How Soon Before The Koch Brothers Are In A Position To Buy Cheri Bustos The Speakership?

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with an old friend, an author who had recently interviewed David Koch for a book he's working on. He told me the Koch brothers planned to support Democrats as well as Republicans this cycle. We went back and forth about that and then let it drift. Then, on Friday the news started filtering out that the Kochs are indeed looking to gain influence inside the Democratic Party, the way they have inside the Republican Party.

The Kochs are willing to finance Democrats "in step with Koch policies?" Don't be deceived by the Koch affinity for DREAMers. That isn't what "in step with Koch policies" is about. About a week ago, in an unrelated story, Common Dreams published a piece by Jake Johnson about what the Koch agenda is and has always been: pushing a polluter-friendly agenda... their business bottom line. "The Koch network's dark money manipulation of our nation's colleges and universities," wrote Johnson, "has been proven to harm communities of color, dismantle protections for workers, and obstruct environmental protections... George Washington University's ostensibly neutral Regulatory Studies Center is in fact a "key cog" in the Koch family's fight to slash government regulations designed to protect workers and the planet... [T]he Regulatory Studies Center (RSC) 'is the Fox News of the regulatory policy world, except it still clings to the fiction that it is fair and balanced. The center is a microcosm of the strategy that Charles Koch has honed since the 1970s to finance deceptively named university centers to generate faux scholarship in support of Koch's anti-regulatory views.'... [M]uch of RSC's work revolves around providing 'scholarly rationales against government regulation' of corporate America, with a particular focus on the fossil fuel industry--where Koch Industries makes much of its profits while financing campaigns to spread doubt about the reality and urgency of the climate crisis."

Translate that into politics and what you will have is millions in right-wing sewer dollars flowing right into the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the Blue Dogs and New Dems-- to finance a take-over of the party by elements that are already largely in calling the shots. And what a coincidence that reactionary Blue Dog Cheri Bustos, the moment she seized control of the DCCC, immediately undermined the ability of progressives to challenge reactionaries like herself, reactionaries likely to be the beneficiaries of filthy Koch campaign largesse. Believe me, the Koch brothers are more interested in stopping candidates like AOC than they are in helping DREAMers.

These are some of the headlines I caught on Friday and Saturday about the Koch brothers new "bipartisan" approach to taking over the American political system entirely:

TIME: Coming Soon to a Democratic Primary: Candidates Backed By Charles Koch

Politico: Koch Network Floats Backing Democrats In Revamp Of Influence Operation

Open Secrets: Koch Brothers Float Possibility Of Backing Congressional Democrats In 2020 Primaries

National Review: Koch Network Willing To Back Dem. Candidates In 2020

Jack Crowe, writing up the story for National Review reported that "Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the political arm of the billionaire Koch brothers’ sprawling influence network, which has traditionally confined its support to Republicans, plans to pursue a 'bipartisan approach' when determining which candidates to back in the 2020 election cycle. In a memo distributed to employees Thursday and obtained by CNBC, AFP CEO Emily Seidel announced that the group will evaluate candidates entirely based on their support for its preferred policies without respect to party affiliation. 'AFP or AFP Action [the group’s super PAC] will be ready to engage contested U.S. Senate, U.S. House, and state-level primary races, including Republican, Democrat, Independent or otherwise, to support sitting legislators who lead by uniting with others to pass principled policy and get good things done,' Seidel’s memo said."

The Kochs are creating 4 new PACs with 4 policy agendas. One, for example, is the Economic Opportunity PAC, which will back candidates opposed to increased regulation on business. OK, who inside the Democratic Party would happily sell their asses for opposing increased regulation on business? That is, after all, a perfect description of the New Dems, including notorious corporate whores like Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL), Pete Aguilar (CA-- who also runs Bustos' DCCC recruitment committee), Derek Kilmer (WA), Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Scott Peters (CA), Charlie Crist (FL), Henry Cuellar (TX), Brad Schneider (IL), Ami Bera (CA), Jim Cooper (TN), Ron Kind (WI), Tom O'Halleran (AZ), Kurt Schrader (OR), Tony Cárdenas (CA), Denny Heck (WA), David Scott (GA), Jim Costa (CA), Ed Case (HI), Gregory Meeks (NY)...

A little warning to low-IQ right-wing Democrats from, of all places, Politico: "But North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat, was an early test case for the Koch’s bipartisan approach to election spending during the general 2018 elections: After she voted in favor of a bill relaxing some financial regulations in the Dodd-Frank law, the network ran digital advertisements in Heitkamp’s favor. It later decided to eschew supporting Heitkamp’s Republican opponent in the race, then-Rep. Kevin Cramer, saying he was insufficiently supportive of Koch priorities like free trade-- saving Heitkamp from artillery in the form of what could have been millions of dollars worth of television ads and other election spending." The Kochs had already spent around $500,000 beating up on Heitkamp for not supporting Trump's tax cuts for the rich-- and in North Dakota $500,000 buys an immense amount of propaganda. and it was far more than the crumbs the Koch network sent Heitkamp's way in return for the anti-regulatory votes that soured progressives on her.

The Koch Industries PAC spent 1,464,000 on congressional Republicans and $24,500 on congressional Democrats. To get a better idea of where Koch money is likely to flow this cycle, look at who they helped finance last cycle-- all extremely right-wing Democrats who vote with the GOP frequently and who were not being targeted by the NRCC:

• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)- $2,000
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- $7,500
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $10,000
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog- OR)- $5,000

Kara Eastman, an Omaha grassroots progressive is in a primary with an establishment shill recruited by the DCCC. Kara has been very firm about not accepting corporate PAC money and came within a couple of points of beating GOP incumbent Don Bacon in 2018-- 126,715 (51%) to 121,770 (49%)-- beating him outright in Douglas County. The last thing the Koch brothers want to see is a Democrat winning a House seat in Nebraska-- and the last thing Cheri Bustos wants is a progressive winning in Nebraska-- or anywhere else. "Rejecting corporate PAC money is not enough for a candidate," Kara told us last night. "We have to stop allowing large corporations and the very wealthy to have such influence in all levels of electoral politics. In my last race, I raised more money than any other Democrat had raised in this district and did it from small dollar contributions. I also pledged that I would represent the people of Nebraska-- not the corporations who do not need my voice. It’s time to change this corrupt system and it starts with candidates like me."

Kathy Ellis is running for a congressional seat in southeast Missouri, the 8th district, the 11th poorest district in America. People should be voting overwhelmingly for Democrats but instead, it's the reddest district in the state. Obama lost badly there both times he ran and in 2016 Trump beat Hillary 75.4% to 21.0%. Ellis has seen the Koch brothers come in and buy up the Republican Party in districts like hers. This morning she warned us that "no self-respecting Democrat, either a progressive or otherwise, should make a deal with the Koch brothers. This is just another way to infiltrate our Democratic values with poison.

