Koch Brothers thread

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Re: Koch Brothers thread

Postby Allegro » Sat Jun 30, 2012 2:23 am

.
Update.

    Wal-Mart, Johnson & Johnson, Amazon.com, Coke, Pepsi, Kraft, McDonald's, Wendy's, Intuit, and 54 legislators have dumped the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

    ALEC Exposed | SourceWatch
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Re: Koch Brothers thread

Postby Allegro » Sat Sep 08, 2012 5:11 pm



Several links in original. Highlights mine.

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ALEC faces new challenge to tax-exempt status
Center for Public Integrity | John Dunbar, Updated July 17, 2012

    A prominent tax attorney has accused an organization of state lawmakers and corporations officials with improperly claiming nonprofit status, alleging the group’s role is to benefit businesses, the Republican Party, and legislators and not the public.

    The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) “elevates commercial gain for a few over the well-being of society’s less fortunate,” says a complaint penned by Marcus Owens, the former chief of the Internal Revenue Service’s nonprofit corporations division, on behalf of Clergy VOICE, a group of ministers from progressive churches in Ohio.

    ALEC has attracted attention recently for its model “stand your ground” and voter ID laws which led major corporate backers like Coca Cola and Kraft Foods Inc. to drop their membership in the face of a threatened boycott by activists. The Florida gun law became a hot topic following the slaying of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teen, by a neighborhood watch volunteer in February.

    Until recently, ALEC has enjoyed a low profile, despite its substantial influence over legislation in the nation’s statehouses. The group claims on its website that it has helped craft close to 1,000 bills introduced by state lawmakers and that “an average of 20 percent become law.”

    In its complaint, Clergy VOICE says ALEC has “deliberately and repeatedly failed to comply with some of the most fundamental federal tax requirements applicable to public charities” and that evidence “quite strongly” suggests that the group is violating civil and criminal tax laws.

    The clergy’s complaint goes beyond allegations of improper lobbying, claiming that ALEC exists for the “private benefit” of its members rather than for charitable, educational or other exempt purposes that serve the public interest and deserve special tax treatment.

    The Center forwarded the complaint to ALEC’s media relations representative Tuesday via email but a call was not returned. The Center forwarded the complaint and questions Wednesday morning to the organization and was told it had been passed along to “appropriate parties” but did not receive a response.

    The 30-page letter sent to the IRS on June 18 was inspired by a separate, whistleblower claim lodged by consumer group Common Cause in April, which alleged ALEC is a corporate-funded lobbying group, which violates IRS rules that govern 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations. The complaint was based, in part, on information about ALEC obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit research group opposed to ALEC's legislative ambitions.

    ALEC, formed in 1973, has consistently argued it is bipartisan and educational in nature, because it provides research and analysis for legislators. It pays no income tax and donors to the organization, including its corporate members, can deduct their contributions from their taxable income, just as they would for a charity.

    The Internal Revenue Code says a 501(c)(3) organization “may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.” ALEC reports no lobbying on its annual filings with the IRS, according to the complaint, but state records in North Dakota show two lobbyists registered to represent the organization in 2008 and 2009: Mark Behrens and Cory Shaecher.

    ALEC was formed in Chicago by a group of state legislators and the late Paul Weyrich, a pioneering conservative activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation. Based in Washington, D.C., the group says its mission is to advance “free-market enterprise, limited government and federalism at the state level through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public.”

    Its 23-member board of directors is made up of entirely of state legislators. But it also has a “private enterprise board” consisting of corporate representatives, including GlaxoSmithKline, PhRMA, Pfizer Inc. AT&T Inc., Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC, Altria (formerly Philip Morris) Client Services, ExxonMobil Corp. and State Farm Insurance Co. Legislators join for $50 per year while private sector members join for $7,000, $12,000 or $25,000 for the top-tier “Jefferson Club.”

    The criticism of the group is focused mainly on its “task forces,” which bring legislators and corporate members together to create model bills.

    The complaint alleges that industry representatives have “effective veto power” over the recommendations of the task forces.

    While ALEC describes the output of its task forces as bipartisan analysis and research, the complaint said the task force proposals “do not appear to contain ‘a sufficiently full and fair exposition’ of the public policy issue underlying the legislative proposal. To the contrary, they promote the ideological views and business interests of ALEC’s Private Sector members — the corporate funders.”

    Clergy VOICE consists of 18 religious leaders who have come together in the past to challenge nonprofits. In 2004 and 2006, they filed complaints against two large Ohio churches alleging they were promoting Republican candidates.

    They also challenged the tax-exempt status of a Christian organization and its $1.8 million Washington, D.C., townhouse that housed conservative Christian members of Congress. The “C Street Center” made the news as a refuge for three Republican politicians tarnished by scandal.

    The religious leaders do not represent their congregations. Half are members of the United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination that has been historically liberal on social issues. In a cover letter to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, they accuse ALEC of compromising free and fair elections, weakening union rights, degrading the environment and a host of other offenses.

    The organization singled out a handful of corporate-influenced model bills, including a cap on damages for asbestos claims, the “stand your ground” legislation pushed by the National Rifle Association and an immigration bill which reportedly served as the basis for Arizona’s law and was drafted with help from a private prison company. The immigration law was partially knocked down by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 25.

    The complaint also said ALEC had improperly provided a benefit to lawmakers by creating “scholarships” under the control of the national headquarters that paid for the lawmakers’ attendance at meetings ”held in luxury hotels, frequently in vacation-worthy destinations like San Diego, New Orleans and Scottsdale.” These include “perks such as meals, recreational activities, and subsidized childcare for legislators and their families” that are often not reported by the lawmakers on their state ethics disclosure forms, the complaint said.

    “Meeting agendas include events like golf tournaments, open bar parties and baseball games — all subsidized directly or indirectly by ALEC’s corporate members,” the letter said, citing an estimate by ALEC that these benefits cost $1 million to $2 million each year.

    ALEC claims to be bipartisan, but all 23 legislative members of its board listed on ALEC’s 2010 tax return are Republicans, according to a Center review. The clergy complaint claims 72 of ALEC’s 74 filled state chairman seats are held by Republican legislators.

    The group states ALEC faces potential civil penalties for “a pattern of filing multiple inaccurate” tax returns with the IRS, such as not reporting lobbying activities and providing incorrect information about its payments to legislators for travel and entertainment.

    It also says the group may face criminal tax penalties if the misstatements or omissions were made “knowingly or willfully.”

    Whether the IRS will pursue any action is difficult to say. Complaints are typically answered with a “thank you” letter acknowledging their receipt and the agency does not release details about investigations or audits.

    Owens, who was director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the IRS from 1990 to 2000, said he expects a reaction.

    “The legal analysis is done for them. They just have to read it,” he said. “I would be surprised if the IRS took no action in response to this letter.”
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Re: Koch Brothers thread

Postby StarmanSkye » Sun Sep 09, 2012 5:36 am

^^^
It CAN'T be! A gang of Loyalist Partisan Republicans craftily using a non-profit charity tax-dodge to legally (sic) deduct 1 to 2 million dollars of taxable income which is then spent on providing them with a wide range of lavish personal-benefit perks and priveleges -- essentially a tax-free 'gift' they give themselves through the 'charity' they makes these donations to -- which is also used to fund lobbying and the research & manufacture of legislative bills that typically enrich the private business members' own companies.

This sure doesn't look like they didn't know what a clever self-serving little gimmick they had going here ...

