The Koch Whisperers: Big Brothers Buy in at Big Media (by Pam Martens)

[Octafish]

And now a word from our sponsor. No, not really.



Big Brothers Buy in at Big Media

The Koch Whisperers

by PAM MARTENS
A CounterPunch Special Report
September 12, 2011

When Larry Kudlow of CNBC, WABC Radio and National Review speaks, who’s really talking? Is it Kudlow or is it the $332,500 he has pocketed from the Koch-funded Mercatus Center. While Kudlow did previously acknowledge accepting $50,000 from Enron after he wrote an article about the company and failed to disclose it, he has not disclosed the Mercatus money to readers of his columns, blog or to viewers of his programs as he openly pitches the Mercatus/Koch agenda.

SNIP...

Now, according to tax records obtained through the assistance of www.GuideStar.org, Donors Capital sluiced over $130 million into the Kochtopi in 2008 and 2009, with massive sums going to fund “news bureaus” in dozens of states. (Apparently, as Brad Friedman exposed at Mother Jones recently, when Charles Koch stated at his secret Colorado bash in June of this year that the upcoming presidential campaign would be “the mother of all wars over the next 16 months,” he already had his boots on the ground in Donors Capital-funded newsrooms around the country.) Next to each notation of funding for a “news bureau” there frequently appears another line item that reads “for transparency project.” It takes an Orwellian brand of tartuffery to be running an ultra secretive slush fund and telling the IRS it’s for transparency projects.

SNIP...

A review of documents and tax records for the dizzying, interconnected web of corporate front groups, frequently created, supported and influenced by Charles or David Koch, shows just how dangerous these groups espousing free markets and liberty have become to a free society. The game plan is to devalue the rights of actual citizens by seeking human voices dangling from a corporate marionette string, that might be willing for the right amount of cash incentive to broadcast the Orwellian reverse-speak: liberty means more liberty for corporations (corporate serfdom for real citizens); freedom means corporate freedom to privatize national resources, pollute the environment and fleece the consumer with impunity; free market means the freedom to draw a dark curtain around how the corporations are actually screwing us and stealing our liberty.

SNIP...

The goal is to financially allure university professors to Koch’s distorted vision of market based management, free markets, and transparency. All the while, Koch Industries is a private, dark curtain corporation. Its own stock has never been subjected to price discovery in a free market; the public can’t get a peek at the financials of this firm; there is no means of determining how much debt is on the corporate balance sheet or if, as with AIG and Citigroup, we, the sheared sheep, might have to bail the corporation out some day to save some too-big-to-fail bank that holds its debt. When the firm purchased Georgia-Pacific, that company was immediately delisted from public, transparent trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Maybe it takes a juggernaut of think tanks, lobby groups and corporate tyrants in drag as citizen movements to disorient inquisitive media minds.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/12/the-koch-whisperers/

Please deliver us from buckrakers like John Stossel; a Supreme Court that equates money with democracy; and a government of, by and for the tax-dodging, filthy rich plutocrats.

[Liberal_Dog]

1. K & R

Citizens United must be reversed if this country is to have any hope at all.

[Octafish]

3. Koch Brothers play a big role in the Supreme Court of the United States

Group Requests DOJ To Investigate Scalia and Thomas Involvement With Koch Corporate Fundraisers

EXCERPT...

(Back in January), the good government advocacy group Common Cause filed a letter, citing ThinkProgress’ report, asking that the Justice Department investigate Scalia and Thomas for a potential conflict of interest in supporting the Citizens United decision while being involved with the Koch fundraisers. Common Cause is also requesting that the landmark case be reconsidered given the recent revelations. The letter refocuses attention on a series of investigations conducted by ThinkProgress about the Supreme Court’s right flank — Justices Samuel Alito, Thomas, and Scalia — and their relationship with the corporate right:

Gee. It's weird. After Weiner-gate, this sort of dropped off the media Corporate McPravda radar. Thankfully, you remember, Liberal_Dog!

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. Who would have guessed that the fourth estate has been corrupted?

Well, maybe I had an inkling.

Thx for the post, my friend.

So many Koch spawn out there doing their best to fuck their fellow countrymen...

[Octafish]

5. ''Never heard of 'em.'' -- Sixpack McPlumber

And that's the idea.