Jon Hoadley, candidate for Congress in MI-06, is in the Michigan legislature, so he's already seen the kind of damage the Koch network does. "The Koch brothers and their network unleashed untold harm on our political system," he said. "In an effort to protect their own narrow business interests, their sponsored candidates and shadowy nonprofits weakened laws meant to protect the voices of individual voters against the influence of wealthy and powerful special interests. The Kochs have assaulted the basic institutions and important norms that reinforce stability in our democracy. This is exactly why people don’t trust their elected officials. I call on every candidate asking to earn the public’s trust-- Republicans and especially Democrats-- to reject contributions from the Koch brothers."

Why Are Conservatives Willing To Watch The Planet Destruct? Fear And Cash/Cash And Fear

Over the weekend, NY Times reporters Coral Davenport and Eric Lipton traced a metamorphosis inside the upper echelons of the Republican Party. They looked at how GOP dogma went from dealing rationally with Climate Change to obstinate science denialism formerly only embraced by complete crackpots like House Science Committee chairman Lamar Smith of Texas. The are good reasons why the crazy far right fringe was the first part of the GOP to embrace Trump and Trumpism. Lamar Smith, in fact, was the very first Republican in Congress top contribute money to Trump's campaign.

Start by looking at the 30 second spot from McCain's 2008 presidential campaign up top. No, that wasn't put together by Al Gore. That's a mainstream Republican's view of Climate Change less than a decade ago. Today Trumpanzee is widely viewed as an existential threat to the future of the planet. "It is difficult," they wrote, "to reconcile the Republican Party of 2008 with the party of 2017, whose leader, President Trump, has called global warming a hoax, reversed environmental policies that Mr. McCain advocated on his run for the White House, and this past week announced that he would take the nation out of the Paris climate accord, which was to bind the globe in an effort to halt the planet’s warming. The Republican Party’s fast journey from debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist is a story of big political money, Democratic hubris in the Obama years and a partisan chasm that grew over nine years like a crack in the Antarctic shelf, favoring extreme positions and uncompromising rhetoric over cooperation and conciliation."

Not sure what "Democratic hubris" they're talking about but I think NY Times policy is... "both sides"-- even if it can't be backed up-- and there's no more talk of "Democratic hubris" is the article. They quote GOP strategist and Rubio campaign consultant Whit Ayres: "Most Republicans still do not regard climate change as a hoax. But the entire climate change debate has now been caught up in the broader polarization of American politics. In some ways it’s become yet another of the long list of litmus test issues that determine whether or not you’re a good Republican." Maybe they meant Republican hubris.

Since Mr. McCain ran for president on climate credentials that were stronger than his opponent Barack Obama’s, the scientific evidence linking greenhouse gases from fossil fuels to the dangerous warming of the planet has grown stronger. Scientists have for the first time drawn concrete links between the planet’s warming atmosphere and changes that affect Americans’ daily lives and pocketbooks, from tidal flooding in Miami to prolonged water shortages in the Southwest to decreasing snow cover at ski resorts.

That scientific consensus was enough to pull virtually all of the major nations along. Conservative-leaning governments in Britain, France, Germany and Japan all signed on to successive climate change agreements.

Yet when Mr. Trump pulled the United States from the Paris accord, the Senate majority leader, the speaker of the House and every member of the elected Republican leadership were united in their praise.

Paul Ryan's reaction is likely to further erode his own shaky political support back in his Wisconsin congressional district. After Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord, Ryan said "The Paris climate agreement was simply a raw deal for America. Signed by President Obama without Senate ratification, it would have driven up the cost of energy, hitting middle-class and low-income Americans the hardest. In order to unleash the power of the American economy, our government must encourage production of American energy. I commend President Trump for fulfilling his commitment to the American people and withdrawing from this bad deal."

His likely opponent in 2018, iron worker and union activist Randy Bryce sees it differently. He told us "Ryan was once again showing that his loyalty is not to the overwhelming majority of hard working people whose very lives depend on a livable environment, but, to the highest bidders who fund his elections. By withdrawing from the Paris Accord, the U.S. now stands against the overwhelming majority of nations on the planet as well. We now stand on the same side as Nicaragua and Syria. (one of those two we reward with bombs) On the other side of the issue stands the rest of the world. Civilized nations have evolved as a result of lessons learned. We have protections in place so that the citizenry is protected by unscrupulous corporations who profit from pillaging our natural resources at the expense of our neighbors’ health. It’s bad enough to sell us out. It’s another thing entirely to hide from us in #WI01. Paul Ryan has plenty of time to jetset from fundraiser to fundraiser, but, has been absent from actually meeting with constituents for more than 600 days. Paul Ryan, after November of 2018, you will no longer need to hide. We will reward you with an extended vacation. It will be the only thing that you have 'earned' since you took office."

Follow the money

Those divisions did not happen by themselves. Republican lawmakers were moved along by a campaign carefully crafted by fossil fuel industry players, most notably Charles D. and David H. Koch, the Kansas-based billionaires who run a chain of refineries (which can process 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day) as well as a subsidiary that owns or operates 4,000 miles of pipelines that move crude oil.

Government rules intended to slow climate change are “making people’s lives worse rather than better,” Charles Koch explained in a rare interview last year with Fortune, arguing that despite the costs, these efforts would make “very little difference in the future on what the temperature or the weather will be.”

Republican leadership has also been dominated by lawmakers whose constituents were genuinely threatened by policies that would raise the cost of burning fossil fuels, especially coal. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, always sensitive to the coal fields in his state, rose through the ranks to become majority leader. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming also climbed into leadership, then the chairmanship of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, as a champion of his coal state.

Mr. Trump has staffed his White House and cabinet with officials who have denied, or at least questioned, the existence of global warming. And he has adopted the Koch language, almost to the word. On Thursday, as Mr. Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal, he at once claimed that the Paris accord would cost the nation millions of jobs and that it would do next to nothing for the climate.

Beyond the White House, Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman of the House Science Committee, held a hearing this spring aimed at debunking climate science, calling the global scientific consensus “exaggerations, personal agendas and questionable predictions.”

A small core of Republican lawmakers-- most of whom are from swing districts and are at risk of losing their seats next year-- are taking modest steps like introducing a nonbinding resolution in the House in March urging Congress to accept the risks presented by climate change.

Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), for example, isn't on the same page as Trump on Climate Change denialism. ""With forty percent of Florida’s population at risk from sea-level rise, my state is on the front lines of climate change. South Florida residents are already beginning to feel the effects of climate change in their daily lives-- from chronic flooding to coral bleaching to threats to our freshwater supply in the Everglades.  We cannot ignore these challenges and every Member of Congress has a responsibility to our constituents and future generations to support market-based solutions, investments, and innovations that could alleviate the effects of climate change and make our nation more resilient." The only Florida Republicans who joined him in the Climate Solutions Caucus are Miami Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who's retiring next year and Brian Mast, from a purple district with a habit of ditching conservative Republicans for conservative Democrats every few years. But, as Davenport and Lipton pointed out, "in Republican political circles, speaking out on the issue, let alone pushing climate policy, is politically dangerous. So for the most part, these moderate Republicans are biding their time, until it once again becomes safe for Republicans to talk more forcefully about climate change. The question is how long that will take." For now, the Koch Brothers completely control the Climate agenda of the Republican Party. They have a pledge Republicans are forced to sign to get Koch cash: "I will oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue." First on board was far right extremist loon Jim Jordan (R-OH).