No prospective viably lucrative tax-dodge, gimmick, tactic, method or loophole with potential to be exploited for personal or business gain shall go untried. -- The unofficial neoliberal motto #2187.
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Re: Koch Brothers thread

Postby compared2what? » Sun Sep 09, 2012 1:08 pm

StarmanSkye wrote:^^^
It CAN'T be! A gang of Loyalist Partisan Republicans craftily using a non-profit charity tax-dodge to legally (sic) deduct 1 to 2 million dollars of taxable income which is then spent on providing them with a wide range of lavish personal-benefit perks and priveleges -- essentially a tax-free 'gift' they give themselves through the 'charity' they makes these donations to -- which is also used to fund lobbying and the research & manufacture of legislative bills that typically enrich the private business members' own companies.

This sure doesn't look like they didn't know what a clever self-serving little gimmick they had going here ...

No prospective viably lucrative tax-dodge, gimmick, tactic, method or loophole with potential to be exploited for personal or business gain shall go untried. -- .


It's true that there could be a tax issue there. But if there is, it would also be a regular old statutory federal crime, in this instance. So there are potentially a lot of DAs who could open an investigation if they wanted to, it's not necessarily limited to the infinitely opaque IRS.

I think. I'm much more familiar with the exempt-organization tax stuff, and that part's a lot less ambiguous: If they're investigated, they're done. At a minimum. There's really no way to know if that's happening or not, though. The IRS can't talk about individual taxpayers. And that's as it should be, really. But sometimes it's frustrating.

The unofficial neoliberal motto #2187


I see that you speak fluent 8bit-ese.
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Re: Koch Brothers thread

Postby brainpanhandler » Sun Sep 09, 2012 2:38 pm

ALEC has attracted attention recently for its model “stand your ground” and voter ID laws which led major corporate backers like Coca Cola and Kraft Foods Inc. to drop their membership in the face of a threatened boycott by activists.


Really? If true that is stupendous news, I think. Boycotts should be one of our most potent weapons, but I rarely ever hear of a successful boycott, let alone the mere threat of one forcing corporate giants like coca cola and kraft foods to cave.
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ALEC’s ‘Forty Years of Corporate Greed’

Postby Allegro » Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:14 pm

Activist rally against forty years of ‘legislative-corporate collusion’ as new report documents assault on democracy and progress
Common Dreams, Jon Queally, staff writer | Thursday, August 8, 2013

Image

    Community activists, labor groups, and other progressives are making noise outside a downtown Chicago hotel on Thursday in order to draw attention to the annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (or ALEC)—derisively known as the rightwing’s regressive “law factory”—being held inside.

    The anti-ALEC rally—led by groups that included StandUp! Chicago, the Center for Media & Democracy, ColorOfChange, the Chicago Federation of Labor, and others—was taking place outside the Palmer House Hotel with a call to put an end to the powerful lobbyist group.

    Described as the engine of the corporate “retrograde agenda” by CMD’s Mary Bottari, the laws proposed by ALEC members include “bills to roll back wages, worker rights, access to paid sick leave, and even renewable energy standards.”

    CMD’s Brendan Fischer, who has studied the group extensively, called their operations a collusion between corporate interests and rightwing lawmakers.

    ALEC is celebrating its 40th anniversary of operation this year, but the meeting in Chicago—though designed to be more secretive than ones in the past—will follow the same playbook in which “lobbyists from U.S. and foreign corporations will vote as equals alongside state legislators to adopt ALEC “model” bills, which then will be distributed nationwide with little or no disclosure of their ALEC roots.”

    Aspects of the protest, including photos from the street rally, were being actively reported on Twitter:

    As ALEC is known to provide state and federal lawmakers with their “model legislation” on numerous policy fronts, the coalition of protesters in Chicago were highlighting numerous laws pushed by the conservative group, including ‘stand your ground’ laws, ‘right-to-work’ legislation, ploys to limited voting rights, and many others.

    Citing the role of ALEC-backed ‘stand-your-ground’ law in the Florida shooting death of Trayvon Martin last year, many in Chicago were blasting the proliferation of similar laws in other states.

    “These laws encourage people to act on irrational fears fed by biases and prejudice,” said Shani Smith with Stand Up! Chicago, who spoke about her anxieties as the mother of a black teenager. “I know that where I see my son—a caring, creative, vulnerable young man—others may see a dangerous stranger. We’ve lost enough young black men in this country to fear and prejudice.”

    ‘Too many politicians of both parties carry the corporate greed agenda’. (Photo: AFSCME via Twiter)On the same day of the protest, the Center for Media & Democracy—which has done yeoman work in uncovering the operations of ALEC in recent years—also published their latest report on the group, documenting and analyzing 466 new ALEC bills introduced across all fifty states in 2013.

    Among the highlights included in the report, CMD offered these key findings:

    ⋅ CMD identified 466 ALEC bills from the 2013 session. 84 of these passed and became law. ALEC bills were introduced in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2013. The top ALEC states were West Virginia (25 bills) and Missouri (21 bills).

    ⋅ Despite ALEC’s effort to distance itself from Voter ID and Stand Your Ground by disbanding its controversial Public Safety and Elections Task Force, 62 of these laws were introduced: 10 Stand Your Ground bills and 52 bills to enact or tighten Voter ID restrictions. Five states enacted additional Voter ID restrictions, and two states passed Stand Your Ground.

    ⋅ CMD identified 117 ALEC bills that affect wages and worker rights. 14 of these became law. These bills included so-called “Right to Work” legislation, part of the ALEC agenda since at least 1979, introduced in 15 states this year. Other bills would preempt local living or minimum wage ordinances, facilitate the privatization of public services, scrap defined benefit pension plans, or undermine the ability of unions to organize to protect workers.

    ⋅ CMD identified 139 ALEC bills that affect public education. 31 of these became law. Just seven states did not have an ALEC education bill introduced this year. Among other things, these bills would siphon taxpayer money from the public education system to benefit for-profit private schools, including the “Great Schools Tax Credit Act,” introduced in 10 states.

    ⋅ CMD identified 77 ALEC bills that advance a polluter agenda. 17 of these became law. Numerous ALEC “model” bills were introduced that promote a fossil fuel and fracking agenda and undermine environmental regulations. The “Electricity Freedom Act,” which would repeal state renewable portfolio standards, was introduced in six states this year.

    ⋅ CMD identified 71 ALEC bills narrowing citizen access to the courts. 14 of these became law. These bills cap damages, limit corporate liability, or otherwise make it more difficult for citizens to hold corporations to account when their products or services result in injury or death.

    ⋅ CMD identified nine states that have been inspired by ALEC’s “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” to crack down on videographers documenting abuses on factory farms. These so-called “ag-gag” bills erode First Amendment rights, and threaten the ability of journalists and investigators to pursue food safety and animal welfare investigations.

    ⋅ CMD identified 11 states that introduced bills to override or prevent local paid sick leave ordinances, such as the one recently enacted in New York City. At least eight of these bills were sponsored by known ALEC members. Although ALEC has not adopted a preemption bill as an official “model,” ALEC member the National Restaurant Association brought a bill to override local paid sick leave ordinances to an ALEC meeting in 2011, along with a target map and other materials.

    Read the CMD’s full report: ALEC at 40: Turning Back the Clock on Prosperity and Progress (pdf).
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William Koch emerges from shadow of siblings

Postby Allegro » Sat Aug 17, 2013 2:16 pm

Images and links in original.

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Billionaire not shy about making corporate contributions to super PACs
Center for Public Integrity, Michael Beckel | 6:00 am, August 13, 2013 Updated: 23 hours, 33 minutes ago

    Billionaire businessman William Koch once operated green energy plants on multiple continents and had a reputation for being more politically moderate than his better-known brothers, Charles and David — the principal owners of Koch Industries, Inc..

