tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59319122710774641132024-03-05T04:14:28.173-07:00Examining Dark MoneyI am developing this blog to raise awareness of how dark money is damaging the US. It is based primarily on the books Dark Money by Jane Mayer and Kochland by Christopher Leonard. In summary: stealth fascism of the rich radical right is trying to take over our country, they have been making this effort long before Trump & will keep at it no matter what happens to him, they have made real progress towards their goal, and why they must be stopped...hope you keep reading!Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comBlogger54125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-24161929530539306482021-11-03T21:18:00.000-06:002021-11-03T21:18:44.193-06:00Pine Bend refinery: its secret source of profits But the Pine Bend refinery, as everyone called it, had a secret source of profits. And this source of profits could be traced to exactly the kind of government intervention that Hayek hated most. In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower capped the amount of oil that could be imported into the United States, in one of the federal government’s many ploys to protect domestic oil drillers. (Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-28470235136672252612021-11-02T14:36:00.000-06:002021-11-02T14:36:11.247-06:00Pine Bend refinery: its history and significance to Koch Industries The crown jewel, according to one former Koch Industries insider, was the Pine Bend Refinery, than called the Great Northern Oil Company, in Rosemont, Minnesota, not far from Minneapolis. In 1959, Fred Koch bought a one-third interest in the concern In 1969, two years after Charles Koch took the company's helm, Koch Industries acquired the majority share in the refinery. Charles later Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-74713661411209611642018-04-03T12:21:00.004-06:002021-11-02T14:23:49.193-06:00Creation of Americans for Prosperity (AFP); tax structure of the 501(c)(3)AFP foundation and the (c)(4)AFP advocacy group Like Citizens for a Sound Economy [CSE], the new group had several different divisions, with different tax structures. One wing of the new organization was the Americas for Prosperity Foundation, whose board members included both David Koch and Richard Fink. The foundation was a 501(c)(3) educational organization, so donations to it could be written off as tax deductible charitable gifts. But Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-91614448428980864192018-03-31T14:28:00.001-06:002018-03-31T14:28:20.515-06:00Citizens for Sound Economy, split in 2003 to form FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity; Richard Fink...at the end of 2003, internal rivalries caused Citizens for a Sound Economy to split apart. "The split was about control," recalled Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader from Texas who chaired the organization after leaving Congress. ... He believed the Kochs wanted to use the group "to push their business interests..." There was another factor...behind the split, Armey Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-44157980421138200312018-03-31T14:08:00.002-06:002018-03-31T14:08:53.649-06:00Citizen for Sound Economy (CSE), early success in defeating Clinton tax bills; misleading political advertising campaigns; Koch scare tacticsCSE's success [Citizens for a Sound Economy] in helping to kill Clinton's energy tax emboldened the group. Next, it went after his proposed tax increase on high earners. According to the Wall Street Journal, however, CSE's ads were deeply misleading, focusing on owners of car washes and other mom-and-pop small businesses, implying that the tax was aimed at the middle class when in fact it Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-91110721304332505762018-03-10T20:39:00.001-07:002018-03-10T20:39:06.302-07:00CSE defeat of high income tax proposal under Clinton; scare tactics in CSE adsCSE's success in helping to kill Clinton's energy tax emboldened the group. Next, it went after his proposed tax increase on high earners. According to the The Wall Street Journal, however, CSE's ads were deeply misleading, focusing on owners of car washes and other mom-and-pop small businesses, implying that the tax was aimed at the middle class when in fact it would affect only the wealthiest 4Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-48569912402095145752018-03-08T22:28:00.002-07:002018-03-08T22:28:14.443-07:00CSE role in killing Clinton 1993 energy tax; Dan Glickman's defeatBy the time Bill Clinton became president, Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) had become a prototype for the kinds of corporate-backed opposition campaigns that would proliferate after Obama was elected. In 1993, it wages a successful assault on Clinton's proposed tax on energy, which would have taxed fossil fuel use but exempted renewable energy sources. In a show of force, without revealing itsRick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-17058552991493114162018-03-07T22:00:00.001-07:002018-03-07T22:00:09.977-07:00Citizens for Sound Economy recruited major corporations as donors; anti-government goals; deceptive practicesAlthough the Kochs were the founders and early funders of the group, it soon served as a front for dozens of the country's largest corporations. Its headed denied that it was a rent-a-movement. But private records obtained by The Washington