Conservative activists saw the [2009 cap-and-trade] legislative effort as an opportunity to transform the climate debate.

With the help of a small army of oil-industry-funded academics like Wei-Hock Soon of Harvard Smithsonian and think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, they had been working to discredit academics and government climate change scientists. The lawyer and conservative activist Chris Horner, whose legal clients have included the coal industry, gathered documents through the Freedom of Information Act to try to embarrass and further undermine the climate change research.

Myron Ebell, a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, worked behind the scenes to make sure Republican offices in Congress knew about Mr. Horner’s work-- although at the time, many viewed Mr. Ebell skeptically, as an extremist pushing out-of-touch views... As Congress moved toward actually passing climate change legislation, a fringe issue had become a part of the political mainstream.

“That was the turning point,” Mr. Horner said.

The House passed the cap-and-trade bill by seven votes, but it went nowhere in the Senate-- Mr. Obama’s first major legislative defeat.

Unshackled by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and other related rulings, which ended corporate campaign finance restrictions, Koch Industries and Americans for Prosperity started an all-fronts campaign with television advertising, social media and cross-country events aimed at electing lawmakers who would ensure that the fossil fuel industry would not have to worry about new pollution regulations.

Their first target: unseating Democratic lawmakers such as Representatives Rick Boucher and Tom Perriello of Virginia, who had voted for the House cap-and-trade bill, and replacing them with Republicans who were seen as more in step with struggling Appalachia, and who pledged never to push climate change measures.

But Americans for Prosperity also wanted to send a message to Republicans.

Until 2010, some Republicans ran ads in House and Senate races showing their support for green energy.

“After that, it disappeared from Republican ads,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity. “Part of that was the polling, and part of it was the visceral example of what happened to their colleagues who had done that.”

What happened was clear. Republicans who asserted support for climate change legislation or the seriousness of the climate threat saw their money dry up or, worse, a primary challenger arise.

“It told Republicans that we were serious,” Mr. Phillips said, “that we would spend some serious money against them.”

By the time Election Day 2010 arrived, 165 congressional members and candidates had signed Americans for Prosperity’s “No Climate Tax” pledge.

Most were victorious.

“The midterm election was a clear rejection of policies like the cap-and-trade energy taxes that threaten our still-fragile economy,” said James Valvo, then Americans for Prosperity’s government affairs director, in a statement issued the day after the November 2010 election. Eighty-three of the 92 new members of Congress had signed the pledge.

Even for congressional veterans, that message was not missed. Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who once called climate change “a serious problem” and co-sponsored a bill to promote energy-efficient light bulbs, tacked right after the 2010 elections as he battled to be chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee against Joe Barton, a Texan who mocked human-caused climate change.

Mr. Upton deleted references to climate change from his website. “If you look, the last year was the warmest year on record, the warmest decade on record. I accept that,” he offered that fall. “I do not say that it’s man-made.”

Mr. Upton, who has received more than $2 million in campaign donations from oil and gas companies and electric utilities over the course of his career, won the chairmanship and has coasted comfortably to re-election since.

Two years later, conservative “super PACs” took aim at Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, a senior Republican who publicly voiced climate concerns, backed the creation of a Midwestern cap-and-trade program and drove a Prius. After six Senate terms, Mr. Lugar lost his primary to a Tea Party challenger, Richard E. Mourdock. Although Mr. Lugar says other reasons contributed, he and his opponents say his public views on climate change played a crucial role.

“In my own campaign, there were people who felt strongly enough about my views on climate change to use it to help defeat me, and other Republicans are very sensitive to that possibility,” Mr. Lugar said in an interview. “So even if they privately believe we ought to do something about it, they’re reticent, especially with the Republican president taking the views he is now taking.”

After winning re-election in 2012, Mr. Obama understood his second-term agenda would have to rely on executive authority, not legislation that would go nowhere in the Republican-majority Congress. And climate change was the great unfinished business of his first term.

To finish it, he would deploy a rarely used provision in the Clean Air Act of 1970, which gave the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to issue regulations on carbon dioxide.

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” he declared in his 2013 State of the Union address.

The result was the Clean Power Plan, which would significantly cut planet-warming emissions by forcing the closing of hundreds of heavy-polluting coal-fired power plants.

The Koch Brothers lost their shit over it and even Republicans who had supported the climate change agenda began to defect. I haven't heard any of those Republicans so upset about Obama's executive orders going around Congress complaining about the most executive-order-addicted president in history going nuts using them now. Have you?

Starting in early 2014, the opponents of the rule-- including powerful lawyers and lobbyists representing many of America’s largest manufacturing and industrial interests-- regularly gathered in a large conference room at the national headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, overlooking the White House. They drafted a long-game legal strategy to undermine Mr. Obama’s climate regulations in a coordinated campaign that brought together 28 state attorneys general and major corporations to form an argument that they expected to eventually take to the Supreme Court.

They presented it not as an environmental fight but an economic one, against a government that was trying to vastly and illegally expand its authority.

“This is the most significant wholesale regulation of energy that the United States has ever seen, by any agency,” Roger R. Martella Jr., a former E.P.A. lawyer who then represented energy companies, said at a gathering of industry advocates, making an assertion that has not been tested.

Republican attorneys general gathered at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia in August 2015 for their annual summer retreat, with some special guests: four executives from Murray Energy, one of the nation’s largest coal mining companies.

Murray was struggling to avoid bankruptcy-- a fate that had befallen several other coal mining companies already, given the slump in demand for their product and the rise of natural gas, solar and wind energy.

The coal industry came to discuss a new part of the campaign to reverse the country’s course on climate change. Litigation was going to be needed, the industry executives and the Republican attorneys general agreed, to block the Obama administration’s climate agenda — at least until a new president could be elected.

West Virginia’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, led the session, “The Dangerous Consequences of the Clean Power Plan & Other E.P.A. Rules,” which included, according to the agenda, Scott Pruitt, then the attorney general of Oklahoma; Ken Paxton, Texas’ attorney general; and Geoffrey Barnes, a corporate lawyer for Murray, which had donated $250,000 to the Republican attorneys general political group.

That same day, Mr. Morrissey would step outside the hotel to announce that he and other attorneys general would sue in federal court to try to stop the Clean Power Plan, which he called “the most far-reaching energy regulation in this nation’s history, drawn up by radical bureaucrats.”

Mr. Pruitt quickly became a national point person for industry-backed groups and a magnet for millions of dollars of campaign contributions, as the fossil fuel lobby looked for a fresh face with conservative credentials and ties to the evangelical community.