    But William now rejects the “apocalypse of global warming.” He says investing in alternative energy is “foolhardy.” And ahead of the 2012 election, he criticized President Barack Obama for trying to “socialize” the country.

    Koch is putting his fortune where his mouth is and is also using his companies’ funds to do so. He has spent millions of dollars to aid politicians he sees as more business-friendly and to fight the Obama administration’s moves to combat climate change, which could mean costly new regulations for Koch’s expansive Oxbow Carbon LLC business network.

    Unlike his brothers who have favored politically active nonprofits as their vehicles of choice to back conservative causes, William Koch has poured resources into super PACs, with millions of dollars coming straight from the corporate treasuries of his firms. Meanwhile, donations from his company’s traditional political action committee are at an all-time high — as are Oxbow’s lobbying expenditures.

    “Energy companies see a threat to their bottom line and they are taking action,” political analyst Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics told the Center for Public Integrity. “Whatever way they can influence the process, that’s what they’re going to do.”

    At the vanguard

    Very few large companies took advantage of the more liberal campaign finance system that emerged following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in 2010 the way Koch’s Oxbow Carbon LLC did.

    The decision allowed corporations to use treasury funds to pay for expenditures that call for the election or defeat of a candidates — or give them to intermediaries, like super PACs.

    In 2012, Oxbow was at the vanguard, contributing millions to Republican super PACs — more than nearly any other company. Oxbow, along with Huron Carbon LLC, another of Koch’s companies, contributed $4.35 million to GOP super PACs, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal records.

    The vast majority of that sum — $3.75 million — went to Restore Our Future, the main super PAC supporting Republican Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful presidential bid. Meanwhile, $500,000 went to a group that backed former Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., known as the America 360 Committee.

    Another $100,000 went to a Florida-based organization called Freedom PAC, which spent money on behalf of then-Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Connie Mack IV.

    Through Oxbow spokesman Brad Goldstein, Koch declined an interview for this story. But earlier this year, Koch told Massachusetts-based CommonWealth magazine that “a lot of our business is influenced regularly by government, too damn much by government. And so we have to play in that game.”

    In 2011, Goldstein told The Village Voice that the Obama administration “has made it extremely difficult for businesses to operate.” Koch himself used even stronger language in a 2012 interview with the Cape Cod Times. “I think Obama's trying to socialize this country,” he said.

    Koch also argued to CommonWealth that the renewable energy industry is only profitable when big government gets involved: “The alternative energy business is uneconomical unless you get a government subsidy or a government-enforced contract,” he said.

    Florida-based empire

    Oxbow Carbon LLC, which is described in government records as the “holding company for all Oxbow business,” has interests in natural gas, coal, petroleum coke and sulfur, among other natural resources. (Petroleum coke is a byproduct of oil refining, which is used to manufacture steel and aluminum, and Oxbow is one of the leading companies in the industry.)

    Its corporate headquarters are in Palm Beach, Fla., but its operations span the globe. Including its subsidiaries and related companies, Oxbow’s annual sales exceed $4 billion, and it employs more than 1,000 workers worldwide.

    A related company, Oxbow Mining LLC, owns and operates the Elk Creek coal mine in Colorado. And another Koch company, Oxbow Carbon and Minerals LLC, has sold significant amounts of coal over the years to both the U.S. Department of Defense and Tennessee Valley Authority.

    This relationship prompted controversy when Koch’s companies began giving millions of dollars to GOP super PACs, as federal contractors are prohibited from making such donations.

    When the Los Angeles Times raised questions about the contribution ban faced by federal contractors, Goldstein, the Oxbow spokesman, maintained that Koch’s companies were on the right side of the law.

    "I can say without equivocation that Oxbow Carbon LLC is not a federal contractor," Goldstein wrote in an email to the Times.

    Billy the Kid and Katy Perry

    Koch, who is the 92nd-richest person in the United States according to Forbes, is Oxbow Carbon LLC’s founder, president and chief executive officer. While he may not have the same prolife in political circles as his brothers — who are tied for fourth among the richest Americans according to Forbes — he’s arguably more colorful.

    The 73-year-old chemical engineer earned a doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an avid collector of art, fine wine and Western memorabilia. He once paid $2.3 million at an auction for the only verified photograph of frontier outlaw Billy the Kid.

    In 1992, Koch won the America’s Cup, the highest honor in sailing, and he has been awarded the title of honorary admiral in the state navies of Kansas, Nebraska and Alabama. Last year, for his wife’s 50th birthday party, he hired pop star Katy Perry to perform for a private party at their Palm Beach house.

    Additionally, Koch has moved a ghost town he purchased to property he owns outside of Aspen, Colo. For years, he has been pushing for a land exchange with the federal government that would secure even more privacy for the family and guests he plans to entertain there. He recently founded a college preparatory school called the Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches. And he has spent millions of dollars opposing a wind farm project off the shore of Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, where he also has a home.

    In 1980, Koch narrowly failed in a bid to win control of the family oil business, which had been established by his father in Kansas in the 1920s. A few years later, he sold his stake and started his own energy corporation. But he later charged that he had been underpaid and brought a series of lawsuits against Koch Industries and his two brothers, beginning in 1984.

    Fortune called the struggle “perhaps the nastiest family feud in American business history.” The last court case was settled in 2001, but in a 2012 interview with Forbes, Charles Koch still declined to refer to William by name.

    That year, Forbes ranked Koch Industries the second-largest privately held company in the U.S., while William Koch’s Oxbow ranked 96th, as it pumped millions into the nascent GOP super PACs.

    Ahead of the 2012 election, Koch, himself, personally donated $400,000 split between three Republican-aligned super PACs, including $250,000 to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future.

    But Koch hasn’t always been so enthralled with the GOP. For years, he backed Democrats as often as Republicans.

    Not including his recent super PAC donations, Koch has contributed more than $1 million to federal candidates, parties and political action committees since the 1990 election cycle, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of data maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

    Of that sum, nearly two-thirds went to Democrats, including $400,000 to the Democratic Party of Kansas during the tail end of Bill Clinton’s presidency when “soft money” donations of unlimited size to parties were legal.

    Lobby shop headed by former Cheney aide

    Oxbow Carbon LLC maintains an office in downtown Washington, D.C., in a building along Pennsylvania Avenue about halfway between the U.S. Capitol and the White House. From there, Karen Knutson — who served as the deputy director of Vice President Dick Cheney’s secretive energy task force during the Bush administration — leads its lobbying operation.

    Knutson, who did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story, is also a former chief of staff for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska — the ranking Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

    Two other lobbyists who have passed through the revolving door between government and industry appear in Oxbow’s most recent filings: Caroline Martin Szeremeta, who once was a legislative aide to former Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.; and Kathleen O’Connor, who served in the White House’s office of legislative affairs under President George W. Bush and whose Capitol Hill work experience included a stint as an aide to former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert.

    In addition to its in-house lobbyists, Oxbow retains the lobbying services of Heather Podesta & Partners, including the firm’s namesake, Heather Podesta, one of D.C.’s most recognizable lobbyists.

    Last year, Oxbow spent $1.6 million on lobbying — a record for the company. That’s up from $510,000 in 2011, and up from $30,000 in 2009, the year Obama took office. This year, it is on pace to again post some of its highest totals.

    During the first half of 2013 alone, Oxbow spent $620,000 lobbying Congress and the Department of Interior on a range of business concerns. Among them: Koch’s desired land swap in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, as well as proposals related to greenhouse gas regulations, coal leasing on federal lands, fracking and tax reform proposals affecting the energy industry, according to federal records.

