In the latest edition of the New Yorker, investigative reporter Jane Mayer, looks at the corporate money dedicated to bringing down President Obama. Much of that money comes from the billionaire Koch brothers, and channeled through Americans For Prosperity.
David Koch, in case you need to know, is a very right wing "libertarian" who appears to be of the sort who believes that if he does it, even if it hurts others, he has a right to do it. He and his brother seem to use money to enforce that belief.
Lately he's been spending, too, on social status. In fact, Mayer's article opens with a description of his gifts to the American Ballet Theater and his appearance at a gala (Caroline Kennedy, co-hostess) in New York's Metropolitan Opera House. Honorary chair, Michelle Obama was not there that night, presumably avoiding being seen with Koch who is "part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular."
The Koch brothers are oil people whose corporation Greenpeace has called "the kingpin of climate science denial." So right off the bat you know these are really nice folks, dedicated to the betterment of the world. But at the center of Mayer's report is a description of the relationship between the Koch brothers and that "independent, grass-roots" Tea Party through the Tea Party's guardian angel, Americans For Prosperity.
The Tea Party spends a lot of time and plenty of jaw action trying to maintain their veneer as a home-grown, grass roots organization. It wouldn't surprise me at all if a significant percentage of the poor dopes really believe that they remain "grass roots."
Jane Mayer effectively kills that persistent lie. It's not often that Koch will turn up at even a major Tea Party event like the one that took place in Texas a month or so ago. He may not have been there in person, but in a convivial moment, Peggy Venable, who organized the event and who is a salaried employee of Americans for Prosperity, let the cat out of the bag.
Americans For Prosperity was founded by David Koch in 2004. It has ties to salubrious people like Jack Abramoff because he was good, it is said, at grass-roots organizing.
One ex-insider at the Cato Institute talked to Mayer about the Koch brothers commitment.
Whatever its size, the Kochs’ political involvement has been intense; a former employee of the Cato Institute told me that Americans for Prosperity “was micromanaged by the Kochs.” And the brothers’ investment may well have paid off: Americans for Prosperity, in concert with the family’s other organizations, has been instrumental in disrupting the Obama Presidency.
So the Austin event was an Americans For Prosperity event. They said so themselves.
Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”
In April, 2009, Melissa Cohlmia, a company spokesperson, denied that the Kochs had direct links to the Tea Party, saying that Americans for Prosperity is “an independent organization and Koch companies do not in any way direct their activities.” Later, she issued a statement: “No funding has been provided by Koch companies, the Koch foundations, or Charles Koch or David Koch specifically to support the tea parties.” David Koch told New York, “I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me.”
At the lectern in Austin, however, Venable—a longtime political operative who draws a salary from Americans for Prosperity, and who has worked for Koch-funded political groups since 1994—spoke less warily. “We love what the Tea Parties are doing, because that’s how we’re going to take back America!” she declared, as the crowd cheered. In a subsequent interview, she described herself as an early member of the movement, joking, “I was part of the Tea Party before it was cool!” She explained that the role of Americans for Prosperity was to help “educate” Tea Party activists on policy details, and to give them “next-step training” after their rallies, so that their political energy could be channelled “more effectively.” And she noted that Americans for Prosperity had provided Tea Party activists with lists of elected officials to target. She said of the Kochs, “They’re certainly our people. David’s the chairman of our board. I’ve certainly met with them, and I’m very appreciative of what they do.”
Venable honored several Tea Party “citizen leaders” at the summit. The Texas branch of Americans for Prosperity gave its Blogger of the Year Award to a young woman named Sibyl West. On June 14th, West, writing on her site, described Obama as the “cokehead in chief.” In an online thread, West speculated that the President was exhibiting symptoms of “demonic possession (aka schizophrenia, etc.).” The summit featured several paid speakers, including Janine Turner, the actress best known for her role on the television series “Northern Exposure.” She declared, “They don’t want our children to know about their rights. They don’t want our children to know about a God!”
The Kochs really detest Obama. The fact that they have work below the radar, despite the money and their rabid dislike of anything to the left of Genghis, means that the full import of what they're doing with their billions hasn't hit most of us yet.
But Obama has noticed.
Recently, President Obama took aim at the Kochs’ political network. Speaking at a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser, in Austin, he warned supporters that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Citizens United case—which struck down laws prohibiting direct corporate spending on campaigns—had made it even easier for big companies to hide behind “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity.” Obama said, “They don’t have to say who, exactly, Americans for Prosperity are. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation”—or even, he added, “a big oil company.”
One sad, dangerous delusion to be found in genuinely grass-roots members of the Tea Party is that they own their movement. They don't know -- or don't want to know -- that they are acting on behalf not of their own interests but on behalf of the corporate interests of an oil company. It might matter to them that they've been bought out and, worse, are wasting their votes on a big lie. But apparently tea partiers have never bothered to read the actual tea leaves.
The Kochs don't make it easy.
Don't miss Mayer's full report.The Kochs have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them. They have been content to operate what David Koch has called “the largest company that you’ve never heard of.”