“Pruitt was instrumental-- he and A.G. Morrisey,” said Thomas Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries, an adviser to Mr. Trump’s transition team and the president of a pro-fossil fuel Washington research organization, the Institute for Energy Research. “They led the charge and made it easier for other states to get involved. Some states were keeping their powder dry, but Pruitt was very out front and aggressive.”

After the litigation was filed-- by Mr. Morrissey and Mr. Pruitt, along with other attorneys general who attended the Greenbrier meeting-- Murray Energy sued in the federal court case as well, just as had been planned.

In February 2016, the Supreme Court indicated that it would side with opponents of the rule, moving by a 5-4 vote to grant a request by the attorneys general and corporate players to block the implementation of the Clean Power Plan while the case worked its way through the federal courts.

When Donald J. Trump decided to run for president, he did not appear to have a clear understanding of the nation’s climate change policies. Nor, at the start of his campaign, did he appear to have any specific plan to prioritize a huge legal push to roll those policies back.

Mr. Trump had, in 2012, said on Twitter, “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” But he had also, in 2009, joined dozens of other business leaders to sign a full-page ad in the The New York Times urging Mr. Obama to push a global climate change pact being negotiated in Copenhagen, and to “strengthen and pass United States legislation” to tackle climate change.

However, it did not go unnoticed that coal country was giving his presidential campaign a wildly enthusiastic embrace, as miners came out in full force for Mr. Trump, stoking his populist message.

And the surest way for Mr. Trump to win cheers from coal crowds was to aim at an easy target: Mr. Obama’s climate rules. Hillary Clinton did not help her cause when she said last spring that her climate policies would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

In May 2016, Mr. Trump addressed one of the largest rallies of his campaign: an estimated crowd of over 10,000 in Charleston, W.Va., where the front rows were crammed with mine workers.

“I’m thinking about miners all over the country,” he said, eliciting cheers. “We’re going to put miners back to work.”

“They didn’t used to have all these rules and regulations that make it impossible to compete,” he added. “We’re going to take it all off the table.”

Then an official from the West Virginia Coal Association handed the candidate a miner’s hat.

As he put it on, giving the miners a double thumbs-up, “The place just went nuts, and he loved it,” recalled Barry Bennett, a former adviser to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign. “And the miners started showing up at everything. They were a beaten lot, and they saw him as a savior. So he started using the ‘save coal’ portions of the speech again and again.”

Mr. Trump’s advisers embraced the miners as emblematic of the candidate’s broader populist appeal.

“The coal miners were the perfect case for what he was talking about,” Mr. Bennett said, “the idea that for the government in Washington, it’s all right for these people to suffer for the greater good-- that federal power is more important than your little lives.”

Mr. Trump took on as an informal campaign adviser Robert E. Murray-- chief executive of the same coal company that had been working closely for years with the Republican attorneys general to unwind the Obama environmental legacy.

Mr. Murray, a brash and folksy populist who started working in coal mines as a teenager, is an unabashed skeptic of climate science. The coal magnate and Mr. Trump had a natural chemistry, and where Mr. Trump lacked the legal and policy background to unwind climate policy, Mr. Murray was happy to step in.

“I thank my lord, Jesus Christ, for the election of Donald Trump,” Mr. Murray said soon after his new friend won the White House.

Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Ebell, the Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow who had worked for years to undermine the legitimacy of established climate science, to head the transition team at E.P.A. Mr. Ebell immediately began pushing for an agenda of gutting the Obama climate regulations and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.

When it came time to translate Mr. Trump’s campaign promises to coal country into policy, Mr. Murray and others helped choose the perfect candidate: Mr. Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general.

Mr. Trump, who had never met Mr. Pruitt before his election, offered him the job of E.P.A. administrator-- putting him in a position to dismantle the environmental rules that he had long sought to fight in court.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump wanted to be seen delivering on the promises he had made to the miners. As controversies piled up in his young administration, he sought comfort in the approval of his base.

In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing Mr. Pruitt to begin unwinding the Clean Power Plan-- and he did so at a large public ceremony at the E.P.A., flanked by coal miners and coal executives. Mr. Murray beamed in the audience.

Meanwhile, a battle raged at the White House over whether to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement. Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, urged him to remain in, cautioning that withdrawing could be devastating to the United States’ foreign policy credentials.

Murray Energy-- despite its enormous clout with Mr. Trump and his top environmental official-- boasts a payroll with only 6,000 employees. The coal industry nationwide is responsible for about 160,000 jobs, with just 65,000 directly in mining, according to the federal Energy Information Administration.

By comparison, General Electric alone has 104,000 employees in the United States, and Apple has 80,000. Their chief executives openly pressed Mr. Trump to stick with Paris, as did dozens of other major corporations that have continued to support regulatory efforts to combat climate change.

But these voices did not have clout in Washington, either in Congress or at the White House, when it comes to energy policy.

Mr. Trump’s senior adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, backed by Mr. Pruitt, told the president that pulling out of the deal would mean a promise kept to his base.

“It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-- along with many, many other locations within our great country-- before Paris, France,” Mr. Trump said in his Rose Garden speech on Thursday. “It is time to make America great again.”

Note: Trump lost Youngstown, Detroit and Pittsburgh in the election. Hillary beat him in Youngstown handily and even won surrounding Mahoning County by around 4,000 votes. Detroit wasn't even close and Wayne County rejected Trump's ugly Know Nothing approach 519,444 (66.4%) to 228,993 (29.3%), a rout. Same in Pittsburgh. The mayor reminded Trump the city voted almost 80% for Clinton. Surrounding Allegheny County-- where Trump put immense resources during the campaign-- went for Clinton 367,617 (56%) to 259,480 (39%).

n Congress, reluctance to embrace that science has had no political downsides, at least among Republicans.

“We don’t yet have an example of where someone has paid a political price being on that side of it,” said Michael Steel, who served as press secretary for the former House speaker John A. Boehner, the Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush and the current House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, during his 2012 run as Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential choice.

Instead, the messages of Mr. Pruitt still dominate.

“This is an historic restoration of American economic independence-- one that will benefit the working class, the working poor and working people of all stripes,” Mr. Pruitt said on Thursday, stepping to the Rose Garden lectern after Mr. Trump. “We owe no apologies to other nations for our environmental stewardship.”

American voters-- even many Republicans-- recognize that climate change is starting to affect their lives. About 70 percent think global warming is happening, and about 53 percent think it is caused by human activities, according to a recent study by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. About 69 percent support limiting carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.

But most public opinion polls find that voters rank the environment last or nearly last among the issues that they vote on. And views are divided based on party affiliation. In 2001, 46 percent of Democrats said they worried “a great deal” about climate change, compared with 29 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup tracking poll on the issue. This year, concern among Democrats has reached 66 percent. Among Republicans, it has fallen, to 18 percent.

Until people vote on the issue, Republicans will find it politically safer to question climate science and policy than to alienate moneyed groups like Americans for Prosperity.

There will be exceptions. The 2014 National Climate Assessment, a report produced by 14 federal agencies, concluded that climate change is responsible for much of the flooding now plaguing many of the Miami area’s coastal residents, soaking homes and disrupting businesses, and Representative Curbelo is talking about it.