    PAC also leans right

    While Koch’s companies were at the forefront of super PAC activity following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, they only recently began giving money through traditional political action committees. Traditional PACs, unlike super PACs, are limited in what they can raise, but they may donate directly to candidates’ campaigns.

    Oxbow Carbon LLC itself does not sponsor a political action committee, but Koch’s Oxbow Carbon and Minerals LLC does, having established a corporate PAC in 2007. Since then, it has been extremely active.

    During the 2012 election cycle, the PAC doled out $112,000 to candidates and committees, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of federal records — that’s more than twice as much as it gave to politicians before the 2010 midterms and about seven times as much as it gave out during its inaugural election cycle in 2008.

    Like Koch himself, not only did Oxbow Carbon and Minerals’ PAC donate more lavishly leading up to the 2012 election, it was also more partisan with its giving.

    Prior to the 2008 election, roughly half of the PAC’s contributions aided Democrats, including the legal maximum of $4,600 to U.S. Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado. But ahead of the election last November, for every $1 the Oxbow Carbon and Minerals PAC gave to Democrats, it gave about $4.50 to Republicans.

    This year, the PAC has already contributed to the re-election campaigns of several GOP leaders, including House Minority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.; House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.; House Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich.; and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich.

    All four GOP members of the Colorado delegation in the House also are also among the PAC’s beneficiaries, as is incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.

    Overall, in the first six months of 2013, the PAC doled out $40,500 — with 73 percent of that sum aiding Republicans.

    When asked about the PAC contributions, Goldstein, the Oxbow spokesman, said he was “glad” that the PAC’s footprint had been “growing.”

    The coming storm

    The Obama administration’s willingness to tackle climate change has also been growing.

    “I’m here to say we need to act,” Obama said during a June speech at Georgetown University, when he announced a new “national climate action plan.”

    “We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society,” Obama continued. “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.”

    The president has tasked the Environmental Protection Agency with completing new carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants. And because of this role, it’s become a lightning rod for critics who see the Obama administration as waging a “war on energy” and a “war on coal.”

    For their part, House Republicans have pushed legislation to restrict the EPA’s ability to enact regulations they view as harming the economy. And Senate Republicans only recently dropped their objections to Obama’s new pick to head the agency, Gina McCarthy, who was nominated in March but didn’t get a confirmation vote until July 18. Just six GOP senators voted to support her.

    Oxbow spokesman Goldstein declined to speculate on the company’s future political giving other than to say it will continue backing candidates that support free enterprise.

    “We’re all about business,” he said.
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The Koch brothers’ secret bank

Postby Allegro » Fri Sep 13, 2013 10:32 am

Highlights mine.

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Exclusive: The Koch brothers’ secret bank
Politico, Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei | September 11, 2013 09:00 PM EDT

    An Arlington, Va.-based conservative group, whose existence until now was unknown to almost everyone in politics, raised and spent $250 million in 2012 to shape political and policy debate nationwide.

    The group, Freedom Partners, and its president, Marc Short, serve as an outlet for the ideas and funds of the mysterious Koch brothers, cutting checks as large as $63 million to groups promoting conservative causes, according to an IRS document to be filed shortly.

    The 38-page IRS filing amounts to the Rosetta Stone of the vast web of conservative groups — some prominent, some obscure — that spend time, money and resources to influence public debate, especially over Obamacare.

    The group has about 200 donors, each paying at least $100,000 in annual dues. It raised $256 million in the year after its creation in November 2011, the document shows. And it made grants of $236 million — meaning a totally unknown group was the largest sugar daddy for conservative groups in the last election, second in total spending only to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which together spent about $300 million.

    Short, a soft-spoken but ferociously conservative 43-year-old operative, provided us a draft of a forthcoming IRS filing that will soon be available to the public. Short, like most in the Koch empire, feels wealthy conservative activists such as Charles and David Koch get a bum rap from the media. So, Short wants to ease his groups and their cause out of the shadows.

    “There’s a mystery around us that makes an interesting story,” Short said in an interview in his conference room. “There’s also a vilification that happens that gets exaggerated when your opposition thinks you’re secretive. Our members are proud to be part of [the organization].”

    Democrats have their own vast web of secretive funders — and Short is right: Few liberals got as much scrutiny as the Koch brothers over the past few years.

    But the “proud” donors are not so proud they will publicly identify themselves as donors. Short refused to open up about the men and women behind the quarter-billion-dollar fund, beyond saying that Koch-linked entities provided a “minority” of the funds and that the largest single donor gave about $25 million.

    Freedom Partners is organized under the same section of the Tax Code as a trade association, a 501(c)6, which allows the group to conceal its donors from public release, although the amounts and recipients of its major grants are public.

    The filing offers a rare tour of the conservative movement and how it gets its funds:

    • Center to Protect Patient Rights, a group that vehemently opposes Obamacare: a total of $115 million, from three grants.

    • Americans for Prosperity, an organizing and advocacy group that is courted by Republican presidential candidates: $32.3 million.

    • The 60 Plus Association, a free-market seniors group that also opposes Obamacare: $15.7 million.

    • American Future Fund, an Iowa group that spent a lot of money on ads in 2012, many for Mitt Romney: $13.6 million.

    • Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, which gets involved in a number of social policy debates: $8.2 million.

    • Themis Trust, a Koch-based voter database that is made available to other conservative organizations: $5.8 million.

    • Public Notice, a fiscal policy think tank: $5.5 million.

    • Generation Opportunity, a group for “liberty-loving” young people: $5 million.

    • The LIBRE Initiative, which targets a free-market message to Hispanic immigrants: $3.1 million.

    • The National Rifle Association: $3.5 million.

    • The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: $2 million.

    • American Energy Alliance: $1.5 million.

    • And several groups — including the State Tea Party Express, the Tea Party Patriots and Heritage Action for America — got less than $1 million each.

    Members are drawn from the Koch brothers’ semiannual conferences, a 10-year-old tradition that draws top politicians — including, last month, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Many seminar attendees also give directly to Koch-approved groups, and the Freedom Partners funds do not include the Kochs’ many gifts to university think tanks.

    Short says his members are “concerned that the nation that they grew up in and that their businesses have flourished in will not be there for their children and grandchildren,” and are “committed to trying to restore what they view are free markets in a free society in America.” Many, he said, are “Horatio Alger-type stories,” most of them not household names, who got rich after starting small businesses, from service to manufacturing to information technology: “They are really worried about the country that’s going to be left for their future generations.”

    Freedom Partners now has 48 employees. The executive director is Richard Ribbentrop, a former head of the New York Stock Exchange’s Washington office, who was chief of staff to former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and longtime legislative director to Sen. Phil Gramm, both Texas Republicans. At Hutchison’s office, Ribbentrop hired Short, who succeeded him as chief of staff. Short later was chief of staff to then-Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), who was chairman of the House Republican Conference, and is now governor of Indiana. The Freedom Partners vice president of strategic communications is James Davis, who was communications director of the 2012 Republican National Convention.

    The group has five directors: Short; Wayne Gable, a longtime Koch Industries employee who was the new group’s first director and holds a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University; Richard Fink, a Ph.D. in economics who is president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation; Kevin Gentry, a Koch official and vice chairman of the Republican Party of Virginia; and Nestor Weigand, a board member of Regal Entertainment Group and former president of the National Association of Realtors.

    We asked Short what he has to show for all that money spent in 2012, when Republicans failed at a within-reach effort to take back the Senate and Romney left the GOP in a deep hole by getting wiped out among some demographic groups, including Hispanic and Asian voters. “Our members are committed to the long term,” Short said, “not to one individual cycle.”

    Kenneth P. Vogel contributed.