From Mother Jones, the antidote:

The Koch Brothers' Vast Right-Wing Media Conspiracy

Watched any conservative programs lately? Chances are, you've seen an oil-funded pundit.

—By Kate Sheppard
Mother Jones, Feb. 4, 2011

EXCERPT...

The Kochs' influence over the conservative media may be obvious at such powwows. But to the general public, it's not always apparent that the pundits they read about in blogs and see on TV have a direct relationship to the company. So says Derek Cressman, regional director of state operations with Common Cause, the group that organized the protests outside the Koch Bros gates. "They don't see that connection between the pundit and the fact that it's funded by an oil company," says Cressman. "The global warming deniers aren't being candid that their funding is coming from people with an enormous financial stake in how we deal with climate change."

Take, for example, Planet Gore, the denialist blog at National Review Online. Planet Gore, along with NRO's main blog, The Corner, regularly features guest posts by representatives of think-tanks and foundations that have benefited from the Koch's largesse. Prime examples include Chris Horner and Ian Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who have each posted hundreds of items on the site. NRO's blogs regularly promote the institute's work to undermine climate science, such as the lawsuit the group filed against NASA last fall for temperature records. CEI has received more than $700,000 in Koch funds over the years.

SNIP...

The Kochs' influence isn't limited to fringe media. Krauthammer has used his Washington Post column to blast the "Church of the Environment" that believes the global warming is real, and he has appeared on Fox News to discuss why any legislation addressing climate change is "dead on arrival."

The Wall Street Journal has regularly offered up its opinion pages to Cato's Michaels to bash climate scientists. The Weekly Standard, too, has provided a platform for Koch-backed organizations like the American Enterprise Institute to accuse scientists of being a "corrupt cabal of global warming alarmists."

CONTINUED...

http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/02/koch-brothers-media-beck-greenpeace

Thank you, HCE SuiGeneris. I very much appreciate you knowing who's who and what's what.

[Kingofalldems]

4. Kick and Recommend for their Teabagger useful idiots

[Octafish]

6. They certainly need it most to change into the full human beings everyone is capable of becoming.

Me, I wanted people who care to forward and distribute Pam Marten's article. It is packed with solid information, from the who's who to the what's what and details how much, where and when.

For instance:

Tax records obtained by Greenpeace show that Koch Foundations have given over $12 million to the Mercatus Center and its precursor organization, the Center for the Study of Market Processes, since 1986; over $13 million to Cato, since 1986; over $10 million to the Institute for Humane Studies. Citizens for a Sound Economy received at least $11 million from 1986 through 2002. Since 2005, Americans for Prosperity Foundation has received over $5 million from the Koch Foundations.

Foundations? Isn't that like a place to put tax-sheltered money to work or something?

[PA Democrat]

7. Koch's fake charitable donations illustrate far right agenda

[Octafish]

8. Great chart! That Mackinac Center for Public Policy has been a real curse on Michigan...

...They use the Great Lakes State as a test-bed for the crap that gets rolled out nationwide, for example:

Mackinac Center is part of 'well-funded network of conservative think tanks' waging war against unions

By Andrew Dodson | Booth Mid-Michigan
MotherJones
Published: Tuesday, April 26, 2011, 1:20 PM

MIDLAND — The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is part of an umbrella group with deep ties to the national conservative movement that is waging war against unions, according to Mother Jones, an independent magazine, rooted in liberal and progressive political ideals.

According to the article that printed this week, the State Policy Network aims to "back a constellation of state-level think tanks," loosely modeled after the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative policy research and analysis center, including the Mackinac Center.

"In Michigan, as Mother Jones previously reporterd, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, an SPN member, published a list of four policy recommendations that would give unelected "emergency managers" more power to go into municipalities and wipe out union contracts and fire local elected officials, all in the name of repairing broken budgets. All four ended up in Governor Rick Snyder's 'financial martial law,' as one GOP lawmaker described it. The bill was signed into law in March."

SNIP...

It later received death threats over the FOIA requests.

SOURCE: http://www.mlive.com/midland/index.ssf/2011/04/mother_jones_mackinac_center_is_part_of_well-funded_network_of_conservative_think_tanks_waging_war_a.html

Thanks, PA Democrat, for the heads-up on the Kochtopus!

[fascisthunter]

9. "Hotel Berlin" comes to mind