“This is a local issue for me,” Mr. Curbelo said. “Even conservatives in my district see the impact. It’s flooding, and it’s happening now... There are members from deep-red districts who have approached me about figuring out how to become part of this effort,” Mr. Curbelo said. “I know we have the truth on our side. So I’m confident that we’ll win-- eventually.”

With reactionaries like Trump, Pruitt and Ryan willing-- eager-- to dance to the Koch brothers' tune, "eventually" may be too late. Last cycle alone, energy and natural resources companies poured $64,575,688 into congressional races-- bribes to get what they wanted. And who were the biggest recipients of this planet-killing cash? Among current House members the biggest recipients of bribes from this sector were among the crooked members of Congress who were willing to play the illegal quid pro quo game. The half dozen worst in the House:

• Paul Ryan (R-WI)- $1,149,303
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $613,100
• John Shimkus (R-IL)- $559,383
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $545,700
• Fred Upton (R-MI)- $507,463
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- $498,750

You know what else-- aside from an eagerness to take Koch bribes-- these six crooks have in common? Not one of them was challenged by the DCCC last cycle.

"Why are science museums in bed with science deniers?" (actor-activist Mark Ruffalo)

The link in Mark Ruffalo's tweet is to the above-referenced petition, organized by a new outfit called The Natural History Museum, which "is free from ties to the fossil fuel industry, calls out climate science deniers and culprits obstructing action on climate change, and actively champions the just transition to a sustainable and equitable future."

by Ken

Actor-activist Mark Ruffalo isn't the only one wondering, "Why are science museums in bed with science deniers?," but earlier this week Mark was putting the question out with a vengeance. Of course he, like everyone else who poses the question, knows the answer: $$$$. That's right, almight dollars. Right-wing plutocrats have 'em, and nonprofit orgs of every stripe need 'em, more often than not desperately.

And the lucky-ducky institutions that cash those checks are quick to assure us that the money doesn't influence the way they perform their functions, no sir! And with that assurance we can all rest easy, right? Except that pretty much every day we read new, usually well-documented charges that, on the contrary, nonprofit institutions and media are giving their right-wing zillionaire donors quite a bit of "consideration."

Now I understand why, for example, whoever pocketed that pile of Koch cash forged ahead with the renaming of what was for decades Lincoln Center's New York State Theater as the David H. Koch Theater. Because, after all, they got to pocket that pile of cash. So you see, I understand. Nevertheless, as someone who has I logged a ton of evenings in the State Theater since it opened, I can report that I haven't set foot in the joint since the rechristeneing. (In the interest of proper disclosure, I should note that I probably hadn't been inside the building for a while before the renaming, probably since I gave up trying to find anything on the NYC Opera schedule -- back when there was a NYC Opera -- that seemed worth my time and money. At the moment I can't actually think of any event whose pleasures I've denied myself because I won't, you know, set foot again in that goddamned building. Sometimes these things just work out.)

THE GRITTY WORLD OF NONPROFIT "DEVELOPMENT"

Considering how big a business the "development" (i.e., fund-raising, not to be confused with the "development" of anything actually cultural or artistic) arm of the nonprofit world has become -- one often gets the feeling that the "development" teams have become more important at many orgs than the teams that actually do stuff -- it's not hard to understand the appeal of free-floating $$$$. Small orgs, no matter how high-minded, are in a terrible position to turn away any potential donor, and large orgs now have such an overwhelming need for $$$$ that they feel they have no choice but to go where the $$$$ are.

To get back to the immediate case, that of science museums taking money from science deniers, one thing the museums have known for ages is that we Americans love our dinosaurs. And if you've got dinosaurs and any notion of how to monetize your assets, then the formula is simple: Dinos = $$$$. They can bring in paying customers and paying donors. Including, it seems, PR-conscious energy mega-industries.

If you go to the link for the Natural History Museum's petition, you'll find the following appeal (emphases in the original):

The world’s top scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners, just released an unprecedented letter calling on science and natural history museums to cut all ties to the fossil fuel industry.*

The letter comes on the heels of recent news that Smithsonian-affiliated scientist Willie Soon took $1.25 million from the Koch brothers, Exxon Mobil, American Petroleum Institute and other covert funders to publish junk science denying man-made climate change, and failed to disclose any funding-related conflicts of interest.

In particular, the letter points a finger at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (D.C.) and the American Museum of Natural History (NY), where David Koch is a member of the board, a major donor and exhibit sponsor.

Oil mogul David Koch sits on the board of our nation’s largest and most respected natural history museums, while he bankrolls groups that deny climate science.

Sign this petition to the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History: It’s time to get science deniers out of science museums. Kick Koch off the board!

We’ll deliver this message and the list of signatures to the American Museum of Natural History before their annual board meeting the first week of April. Then we’ll do the same at the Smithsonian before their board meeting in June.

THAT "UNPRECEDENTED LETTER" FROM "TOP SCIENTISTS"

Why don't we just take a look at it?

To Museums of Science and Natural History:

As members of the scientific community we devote our lives to understanding the world, and sharing this understanding with the public. We are deeply concerned by the links between museums of science and natural history with those who profit from fossil fuels or fund lobby groups that misrepresent climate science.

Museums are trusted sources of scientific information, some of our most important resources for educating children and shaping public understanding.

The Code of Ethics for Museums, adopted in 1991 by the Board of Directors of the American Alliance of Museums, states:

“It is incumbent on museums to be resources for humankind and in all their activities to foster an informed appreciation of the rich and diverse world we have inherited. It is also incumbent upon them to preserve that inheritance for posterity.”

“Museums are grounded in the tradition of public service. They are organized as public trusts, holding their collections and information as a benefit for those they were established to serve…Museums and those responsible for them must do more than avoid legal liability, they must take affirmative steps to maintain their integrity so as to warrant public confidence. They must act not only legally but also ethically.”

We are concerned that the integrity of these institutions is compromised by association with special interests who obfuscate climate science, fight environmental regulation, oppose clean energy legislation, and seek to ease limits on industrial pollution.

For example, David Koch is a major donor, exhibit sponsor and trustee on the Board of Directors at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and the American Museum of Natural History. David Koch’s oil and manufacturing conglomerate Koch Industries is one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Mr. Koch also funds a large network of climate-change-denying organizations, spending over $67 million since 1997 to fund groups denying climate change science.

When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge. This corporate philanthropy comes at too high a cost.

Drawing on both our scientific expertise and personal care for our planet and people, we believe that the only ethical way forward for our museums is to cut all ties with the fossil fuel industry and funders of climate science obfuscation.

With concern,

[The letter is signed, as of the time of writing, by 54 scientists, from climatologist James Hansen, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, to Andrew S. Johnson, a research scientist at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience. See the list with the posted version of the letter.

[Potential signers are invited to e-mail thenaturalhistorymuseum.org "with your full name, scientific credentials, and affiliation (past or present) as you’d like it listed."]

