress shouldn’t stop at writing summaries of their findings. I want Think Progress to publish the raw data — I repeat, the raw data — they have that pertain to the upcoming Koch-led meeting. Document scans, voice recordings, whatever is at hand.
SwiftHack had a huge impact — it was a raw data dump. The Wikileaks cable dump had a huge impact — it was a raw data dump. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to kickstart a ‘Kochgate’ scandal whose impact surpasses Watergate, Climategate, and Cablegate combined together. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Think Progress to establish itself as an influential source of information which the big players such as CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN shall listen to. It can be done — if there is a raw data dump.
Will Think Progress take the chance, right here, right now? If not now, when?
– frank
I’d be *very* wary of doing what Frank suggests, since I’d expect that the Koch folks aren’t dumb, and will, after their fall unveiling (link), have figured out that the way to find the leak is to make small “fingerprint” changes to whatever they send out to their private group.
Be careful, folks; protect your sources.
Koch brothers may be unaware they embody all that is wrong. Or maybe they do know, and that’s why they have to hold rallies to push their issue.
The biggest insult I can hurl to the Kochs is that they are stupid. Yes they are wealthy, but stupid. And their unethical promotion of deliberate ignorance is dangerous to much of the world.
As conservatives, what are they are trying to conserve? – personal wealth? Stupid, since wealth melts before extinction. Or do they intend to ignore the real physical consequences of their business?
Is it their power? Again that is painfully short-term thinking about the real concequences of their actions. What good is power if you have lost your world?
Maybe it’s ‘freedom’ – but promoting freedom at the expense of life is not fair and not acceptable. This promotes his own freedom and declares war on the future of others.
If they want no government interference in business – then we can only point to the massive failure of business to self-regulate. Their delusional power-show is promoting sociopathic anarchy.
My friends, we are on The Road to Oligarchy.
Agreed, data dump needed!
NAME the judges please. They must be forced to recuse themselves in certain cases.
What is a hit-piece?
Anna:
I don’t believe that all the information made available to Think Progress can be straightforwardly traced to a particular source. (As for the remaining stuff, I’m guessing there are ways to work around any ‘fingerprinting’ techniques, though it’s definitely good to proceed carefuly.)
In any case, there’s no doubt in my mind that the material must get published sooner or later — preferably sooner — because all I see now is a load of useless unverifiable hearsay.
– frank
In 1964 a prominent Republican spoke at the National Convention. His comments were not received well. He was heckled and booed. He warned of an extremist element that was attempting to subvert the party. Here is some of what Nelson Rockefeller had to say:
“”The Republican party is in real danger of subversion by a radical, well-financed and highly disciplined minority.”
At that time I pointed out that the purpose of this minority were “wholly alien to the sound and honest conservatism that has firmly based the Republican party in the best of a century’s traditions, wholly alien to the sound and honest Republican liberalism that has kept the party abreast of human needs in a changing world, wholly alien to the broad middle course that accommodates the mainstream of Republican principles.”
Our sole concern must be the future well-being of America, and of freedom and respect for human dignity – the preservation and enhancement of these principles upon which this nation has achieved its greatness.
During this year, I have criss-crossed this nation fighting for those principles, fighting to keep the Republican party of all the people – and warning of the extremist threat, its danger to the party and its danger to the nation.
The methods of these extremist elements I have experienced at first hand.
Their tactics have ranged from cancellation by coercion of a speaking engagement before a college audience to outright threats of personal violence.
These things have no place in America, but I can personally testify to their existence. And so can countless others who have also experienced:
Anonymous midnight and early-morning telephone calls.
Unsigned threatening letters.
Smear and hate literature.
Strong arm and “goon” tactics.
Bomb threats and bombing.
Infiltration and take-over of established political organizations by Communist and Nazi methods.
These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror. They have no program for America – no program for the Republican party. They have no solution for our problems of chronic unemployment, of education of agriculture, or racial injustice or strife.
These extremists have no plan and no program to keep the peace and bring freedom to the world.
On the contrary – they spread distrust. They engender suspicion. They encourage disunity. And they operate from the dark shadows of secrecy.
They have called President Eisenhower “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.”
They have labeled a great Republican Secretary of State, the late John Foster Dulles, “a Communist agent.”
They have demanded that the United States get out of the United Nations and that the United Nations get out of the United States.
There is no place in this Republican party for such hawkers of hate, such purveyors of prejudice, such fabricators of fear, whether Communist, Ku Klux Klan or Bircher.
There is no place in this Republican party for those who would infiltrate its ranks, distort its aims, and convert it into a cloak of apparent respectability for a dangerous extremism.
And make no mistake about it – the hidden members of the John Birch Society and others like them are out to do just that!
These people have nothing in common with Republicanism.
These people have nothing in common with Americans.
The Republican party must repudiate these people.”
Rockefeller was right, the extremists were successful, and 1964 was the year the Republican’s publically and officially walked away from the principles of Lincoln.
So what are you going to do about the Koch? They are like the weather, everybody talks about them but nobody does anything.
Joe, I posted about Mercatus Center but it seems to have been lost? Some interesting links were in there.
Californians to protest against Koch brothers in Rancho Mirage
Also effective would be public outreach in New York City about local institutions (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim, Museum of Natural History, etc.) accepting Koch money affecting local politics essentially the same what Phillip Morris did for big tobacco.
Publc money and good will are crucial to the validity of these nonprofit public institutions despite Koch’s deep pockets.