Post showed that a procession of large companies ranging from Exxon to Microsoft had made contributions to the organization after which it had mobilized Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-10420519462395906922018-03-06T22:00:00.004-07:002018-03-07T21:47:14.376-07:00CSE's 'boots on the ground' strategy: selling of ideas, not candidates; early history of CSEFred Koch's sons used the same playbook at Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). Libertarianism remained a lonely crusade, but CSE used corporate treasuries to market its spread and give it the aura of a mass movement. Its mission, according to one early participant, Matt Kibbe, "was to take these heavy ideas and translate them for mass America." Kibbe explained, "We read the same literature Obama Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-9683709844865852612018-03-06T21:42:00.001-07:002018-03-06T21:45:49.726-07:00Citizens for a Sound Economy; astroturf groups; essence of Kochs' deceptive strategy; Charles Koch..in 1984...set out to launch a private political sales force...called...Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE). It was in fact a kind of weapon...a fake populist movement secretly manufactured by corporate sponsors -- not grass roots, but "Astroturf". Unlike corporate lobbying or campaign spending, contributions to CSE could be kept hidden because it classified itself as a nonprofit "Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-53559739176864762172018-03-06T09:10:00.002-07:002021-11-02T14:17:00.132-06:00Kochs corruption of academia; Koch plan to mobilize public opinion; transformation of West Virginia University TechBut in the eyes of critics, the Kochs had not so much enriched as corrupted academia, sponsoring courses that would otherwise fail to meet the standards of legitimate scholarship. John David, an economics professor at West Virginia University Tech who witnessed the school's transformation, wrote in a scathing newspaper column that it had become clear that "entire academic areas at universities Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-21863183266922872018-03-01T21:45:00.000-07:002018-03-01T21:45:00.342-07:00Kochs influence on environmental quality; 2014 industrial accident at Charleston WV; Freedom Industries; Russel SobelAt West Virginia University, the Charles Koch Foundation's donation of $965,000 to create the Center for Free Enterprise came with some strings attached. The foundation required the school to give it a say over the professors it funded, in violation of traditional standards of academic independence. The Kochs' investment had an outsized impact in the small, poor state where coal, in which the Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-81198967950947138982018-03-01T07:26:00.001-07:002018-03-01T07:26:23.259-07:00Koch donations to universities; Brown University; Charles Koch Foundation; Ivy League 'beachhead'George Mason was the Kochs' largest libertarian academic project but far from the only one. By 2015, according to an internal list, the Charles Koch Foundation was subsidizing pro-business, antiregulatory, and antitax programs in 307 different institutions of higher education in America and had plans to expand into 18 or more. The schools ranged from cash-hungry West Virginia University to Brown Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-26005632331581628612018-02-28T22:52:00.001-07:002018-02-28T22:52:15.861-07:00Phil & Wendy Gramm; Mercatus Center; energy markets; George Mason UniversityBy the end of 2002, the Gramms had gone into semiretirement, but at the Mercatus Center the zeal to exempt enormously risky markets, including energy derivatives favored by Koch Industries, lived on. The consequences wouldn't become fully visible until the economic crash of 2008. By then, George Mason University was both the largest single recipient of Koch funds for higher education and the Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-32136566294265230342018-02-28T22:46:00.002-07:002018-02-28T22:46:17.082-07:00Enron; Wendy Gramm; Kenneth Lay; Mercatus CenterIn 2001, Enron collapsed in a heap of bogus financial statements and fraudulent accounting practices. But Wendy Gramm had pocketed up to $1.8 million from Enron the after arguing for the loophole. And it emerged that before going under, Enron had made substantial campaign contributions to Senator Gramm, while its chairman, Kenneth Lay, had given money to the Mercatus Center. (188)
Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-55741538538262314592018-02-26T15:57:00.004-07:002018-02-26T15:57:56.724-07:00Enron; Wendy Gramm; Mercatus Center Regulatory Studies Program; Enron LoopholeThe most fateful Mercatus Center hire might have been Wendy Gramm, an economist and director at the giant Texas energy company Enron who was the wife of Senator Phil Gramm, the powerful Texas Republican. In the mid-1990s, she became the head of Mercatus's Regulatory Studies Program. There, she pushed Congress to support what came to be known as the Enron Loophole, exempting the type of Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-70592547037195457952018-02-23T12:45:00.003-07:002018-02-23T12:45:46.681-07:00Koch ideological pipeline; Susan Dudley; Mercatus Center; Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment; ozone, positive effects ofIn 1997, for instance, the EPA moved to reduce surface ozone, a form of air pollution caused in part by emissions from oil