ARE WE "IMPLICATING" THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

In a Washington Post "In the Loop" item on the scientists' letter and the petition, Colby Itkowitz highlighted the link between the Kochs and the two giant museums directly in the line of fire:

David Koch, the billionaire conservative donor and executive vice president of Koch Industries, donated $35 million in 2012 for a new dinosaur hall at the Smithsonian’s Natural History museum. He had previously given $15 million to the museum’s hall of human origins that is named for him. In New York’s museum, he donated $20 million to the dinosaur wing that is also named after him.

And Colby got some responses. First, from the Smithsonian:

Randall Kremer, spokesman for the Smithsonian Natural History museum, said both exhibits deal in great detail with the impacts of climate change. And that Koch, and others on the board, are well aware of that.

Kremer told the Loop that they wouldn’t be supporting the museum if they “did not understand the science behind our public programs.” (The Smithsonian has been unequivocal in its belief that climate change is manmade.)

And then from KochWorld:

[David] Koch did not respond directly to the letter, or his opinion on climate change, but Ken Spain, Koch’s managing director for external relations did send the Loop an e-mailed statement:

“David Koch and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation have pledged or contributed more than $1.2 billion dollars to educational institutions and cultural institutions, cancer research, medical centers, and to assist public policy organizations. Mr. Koch remains committed to supporting these causes.”

As Colby notes, there's a lot of interest in just "how much the Kochs support climate change deniers," although I think she's pretty much missing the point when she describes this as "a popular topic for Democrats hoping to vilify them." Is it really so hard to grasp that this is really and truly not a matter of political tit-for-tatting? (Yes, apparently it is.) She does report, though, that "several Democratic senators wanted to investigate whether fossil fuel companies, including Koch Industries, were funneling money to groups trying to discredit climate change," and that "the Kochs’s lawyer said that information was protected by the First Amendment."

That last link, by the way, is interesting. It includes a letter from Mark V. Holden, Koch Industries senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary, to Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Edward Markey (D-MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), in response to their inquiry for information "about Koch Industries' payments made in support of scientific research and scientists, as well as support for other efforts related to climate change, if such payments have been made."

Here's what Senior VP Holden had to say:

. . . The activity and efforts about which you inquire, and Koch's involvement, if any, in them, are at the core of the fundamental liberties protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. To the extent that your letter touches on matters that implicate the First Amendment, I am sure you recognize Koch's right to participate in the debate of important public policy issues and its right of free association. These rights have been recognized by the United States Supreme Court.

In reviewing your letter, I did not see any explanation or justification for an official Senate Committe inquiry into activities protected by the First Amendment.

Under the circumstances, we decline to participate in this endeavor and object to your apparent efforts to infringe upon and potentially stifle fundamental First Amendment activities.

As you can see, the counselor, who holds a J.D., class of 1988, from Catholic University Law School, writes a nice lawyer-letter -- except maybe for that phrase about "matters that implicate the First Amendment." I didn't go to law school, but myself, I would be more likely to say something like "matters that involve" or "invoke" the First Amendment. But "matters that implicate the First Amendment"?

Maybe, though, now that the Right has taken up the First as its next-to-favorite amendment, it's not surprising to learn that the shysters of the Right regard it as something to be "implicated." Well, I suppose if the First Amendment gets too deeply implicated, it can always evoke the Fifth Amendment. If corporations have person-like rights, don't constitutional amendments?

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The Koch Billions' Toxic Effect On American Democracy

Last week we talked about how Republicans were unleashing a barrage of attack ads against weak conservative Democrats, like John Barrow, for voting with Republicans. Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans to cut Social Security benefits for retired people are now being bombarded with ads-- that are true, regardless of the disingenuous source-- pointing out that they are the enemies of working people. That's what Blue Dogs and New Dems like John Barrow-- he's both-- deserve anyway.

Taking it a step further, the Koch brother's Americans For Prosperity went after Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor this week for being out of touch with income inequality in America. Mindboggling! Pryor has had a repulsive tendency to vote for the same interests the Kochs promote-- even if he's doing it on behalf of even richer plutocrats than the Kochs-- the Walton family. Take a look at the trailer for Brave New Films Koch Brothers Exposed, 2014 immediately below this paragraph. "Day in and day out, we see the Kochs using their billions to purchase politicians-- and policy-- taking a terrible toll on democracy... stomping on poor people."

The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they've cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today's GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year's midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the Senate... The company's troubled legal history – including a trail of congressional investigations, Department of Justice consent decrees, civil lawsuits and felony convictions-- augmented by internal company documents, leaked State Department cables, Freedom of Information disclosures and company whistle­-blowers, combine to cast an unwelcome spotlight on the toxic empire whose profits finance the modern GOP.

...[I]in the real world, Koch Industries has used its political might to beat back the very market-based mechanisms-- including a cap-and-trade market for carbon pollution-- needed to create the ownership rights for pollution that Charles says would improve the functioning of capitalism.

In fact, it appears the very essence of the Koch business model is to exploit breakdowns in the free market. Koch has profited precisely by dumping billions of pounds of pollutants into our waters and skies-- essentially for free. It racks up enormous profits from speculative trades lacking economic value that drive up costs for consumers and create risks for our economy.

The Koch brothers get richer as the costs of what Koch destroys are foisted on the rest of us-- in the form of ill health, foul water and a climate crisis that threatens life as we know it on this planet. Now nearing 80-- owning a large chunk of the Alberta tar sands and using his billions to transform the modern Republican Party into a protection racket for Koch Industries' profits-- Charles Koch is not about to see the light. Nor does the CEO of one of America's most toxic firms have any notion of slowing down. He has made it clear that he has no retirement plans: "I'm going to ride my bicycle till I fall off."

It's worth pointing out that, at least in passing, that Daniel Scarpinato, national press secretary for the NRCC, noted that some Democrats have been similarly masquerading as Republicans-- i.e., the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Scarpinato sent HuffPo a dozen campaign ads to demonstrate his point. One is from Montana Democratic House candidate John Lewis, who brags about his high NRA approval rating and attacks his Republican opponent for supporting gun control. Another shows Nick Rahall (Blue Dog-WV)-- who the DCCC and their House Majority PAC have already wasted and unprecedented $5,020,316 on (including $702,799 just this week)-- denouncing the Environmental Protection Agency (and President Obama).