    © 2013 POLITICO LLC
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ALEC Corporations update

Postby Allegro » Fri Sep 13, 2013 11:01 am

ALEC Corporations

The alphabetical list below contains the names of for-profit corporations that are known to be, or to have been, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) members or supporters.

Find corporate trade groups here.
Find other special interest groups here.
Find ALEC law and lobbying firms here.
Find government groups here.
Find corporations that have cut ties to ALEC here.
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ALEC | Turning Back the Clock

Postby Allegro » Fri Sep 13, 2013 11:02 am

Read the full report here 41 pp. pdf.

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ALEC at 40: Turning Back the Clock on Prosperity and Progress
PR Watch Staff | August 8, 2013 - 9:30am
Projects: ALEC Exposed

New Report Identifies 466 ALEC Bills in 2013 That Reflect Corporate Agenda

For Immediate Release: August 8, 2013

    Today, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) released a new report: “ALEC at 40: Turning Back the Clock on Prosperity and Progress.” The report identifies and analyzes 466 American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bills introduced in 2013.

    ImageThis week, ALEC celebrates its 40th anniversary in Chicago. At this meeting -- as in all ALEC meetings -- lobbyists from U.S. and foreign corporations will vote as equals alongside state legislators to adopt ALEC “model” bills, which then will be distributed nationwide with little or no disclosure of their ALEC roots.

    In 2013, ALEC is going to new lengths to hide its lobbying of legislators from the public eye. It has taken to stamping all its documents as exempt from state public records laws, dodging open records with a “dropbox” website, and other tricks. After Watergate, many states strengthened their laws regarding open meetings and open records, but real sunshine on government is anathema to ALEC.

    “When ALEC was born, Richard Nixon was president. Gasoline was 40 cents a gallon and the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. Forty years later, ALEC legislators seem to be hankering for this bygone era, pursuing an agenda to roll back renewables, expand the use of fossil fuels, and suppress wages and benefits for even the lowest paid American workers,” says CMD Director of Research Nick Surgey.

    In this report, the CMD identifies 466 ALEC “model” bills introduced in 2013, but pursuing a retrograde agenda.

    Key Findings:

    CMD identified 466 ALEC bills from the 2013 session. 84 of these passed and became law. ALEC bills were introduced in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in 2013. The top ALEC states were West Virginia (25 bills) and Missouri (21 bills).

    Despite ALEC’s effort to distance itself from Voter ID and Stand Your Ground by disbanding its controversial Public Safety and Elections Task Force, 62 of these laws were introduced: 10 Stand Your Ground bills and 52 bills to enact or tighten Voter ID restrictions. Five states enacted additional Voter ID restrictions, and two states passed Stand Your Ground.

    CMD identified 117 ALEC bills that affect wages and worker rights. 14 of these became law. These bills included so-called “Right to Work” legislation, part of the ALEC agenda since at least 1979, introduced in 15 states this year. Other bills would preempt local living or minimum wage ordinances, facilitate the privatization of public services, scrap defined benefit pension plans, or undermine the ability of unions to organize to protect workers.

    CMD identified 139 ALEC bills that affect public education. 31 of these became law. Just seven states did not have an ALEC education bill introduced this year. Among other things, these bills would siphon taxpayer money from the public education system to benefit for-profit private schools, including the “Great Schools Tax Credit Act,” introduced in 10 states.

    CMD identified 77 ALEC bills that advance a polluter agenda. 17 of these became law. Numerous ALEC “model” bills were introduced that promote a fossil fuel and fracking agenda and undermine environmental regulations. The “Electricity Freedom Act,” which would repeal state renewable portfolio standards, was introduced in six states this year.

    CMD identified 71 ALEC bills narrowing citizen access to the courts. 14 of these became law. These bills cap damages, limit corporate liability, or otherwise make it more difficult for citizens to hold corporations to account when their products or services result in injury or death.

    CMD identified nine states that have been inspired by ALEC’s “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” to crack down on videographers documenting abuses on factory farms. These so-called “ag-gag” bills erode First Amendment rights, and threaten the ability of journalists and investigators to pursue food safety and animal welfare investigations.

    CMD identified 11 states that introduced bills to override or prevent local paid sick leave ordinances, such as the one recently enacted in New York City. At least eight of these bills were sponsored by known ALEC members. Although ALEC has not adopted a preemption bill as an official “model,” ALEC member the National Restaurant Association brought a bill to override local paid sick leave ordinances to an ALEC meeting in 2011, along with a target map and other materials.

    ALEC has faced increasing scrutiny since CMD launched its ALEC Exposed project in July 2011, making the entire ALEC library of more than 800 “model” bills publicly available for the first time. Since then, groups including Color of Change, Common Cause, Progress Now, People for the American Way, the Voters Legislative Transparency Project, and others have put ALEC in the spotlight like never before.

    To date, 49 major American corporations have dumped ALEC, including some of the largest firms in the world.
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Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning

Postby Allegro » Tue Oct 08, 2013 12:25 pm

Thanks, SLAD, for the original post here.
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Image
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning

Michael Stravato for The New York Times
Image
"You are here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare. This is a fight we can win." SENATOR TED CRUZ, speaking in August to a Heritage Action gathering in Dallas
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MIKE McINTIRE
Published: October 5, 2013

WASHINGTON — Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.

DRIVING FORCES David Koch of Americans for Prosperity, Michael A. Needham of Heritage Action and former Attorney General Edwin Meese III played roles in the health law fight.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.

It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.

“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”

Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.

To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.

With polls showing Americans deeply divided over the law, conservatives believe that the public is behind them. Although the law’s opponents say that shutting down the government was not their objective, the activists anticipated that a shutdown could occur — and worked with members of the Tea Party caucus in Congress who were excited about drawing a red line against a law they despise.

A defunding “tool kit” created in early September included talking points for the question, “What happens when you shut down the government and you are blamed for it?” The suggested answer was the one House Republicans give today: “We are simply calling to fund the entire government except for the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare.”

The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.

The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight. Included was $5 million to Generation Opportunity, which created a buzz last month with an Internet advertisement showing a menacing Uncle Sam figure popping up between a woman’s legs during a gynecological exam.

The groups have also sought to pressure vulnerable Republican members of Congress with scorecards keeping track of their health care votes; have burned faux “Obamacare cards” on college campuses; and have distributed scripts for phone calls to Congressional offices, sample letters to editors and Twitter and Facebook offerings for followers to present as their own.

One sample Twitter offering — “Obamacare is a train wreck” — is a common refrain for Speaker John A. Boehner.

As the defunding movement picked up steam among outside advocates, Republicans who sounded tepid became targets. The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee dedicated to “electing true conservatives,” ran radio advertisements against three Republican incumbents.

Heritage Action ran critical Internet advertisements in the districts of 100 Republican lawmakers who had failed to sign a letter by a North Carolina freshman, Representative Mark Meadows, urging Mr. Boehner to take up the defunding cause.

“They’ve been hugely influential,” said David Wasserman, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “When else in our history has a freshman member of Congress from North Carolina been able to round up a gang of 80 that’s essentially ground the government to a halt?”

On Capitol Hill, the advocates found willing partners in Tea Party conservatives, who have repeatedly threatened to shut down the government if they do not get their way on spending issues. This time they said they were so alarmed by the health law that they were willing to risk a shutdown over it. (“This is exactly what the public wants,” Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, said on the eve of the shutdown.)
Despite Mrs. Bachmann’s comments, not all of the groups have been on board with the defunding campaign. Some, like the Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity, which spent $5.5 million on health care television advertisements over the past three months, are more focused on sowing public doubts about the law. But all have a common goal, which is to cripple a measure that Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and leader of the defunding effort, has likened to a horror movie.
Enlarge This Image

Americans for Prosperity
SOWING DOUBT A site by Americans for Prosperity, which has spent $5.5 million recently on television ads critical of the health care law.
“We view this as a long-term effort,” said Tim Phillips, the president of Americans for Prosperity. He said his group expected to spend “tens of millions” of dollars on a “multifront effort” that includes working to prevent states from expanding Medicaid under the law. The group’s goal is not to defund the law.