refineries. Susan Dudley, an economist who became a top official at the Mercatus Center, came up with a novel criticism of the proposed rule. The EPA, she argued, had not taken into account that by blocking the sun, smog cut down on cases of skin cancer. She claimed that if Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-31029648739853193702018-02-23T12:24:00.001-07:002018-02-23T12:24:21.085-07:00Mercatus Center, as academic fraud that serves lobbying interests of Koch IndustriesBut Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas who specialized in environmental issues, argued that "Koch has been constantly in trouble with the EPA, and Mercatus has constantly hammered on the agency." One environmental lawyer who clashed repeatedly with the Mercatus Center dismissed it as a lobbying shop dressed up as a nonprofit, calling it "a means of laundering economic Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-64912795157953122522018-02-20T10:40:00.002-07:002018-02-20T10:40:15.860-07:00Koch plan for social change; Cato Institute; Institute for Humane Studies; Mercatus CenterWith Cato and the Institute for Humane Studies, the Kochs checked off the first item on Fink's shopping list for social change -- institutions that could hatch scholarly ideas in line with their own thinking. The Mercatus Center checked off the second item, a more practical organization aimed at promoting these ideas into action. Its location, just across the Potomac from the Capitol, was a bonusRick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-1229373760705464152018-02-20T10:26:00.001-07:002018-02-20T10:26:06.252-07:00Charles Koch management philosophy; Market-Based Management (MBM); Science of Success (book)Charles trademarked [his management philosophy] under the name Market-Based Management, or MBM, and later distilled into his book The Science of Success. In essence, Charles believed that businesses' corporate culture should replicate the competitiveness of the free market....Charles described MBM as a "holistic system" containing "five dimensions: vision, virtue and talents, knowledge Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-31341597545550429172018-02-19T21:20:00.002-07:002018-02-19T21:20:25.318-07:00Rich Fink; Mercatus Center; Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation; Koch Industries lobbying; overlap between for-profit and nonprofit organizations connected to Koch IndustriesThe many hats that Rich Fink wore only underscored critics' concerns. As he grew in importance to Charles Koch, Fink relinquished his formal role at the Mercatus Center, handling its stewardship off to a protege, and joined Koch Industries as its head of lobbying but remained on the university's prestigious Board of Visitors. He also was at one point the president of the Charles G. Koch Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-24436286354075142992018-02-19T21:06:00.003-07:002018-02-19T21:06:40.584-07:00George Mason University; Cato Institute; Julian Sanchez; Rob Stein; Koch influence on George Mason UniversityJulian Sanchez, a fellow at the Cato Institute, soon exalted George Mason as a "libertarian mecca," saying, "It may well be the most heavily libertarian-staffed institution of higher education in the country." Liberals, however, regarded the Kochs' singular influence over the school with suspicion. "It's ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington," said Rob Stein, the Democratic political Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-45046198774367049812018-02-19T20:51:00.005-07:002018-02-19T20:51:44.570-07:00George Mason University; James Buchanan; supply-side economics; libertarian bias against governmentGeorge Mason's economics department, meanwhile, became a hotbed of controversial theories that began to transform Americans' tax bills, serving as an incubator for the supply-side tax cuts in the Reagan administration that hugely advantaged the rich. Paul Craig Roberts, an adjunct professor at GMU, drafted a precursor to the first supply-side tax cut bill of the Reagan era, which was introduced Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-15177768519648516652018-02-19T20:27:00.002-07:002018-02-19T20:27:58.012-07:00Institute for Humane Studies; F.A. "Baldy" Harper; Charles Koch demands students ideological conformity Sharing a building with the Mercatus Center was the heavily Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies, chaired by Charles Koch. The IHS was founded by F.A. "Baldy" Harper, a free-market fundamentalist who had been a trustee at the Freedom School, where he had written essays for The Freeman, calling taxes "theft", welfare "immoral", and labor unions "slavery" and opposing court-ordered remedies to Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931912271077464113.post-68560146366581732542018-02-03T22:40:00.000-07:002018-02-03T22:40:00.070-07:00academic programs funded by Kochs; Mercatus Center; Richard Fink strategy; George Mason UniversityIn the mid-1980s, as called for in the first phase of Fink's plan, the Kochs also began to establish an academic beachhead of their own. Their particular focus was on George Mason University, a little-known campus of Virginia's prestigious higher-education system, located in the Washington suburbs...By 1981, Fink had moved his Austrian economics program there from Rutgers, eventually naming it Rick Caseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06694311455476678959noreply@blogger.com