The Koch's are laughing their asses off as their extremist puppets, like Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Joni Ernest in Iowa, Cory Gardner in Colorado, Mike Rounds in South Dakota, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Shelly Moore Capito in West Virginia and Steve Daines in Montana are propelled towards the Senate takeover the Kochs are willing and able to underwrite. Vice President Henry Wallace warned about Koch-types that "the American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information." And that's exactly what the Kochs have been doing. Do you help bankroll them by buying their products? It's worth thinking about. So is Jon Stewart's welcome to the Koch's as a new advertiser on his Comedy Central show:



NOTE: Short of losing control of the House, which-- thanks to Steve Israel-- is an impossibility this cycle, no House result anywhere in America would damage the Kochs more than losing their Energy Committee chairman, Fred Upton, in MI-06. A dark money group they finance and control, "American Future Fund," has rushed hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race in the last few days to try to save Upton. Lawrence Lessig: "Fred Upton has already taken $2.1 million from Big Oil and energy interests and voted to give away billions in tax breaks for oil and gas companies. Now, a shadowy group that has been largely bankrolled by two billionaire oil barons is pouring money in Southwest Michigan to support him. Voters have a right to know if the hundreds of thousands of dollars AFF is spending to send Fred Upton back to Washington comes with strings attached... The Koch brothers have billions of dollars invested in the very industries that Fred Upton oversees as Chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. If they are funding a last ditch effort to save Fred Upton, voters deserve to know about it."

Steve Israel may be working to protect Upton but Alan Grayson just endorsed Paul Clements. "On Tuesday," he told his supporters today, "we have a chance to take out the reigning king of the polluters, Rep. Fred Upton, the Republican Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The Los Angeles Times has called Fred Upton "one of the biggest threats to Planet Earth on Planet Earth."

Upton has tried to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. He says that Congress's failure to act against climate disruption-- a failure that he is largely responsible for-- means that the EPA must sit on its hands, as well. Upton says that doing anything to fight carbon pollution would "hamstring our economic recovery."

But Upton's not all bad. He cosponsored a bill to make light bulbs more energy efficient. Then he led the fight to prevent President Obama from enforcing it.

Let me put it this way: When Upton was an infant, his first words were "drill, baby, drill."

...Upton's opponent is Paul Clements, a political science professor at Western Michigan University. Clements isn't pulling any punches: he says that environmental protection is THE issue. He is running against Upton because defeating Upton means defeating climate change. Clements wants to bring more clean-energy jobs to Michigan.

It looks like Clements has Upton on the run. A poll last week showed Clements down by only four points, within the margin of error, with ten percent of the voters still undecided. Clements has momentum. He can win. With our help, Paul Clements can beat Fred Upton.

Please keep Paul Clements in your prayers this week. Last minute contributions can be made here.

Where Does The Anti-Democracy Koch Smear Machine Get Its Money?

Most of their wealth comes from oil and gas

This morning, you may have read that just one of the arms of Koch brothers' political Dark Money assault against democracy, a shady proto-fascist outfit called Americans for Prosperity, plans to spend a minimum of $125 million on the midterm elections. "The projected budget for Americans for Prosperity would be unprecedented for a private political group in a midterm, and would likely rival even the spending of the Republican and Democratic parties’ congressional campaign arms," writes Ken Vogel for Politico. Americans for Prosperity has already spent $35 million this cycle smearing the very conservative Democrats who have been most likely to actually back-- whether through fear or conviction-- the Koch/GOP agenda: Kay Hagan (NC), Mark Pryor (AR), Mark Begich (AK) and Mary Landrieu (LA). In Landrieu's case, the Koch smear campaign is already yielding results, her negatives rising dramatically from 28% to 58% since the Koch's gave the go-ahead for the attacks to begin. 59% of Louisiana voters now say they would rather have a new senator.

The plans-- combined with those of other groups in the sprawling political operation affiliated with the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch-- more closely resemble the traditional functions of a national political party than a network of private nonprofit groups.

The goal of the network is a long-term movement to expand the political playing field for conservatives-- both into new states and into non-traditional demographics including millennial, Hispanic and low-income voters.

AFP’s $125-million projected 2014 budget alone would also exceed the total 2012 fundraising hauls of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee or the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

As the Koch network prepares to gather its operatives and donors next month for an annual summer fundraising seminar, it’s implementing a series of adjustments based on lessons learned from 2012. In the run-up to that election, the network spent more than $400 million only to watch President Barack Obama win reelection and his Democratic allies retain the Senate.

Some megadonors wondered what their cash bought, and privately suggested they might look to spend their money elsewhere. The Koch operation undertook a forensic analysis of what went wrong designed partly to prove to donors that it could be trusted with their political donations going forward.

AFP identified “three key areas where the Left outperformed our efforts in the field,” according to the memo, which conceded they were “tough and painful lessons-- but it’s important to remember that AFP is run like a business”:

• “Our data system was insufficient” and failed to quickly process information fed into it by thousands of canvassers and phone bankers contacting voters, causing “delays in updates, leading to some data inaccuracies during a critical phase of our organizing efforts.”

• “We were outmanned” by the left generally and Obama’s campaign, specifically, which, the memo notes “had 770 field staff on the ground” in Florida alone. By contrast, the memo notes that AFP and “other network partners” had about only 300 total field staff nationwide.

• “The Left had a superior messaging strategy and implementation that effectively identified their demographic targets, determined which issues resonated best with which groups, and delivered specific messages over TV, radio and online ads for those audiences.”

…Echoing Charles Koch’s opposition to the minimum wage, it asserts that free market, low-regulation policies “create the greatest levels of prosperity and opportunity for all Americans, especially for society’s poorest and most vulnerable.” Yet, the memo says, “we consistently see that Americans in general are concerned that free-market policy-- and its advocates-- benefit the rich and powerful more than the most vulnerable of society. …We must correct this misconception.”

The major contributors to the Koch network groups tend to skew much whiter and older than the population the groups are trying to reach. And while the emcee of the Koch donor seminars, Kevin Gentry, in April emailed a group of fundraisers for allied organizations that “we want our donors to be younger,” he added that “just doesn’t track with reality. So if we try to ‘force’ our donors to become younger-- i.e., focusing our donor acquisition more at youth cohorts, we will likely have less efficient and less economically profitable fundraising.”

Referencing the thorough research of Bloomberg reporter David de Jong, we find that two of the Koch brothers-- dangerous anti-democracy extremists David and Charles-- are, collectively, worth over $100 billion. The richest person in the world is Bill Gates ($79.5 billion) followed by Carlos Slim ($67.1 billion) and Warren Buffett ($64.5 billion). But not all the Dark Money for the anti-democarcy enterprise comes from the two anti-American brothers. They've carefully developed a whole network of wealthy, old white people who are obsessed with racism, greed, paranoia and anti-social manias. Some give immense sums and some give modestly. De Jong came across one of these hidden billionaires, the 4th richest woman in America-- the 5th richest woman in the world-- whose very controversial inheritance gave her a 15% interest in Koch Industries. 70 year old Elaine Tettemer Marshall of Dallas has managed to avoid the spotlight that billionaire status usually brings. Her stake in the Wichita, Kansas-based industrial conglomerate, which generates annual sales of $110 billion, is worth more than $12.7 billion. The only richer women, like her, did nothing to build or earn immense fortunes, just inherited them-- a couple of Waltons and the Mars candy heiress, Jacqueline Mars. Marshall gained control of the Koch stake following the death of her husband, E. Pierce Marshall in 2006, although the contested battle over the will-- with her "mother-in-law," Anna Nicole Smith a Playboy Bunny, stripper and hooker-- went all the way to the Supreme Court.