“We want to see this law repealed,” Mr. Phillips said.

A Familiar Tactic

The crowd was raucous at the Hilton Anatole, just north of downtown Dallas, when Mr. Needham’s group, Heritage Action, arrived on a Tuesday in August for the second stop on a nine-city “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour.” Nearly 1,000 people turned out to hear two stars of the Tea Party movement: Mr. Cruz, and Jim DeMint, a former South Carolina senator who runs the Heritage Foundation.

“You’re here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare,” declared Mr. Cruz, who would go on to rail against the law on the Senate floor in September with a monologue that ran for 21 hours. “This is a fight we can win.”

Although Mr. Cruz is new to the Senate, the tactic of defunding in Washington is not. For years, Congress has banned the use of certain federal money to pay for abortions, except in the case of incest and rape, by attaching the so-called Hyde Amendment to spending bills.

After the health law passed in 2010, Todd Tiahrt, then a Republican congressman from Kansas, proposed defunding bits and pieces of it. He said he spoke to Mr. Boehner’s staff about the idea while the Supreme Court, which upheld the central provision, was weighing the law’s constitutionality.

“There just wasn’t the appetite for it at the time,” Mr. Tiahrt said in an interview. “They thought, we don’t need to worry about it because the Supreme Court will strike it down.”

But the idea of using the appropriations process to defund an entire federal program, particularly one as far-reaching as the health care overhaul, raised the stakes considerably. In an interview, Mr. DeMint, who left the Senate to join the Heritage Foundation in January, said he had been thinking about it since the law’s passage, in part because Republican leaders were not more aggressive.

“They’ve been through a series of C.R.s and debt limits,” Mr. DeMint said, referring to continuing resolutions on spending, “and all the time there was discussion of ‘O.K., we’re not going to fight the Obamacare fight, we’ll do it next time.’ The conservatives who ran in 2010 promising to repeal it kept hearing, ‘This is not the right time to fight this battle.’ ”

Mr. DeMint is hardly alone in his distaste for the health law, or his willingness to do something about it. In the three years since Mr. Obama signed the health measure, Tea Party-inspired groups have mobilized, aided by a financing network that continues to grow, both in its complexity and the sheer amount of money that flows through it.

A review of tax records, campaign finance reports and corporate filings shows that hundreds of millions of dollars have been raised and spent since 2012 by organizations, many of them loosely connected, leading opposition to the measure.

One of the biggest sources of conservative money is Freedom Partners, a tax-exempt “business league” that claims more than 200 members, each of whom pays at least $100,000 in dues. The group’s board is headed by a longtime executive of Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by the Koch brothers, who were among the original financiers of the Tea Party movement. The Kochs declined to comment.

While Freedom Partners has financed organizations that are pushing to defund the law, like Heritage Action and Tea Party Patriots, Freedom Partners has not advocated that. A spokesman for the group, James Davis, said it was more focused on “educating Americans around the country on the negative impacts of Obamacare.”

The largest recipient of Freedom Partners cash — about $115 million — was the Center to Protect Patient Rights, according to the groups’ latest tax filings. Run by a political consultant with ties to the Kochs and listing an Arizona post office box for its address, the center appears to be little more than a clearinghouse for donations to still more groups, including American Commitment and the 60 Plus Association, both ardent foes of the health care law.

American Commitment and 60 Plus were among a handful of groups calling themselves the “Repeal Coalition” that sent a letter in August urging Republican leaders in the House and the Senate to insist “at a minimum” in a one-year delay of carrying out the health care law as part of any budget deal. Another group, the Conservative 50 Plus Alliance, delivered a defunding petition with 68,700 signatures to the Senate.

In the fight to shape public opinion, conservatives face well-organized liberal foes. Enroll America, a nonprofit group allied with the Obama White House, is waging a campaign to persuade millions of the uninsured to buy coverage. The law’s supporters are also getting huge assistance from the insurance industry, which is expected to spend $1 billion on advertising to help sell its plans on the exchanges.

“It is David versus Goliath,” said Mr. Phillips of Americans for Prosperity.

But conservatives are finding that with relatively small advertising buys, they can make a splash. Generation Opportunity, the youth-oriented outfit behind the “Creepy Uncle Sam” ads, is spending $750,000 on that effort, aimed at dissuading young people — a cohort critical to the success of the health care overhaul — from signing up for insurance under the new law.

The group receives substantial backing from Freedom Partners and appears ready to expand. Recently, Generation Opportunity moved into spacious new offices in Arlington, Va., where exposed ductwork, Ikea chairs and a Ping-Pong table give off the feel of a Silicon Valley start-up.

Its executive director, Evan Feinberg, a 29-year-old former Capitol Hill aide and onetime instructor for a leadership institute founded by Charles Koch, said there would be more Uncle Sam ads, coupled with college campus visits, this fall. Two other groups, FreedomWorks, with its “Burn Your Obamacare Card” protests, and Young Americans for Liberty, are also running campus events.

“A lot of folks have asked us, ‘Are we trying to sabotage the law?’ ” Mr. Feinberg said in an interview last week. His answer echoes the Freedom Partners philosophy: “Our goal is to educate and empower young people.”

Critical Timing

But many on the Republican right wanted to do more.

Mr. Meese’s low-profile coalition, the Conservative Action Project, which seeks to find common ground among leaders of an array of fiscally and socially conservative groups, was looking ahead to last Tuesday, when the new online health insurance marketplaces, called exchanges, were set to open. If the law took full effect as planned, many conservatives feared, it would be nearly impossible to repeal — even if a Republican president were elected in 2016.

“I think people realized that with the imminent beginning of Obamacare, that this was a critical time to make every effort to stop something,” Mr. Meese said in an interview. (He has since stepped down as the coalition’s chairman and has been succeeded by David McIntosh, a former congressman from Indiana.)

The defunding idea, Mr. Meese said, was “a logical strategy.” The idea drew broad support. Fiscal conservatives like Chris Chocola, the president of the Club for Growth, signed on to the blueprint. So did social and religious conservatives, like the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition.

The document set a target date: March 27, when a continuing resolution allowing the government to function was to expire. Its message was direct: “Conservatives should not approve a C.R. unless it defunds Obamacare.”

But the March date came and went without a defunding struggle. In the Senate, Mr. Cruz and Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, talked up the defunding idea, but it went nowhere in the Democratic-controlled chamber. In the House, Mr. Boehner wanted to concentrate instead on locking in the across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration, and Tea Party lawmakers followed his lead. Outside advocates were unhappy but held their fire.

“We didn’t cause any trouble,” Mr. Chocola said.

Yet by summer, with an August recess looming and another temporary spending bill expiring at the end of September, the groups were done waiting.

“I remember talking to reporters at the end of July, and they said, ‘This didn’t go anywhere,’ ” Mr. Needham recalled. “What all of us felt at the time was, this was never going to be a strategy that was going to win inside the Beltway. It was going to be a strategy where, during August, people would go home and hear from their constituents, saying: ‘You pledged to do everything you could to stop Obamacare. Will you defund it?’ ”

Heritage Action, which has trained 6,000 people it calls sentinels around the country, sent them to open meetings and other events to confront their elected representatives. Its “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour,” which began in Fayetteville, Ark., on Aug. 19 and ended 10 days later in Wilmington, Del., drew hundreds at every stop.