[Elaine] Marshall’s ability to stay out of the limelight stands in contrast to her father-in-law, J. Howard Marshall, who had been a Koch shareholder for more than two decades and created a spectacle with his 1994 marriage to Smith, then a 26-year-old Playboy model, whom he wed at age 89. Since then, the Marshall fortune has been in a near-constant state of turmoil.

In April 1995, four months before Howard Marshall’s death, Smith sued his son, Pierce, in Harris County, Texas, probate court, accusing him of interfering with his father’s ability to provide her spousal support. The lawsuit was the first in a stream of legal cases that led to a 16-year battle between Smith and Pierce Marshall, the end of which neither would live to see. Marshall succumbed to an infection in 2006 at age 67; Smith died of a drug overdose at age 39 in a Florida hotel in 2007.

…The partnership between the Koch and Marshall families began in 1959, when Koch Industries founder Fred C. Koch acquired a 35 percent stake in Great Northern Oil Co., a Minnesota-based refinery co-founded by Howard Marshall, for about $5 million in cash. A decade later, Koch’s second-oldest son, Charles, offered to swap the rest of Marshall’s stake in Great Northern for Koch Industries shares.

“He took stock rather than cash-- and held on to it,” said Robert L. Bradley Jr., editor of Howard Marshall’s autobiography, Done in Oil, in an e-mail. “The stock appreciated into something very, very large.”

In 1974, at the wedding reception of his oldest son, J. Howard Marshall III, the elder Marshall gave each of his two sons 4 percent of Koch Industries voting stock, telling them, “Boys, these are the Crown Jewels, take care of them,” according to documents filed by the U.S. District Court for California’s Central District in Santa Ana in 2002.

Those jewels played a crucial role in an attempted boardroom coup six years later, when two of Charles Koch’s brothers tried to oust him as CEO. With some cousins and several allies, Bill Koch and Frederick Koch controlled about 48 percent of the votes, and turned to Howard Marshall’s sons to gain the majority needed to displace Charles. Howard III sided with the dissident brothers; his younger brother, Pierce, rejected their plea.

His loyalty tied to Charles Koch, Howard Marshall thwarted the coup by buying back his oldest son’s voting stock for $8 million. According to court documents, Marshall subsequently disinherited Howard III, considering the $8 million payment “an early inheritance.”

Howard III contested his father’s will in Harris County probate court in 1995. Pierce Marshall, who was left in charge of his father’s estate following his death, countersued, claiming his older brother committed fraud when he sold his Koch Industries voting stock back to their father at an inflated price.

The court sided with the estate. According to the verdict, rendered in 2001, Howard III had engaged in fraud by stating a claim to his father’s inheritance, and was ordered to pay about $11 million to various Marshall family trusts. Howard Marshall III and his wife, Ilene, filed for bankruptcy in Los Angeles in 2002.

While dueling with his brother, Pierce Marshall was also fending off charges from Anna Nicole Smith, who filed for bankruptcy in 1996. During the bankruptcy proceedings, the former stripper-- her given name was Vickie Lynn Hogan-- claimed her late husband had intended to set up a trust in her benefit. The trust was to have contained a sum equal to half of the increased value of Marshall’s assets during their marriage. Pierce Marshall, Smith claimed, illegally interfered with the trust’s creation.

In 2000, the U.S. bankruptcy court for California’s Central District in Los Angeles awarded Smith about $475 million in damages, determining that Pierce Marshall had “deprived her of her expectancy of a substantial inter vivos gift from her deceased husband J. Howard.”

…Smith never got a dollar. The Harris County probate court, where she had filed her first lawsuit against Pierce Marshall, ruled in 2001 that she had no valid claim to the estate… After the first Supreme Court decision in 2006, Pierce Marshall transferred his Koch stake, held by a company called Trof Inc., into a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (GRAT) named Staurolite. Marshall owned all of Trof, according to the 2002 District Court ruling. Trof held 14.6 percent of Koch Industries, according to a 2001 application to the Federal Communications Commission, which was submitted by a company in which a Koch subsidiary held an interest.

Pierce Marshall was listed as Staurolite’s grantor and Elaine as the trustee, according to the trust agreement. Pierce also created his will at that time, leaving the majority of his estate to Elaine and appointing her as executrix. In his will, Pierce Marshall directed that, upon his death, all of his interest in the Staurolite GRAT be transferred to the EPM Marital Income Trust, of which Elaine Marshall is the trustee. He died six weeks after signing his will.

In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in March 2009, Howard K. Stern, the executor of the Anna Nicole Smith estate, accused the late Pierce Marshall of moving the family’s most valuable asset-- Koch Industries stock-- outside of his estate. Elaine Marshall responded in a court declaration that the creation of the will and GRAT was the result of “18 months of planning, reparation and drafting,” and “not caused by the Supreme Court’s decision” that granted jurisdiction to the District Court in 2006 over Smith’s claim.

“The whole advantage of a GRAT is passing appreciated property to your family members without a gift tax,” said Robert Willens, an independent tax adviser based in New York. “You can say with a straight face, if you’re called on to disclose your assets, that you no longer own the stock that you’ve put into the trust. All you have is this amorphous annuity interest.”

Elaine Marshall didn’t list the GRAT as part of his estate, according to an inventory of Pierce Marshall’s estate assets, submitted to the Supreme Court in 2009. The estate’s most valuable asset listed in the inventory was Telomere LLC, which represented more than $115 million of the estate’s reported $125 million value.

Marshall is one of nine Koch Industries board members. She donated $5,000 to the company’s political action committee in December 2011, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. She is credited with the family’s Koch stake because of her control over the EPM Marital Income Trust.

The tangled webs and hidden trusts and shady organizations layered on each other makes it impossible to know for sure where the flow of Dark Money in the Koch world is coming from and where exactly it goes. All we found on Elaine's political giving, aside from the $5,000 to the Koch PAC were a few vanilla contributions to Bush and Dole.

Bloomberg's report last month on the 2 Koch brothers net worth topping $100 billion, emphasized some of the shady political maneuverings the two are employing in their twisted, relentless war against working families in this country. The misnamed "Freedom Partners" is one of their many attack machines, which is running vicious smear campaigns aimed at polluting the political debate in Colorado and Iowa with attacks against Democrats for backing expansion of health insurance.

“The Koch brothers are pouring millions into this,” Chris Harris, a campaign spokesman for Senator Udall, said in an e-mail yesterday. “They’re only fighting for their own interests, not Coloradans’. Mark Udall has a long record of fighting for the middle class and stops at nothing to protect Colorado’s special way of life.”

…Jeff Giertz, a spokesman for Braley’s campaign, said the Kochs and the GOP candidates they support stand behind policies that would hurt Iowa’s economy.

“Bruce Braley fights for Iowa’s working families because that’s where he comes from, and he’ll keep fighting for Iowa in the U.S. Senate,” Giertz said in an e-mail yesterday.