The Senate Conservatives Fund, led by Mr. DeMint when he was in the Senate, put up a Web site in July called dontfundobamacare.com and ran television ads featuring Mr. Cruz and Mr. Lee urging people to tell their representatives not to fund the law.

When Senator Richard M. Burr, a North Carolina Republican, told a reporter that defunding the law was “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard,” the fund bought a radio ad to attack him. Two other Republican senators up for re-election in 2014, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were also targeted. Both face Tea Party challengers.

In Washington, Tea Party Patriots, which created the defunding tool kit, set up a Web site, exemptamerica.com, to promote a rally last month showcasing many of the Republicans in Congress whom Democrats — and a number of fellow Republicans — say are most responsible for the shutdown.

While conservatives believe that the public will back them on defunding, a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority — 57 percent — disapproves of cutting off funding as a way to stop the law.

Last week, with the health care exchanges open for business and a number of prominent Republicans complaining that the “Defund Obamacare” strategy was politically damaging and pointless, Mr. Needham of Heritage Action said he felt good about what the groups had accomplished.

“It really was a groundswell,” he said, “that changed Washington from the outside in.”
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ALEC trick at Federal Level EXPOSED

Postby Allegro » Tue Oct 08, 2013 12:35 pm

RESOURCE

Originally posted here by SLAD.
Another ALEC trick at Federal Level EXPOSED
dailykos, Bob Sloan | Aug 20, 2011

By now many thought they had heard everything to be heard about ALEC and their un-democratic activities. This is simply not true. As I said to a fellow Exposing ALEC member earlier today..."we once thought ALEC was the complete picture of an 'Evil Empire', but after all this research we have to realize that in reality ALEC is merely a single frame of a huge panoramic picture." ALEC only represents one tool in the arsenal of a well organized, well thought out, well funded and well oiled cabal. Using ALEC's ability to advance legislation beneficial to the collective is ALEC's purpose for existence. It is why Koch, Scaife, Coors' and DeVos' money is invested in their activities.

How is this money and participation between all these "Family" foundations coordinated? Twice a year Charles and David Koch hold secret, by invitation only "meetings". Last year's July meeting, the agenda and the attendants were discovered by accident and published for all to see by ThinkProgress.org. As can be determined by the documents, representatives of the Scaife's, Coors' and DeVos' foundations were in attendance. The Corporations were also represented along with members of the Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute and Koch funded universities such as George Mason University. The rest of those in attendance represent the upper echelon of conservative society. Through these meetings all are given their marching orders, the foundations told where to invest their considerable wealth and the elite and media representatives...? They're told to use key phrases developed by the cabal to describe in sarcastic terms, the Democratic efforts. They're told to use "socialism", "Obamacare" and "EPA Train Wreck" at every opportunity to reinforce the collective's pursuits against this leftist "ideology." ALEC quickly issues statements, "papers" on key issues and to the public, complaining that Obamacare is socialist medicine, the EPA Train Wreck is not working and each of these position papers is supported by statistics, graphs and professor-like documents provided to them by GMU, Heartland Institute, Reason Foundation or the Heritage Foundation.

The corporations dutifully attend meetings to provide an instructive voice - and purpose - to the legislators. Much of the money begins with the family money of those mentioned above, it is filtered through many of the below the fold listed organizations, foundations, institutes:

American Council of Trustees and Alumni
American Legislative Exchange Council
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
Bill of Rights Institute
Center for Excellence in Education
Fund for American Studies
Heritage Foundation
Institute for Energy Research
Institute for Humane Studies
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
National Center for Policy Analysis
National Federation of Independent Business Legal Foundation
National Taxpayers Union Foundation
Reason Foundation
Students for Liberty

PARTNERS BASED OUTSIDE OF DC

Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions
Foundation for Economic Education
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
Illinois Policy Institute
Jack Miller Center
John W. Pope Civitas Institute
John William Pope Foundation
Lucy Burns Institute
Sam Adams Alliance
South Carolina Policy Council
Texas Public Policy Foundation

ADDITIONAL PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS
Partner organizations change from session to session; additional organizations the Foundation has worked with through the Koch Internship Program and/or Koch Associate Program include:

Acton Institute
American Enterprise Institute
American Spectator Foundation
Americans for Tax Reform Foundation
Boys and Girls Club of South Central Kansas
Cato Institute
Center for College Affordability and Productivity
Commonwealth Foundation
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Federalist Society
Free to Choose Network
Galen Institute
George C. Marshall Institute
George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center
Hudson Institute
Independent Women's Forum
John Locke Foundation
John William Pope Center for Higher Education
Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship
Philanthropy Roundtable
State Policy Network
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Washington Legal Foundation
Youth Entrepreneurs Kansas

Our research has shown that all of the foregoing are interconnected and thus much of the Koch ideology and conservative rhetoric is carried along through the above entities with their money. Koch does not simply give their money out without keeping an eye on what those dollars are being used for. Every year Koch provides "interns" to serve in several of these key "organizations:"

American Ideas Institute, publisher of American Conservative Magazine
American Legislative Exchange Council
American Spectator Foundation
Atlas Economic Research Foundation
Bill of Rights Institute
Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
The Fund for American Studies
George Washington Regulatory Studies Center
George Marshall Institute
Hudson Institute
Independent Women's Forum
Institute for Energy Research
Institute for Humane Studies
Leadership Institute
Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship
Philanthropy Roundtable
Reason Foundation
Searle Civil Justice Institute at George Mason School of Law
State Policy Network

By doing this they accomplish two goals; first they provide workers for these organizations paid $10.00 per hour by Koch. This increases staffing for all of these organizations without costing them a cent in payroll (any doubts that this is all written off by Koch as charitable work for non-profits?). Secondly it gives Koch as many as ten sets of eyes and ears within each of those entities that can be used to ensure the messages and agenda are being met and followed.

Then we learned that Koch was involved in "Buying" the curricula and professorships at key public universities through the discovery of their 2008 $1.5 million "endowment" to Florida State University with strings attached:

The president of FSU, who defended the Koch deal, did not mention that such outside endowments are skewing the curriculum at state universities in unfortunate ways.
But here is the objectionable thing, which he admits, about the way the search for the positions was conducted:

‘These 50 applications were sent for input to an advisory board approved by the Koch Foundation. The advisory board, formed in 2008, consisted of two FSU faculty members, both Eminent Scholars in Economics, and a Ph.D. economist appointed by the Koch Foundation. (It is not unusual for a donor to have representation in an advisory capacity.)’

This allegation is simply untrue. It is not the case that academic institutions routinely insert an outside advisory board into the middle of the search process. In fact, this way of proceeding is absolutely outrageous, more particularly because one of the members of the advisory board was not even on the faculty! Moreover, it is invidious for the Kochs to give some FSU faculty more of a voice in hiring than others.

On top of this shock to FSU students, their families and alumni...we learn that it has been done over and over again, university by university and in each case involves gaining control over economic departments in public universities. Another one is Utah State University:

– Utah State University: The Charles Koch Foundation has given nearly $700,000 to Utah State University, mostly for the Huntsman School of Business. The money has been used to hire five new faculty members, and establish a program for undergraduates to enroll and learn about Charles Koch’s “Science of Liberty” management theory. Professor Randy Simmons, the “Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy” at the school, helps select students — who must provide information about their ideological interests in their application form — to the Koch program. Simmons also works for several Koch-funded front groups, and writes papers against environmental regulations. Charles Koch’s book, “The Science of Success,” a book Forbes mocked for proclaiming a “Marxist faith in ‘fixed laws’ that govern ‘human well-being,’” is part of the required reading list for the program. A representative for Utah State did not return ThinkProgress’ calls about conditional strings attached to the Koch grant.

So here's the pattern and methodology used by Koch; first they use ALEC's influence upon legislators to attack funding of public schools and universities. As the colleges lose public funding and are faced with cutting back educational programs...in steps Ol Chucky and Davy Boy with hands full of money ready to step in and "save" the collegiate programs. All they want in exchange is the ability to instill their bullshit economics theory, pick the professors and the students. In this way the find fodder from within that generation to cultivate for positions within government, interns and for other conservative needs in the years ahead.

If you think this is merely a coincidence and does not represent a well thought out agenda...let me now provide the tiny piece of our research that corroborates just how devious these folks are. Devious, well thought out and executed precisely as intended.

In 2003 ALEC drafted their Animal EnterpriseTerrorism Act and adopted it as model legislation. This was introduced in various states and the core of the bill was designed to allow for prosecuting those activist that protest on behalf of animal rights. If money is lost to businesses operating chicken farms, pig raising facilities or laboratories using animals for research are protested against, the activists can be labeled as terrorists and prosecuted under terrorism laws. Bad enough they introduced this in the states, but worse they found a way through their alumni and sympathetic Republican U.S. Congressmen to introduce and pass this model legislation at the federal level.

ALEC Alumni, Senator Inhofe (R-OK) co-sponsored this ALEC written legislation with Senator Feinstein (D-CA) in the U.S. Senate (S.3880) and Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI)(HR 4239). In both the House and Senate the bills were put on "Fast Track" which is normally used for “non-controversial bipartisan legislation,” these “fast track” rules limit debate to forty minutes, prohibit bill amendments, and require the approval of only two thirds of members present on the floor. First the bill was passed in the U.S. Senate by a voice vote then the House took it up and sponsors there found many objections to the legislation. Knowing passage was not assured but a vote was scheduled for 6:00 pm on November 13, 2006, the Republicans led by Representative Sensenbrenner R_WI) used the fast track provision three hours before the scheduled time for the vote when other members were unaware of the change in schedule. Once introduced Rep. Kucinich (D_OH) walked in and protested the way in which the fast tracking was being used and asked Sensenbrenner to withhold the vote until the 6:00 pm time originally scheduled so other members could take part in the discussion and vote.

Sensenbrenner refused and within 3 minutes he put it to a vote and with only 6 members present, 5 voted for it and it passed by a 2/3 majority. It was signed into law by President Bush within two weeks.

In this manner ALEC legislation was able to become law with only 5 of the 435 House members voting for this ALEC written legislation! During our research we discovered another scary fact: the Congressional records office has no record of who was present and voted, and thus the identities of those who voted for the Bill remain anonymous to researchers and the public. The official Congressional report for that day simply advises that the bill passed by a majority voice vote of 5 to 1 and no record of those participating in the vote were reported to the Congressional Records Office.

As I said above, well funded, strategically well thought out, organized and tactically executed - not at the state level, at the federal level, where ALEC claims over and over again they don't have or apply any influence. This is just one documented case of this. With the research incomplete, I have to wonder just how many other ALEC model legislation has been slipped into Congress and passed into federal law in this manner?

Kossacks who want to know the answer to this last question are challenged to join in the research and see if they can find other laws we live by that were passed in this manner - from ALEC.

I think it is pretty obvious and a well documented fact that today America is in the grip of not only a class war, but one that is being waged from within by a shadowy cabal who are working to take over and toss democracy out the window. One of their main goals is to reduce the wealth of the middle class and thus their ability to fight back. This is done in a manner similar to what is being done with the universities mentioned above. They remove our jobs and put them in the hands of prisoners, rendering more and more Americans jobless. They work to legislate reductions in funding for social networks and programs helping those displaced and jobless. They fight against universal health care to keep us spending more of what is left to us to maintain our health while they fight to abolish necessary government regulations to protect us from the carcinogenic and toxic emissions from their plants and factories...causing more of us to become adversely affected by the very air we breathe.

And of late they use more ALEC model legislation designed to further remove even the equity in our homes from us through their Reverse Mortgage Enabling Act - YES!, this is also an ALEC drafted and written legislation. In a report proposing the implementation of reverse mortgages, the purpose of this financing is to allow seniors to access the equity in their homes to use that money to pay for necessary healthcare insurance policies and long term care:

“Payments from a reverse mortgage can help reduce dependence on Medicaid by lowering the likelihood for spend-down. Increased use of this financial option for long-term care could result in savings to Medicaid ranging from about $3.3 to almost $5 billion annually in 2010, depending on market penetration rates increasing from 4 percent to 25 percent of older homeowners.

“As the population ages and the pressure on state Medicaid budgets rises, it becomes increasingly important to find effective ways to improve our long-term care financing system. Funding the growing demand for long-term care is a major national challenge that will require increased spending by both the public and private sectors. This study provides compelling evidence that reverse mortgages have the potential to significantly increase the funds available to pay for home and community-based long-term care. By liquidating a portion of their housing wealth, older homeowners could access a substantial amount of cash. With appropriate incentives, careful protections, and innovative products, greater use of reverse mortgages may offer additional options for seniors to manage assets to pay for long-term care at home.”

The way to capitalize off of this for Medicaid is for seniors to pay their own way on extended care, hospice or other needs. This includes those seniors buying long term healthcare policies with the money advanced through the reverse mortgage. There are also provisions allowing for high interest that is compounded resulting in the loan accruing interest upon interest, and a provision to avoid usury prohibitions:

Reverse mortgage loans may be made or acquired without regard to the following provisions for other types of mortgage transactions set out in the statutes specified below;
(D) Requirements that a maximum mortgage amount be stated in the mortgage;
(E) Limitations on loan-to-value ratios;
(F) Prohibitions on balloon payments;
(G) Prohibitions on compounded interest and interest on interest;
(H) Interest rate limits under the usury statutes; and
(I) Requirements that a percentage of the loan proceeds must be advanced prior to loan assignment.

Through the Reverse Mortgage Act analysts reported there was more than $2 Trillion available as untapped equity in the homes of seniors. The cabal want to lay their hands on this money to use it to reduce Medicaid costs and thus free up state money now used for that program to be available for other uses. The Reverse Mortgage Act is but one of over 800 initiatives or model bills written by ALEC over the past two decades. The ads in the mainstream media (another of their enablers) urging seniors to take advantage of a reverse mortgages, make no mention of the true intent of the legislation.

All of us have seen the slick ads on TV about reverse mortgages. Have any of you seen the real purpose of this legislation advertised? Are most of those who are attracted to this option even aware that it is intended to allow the banks to loan them money and that for as long as the loan is in effect (not paid off) that the high interest of the loan accrues and is compounded allowing for the financial institution to earn interest on the interest that is added to the principal? Do they realize that once they pass away, their families have to pay the principal and all of the accrued interest if they want to keep a home that has possibly been in the family for generations?"

In this way the frigging banks - that stole our pensions, 401k's and retirement investments and caused our property to decrease in value by as much as 50% over the past two or three years - now have a way to pay 60 to 80 cents on the dollar and acquire the title to and rights to our homes. This serves to further reduce the money available to our children and families. The homes that slick advertising has seniors calling to turn their homes over to these lenders, is being used to quietly remove the last vestiges of wealth to the middle class. When all of this is added to the attack upon public, civilian and Union workers, legislating to abolish the minimum wage and other machinations to reduce us to a society of 300 million living in poverty conditions, with even our rights to vote taken through their legislation...these corporations and their wealthy owners will have created a Utopian (to the corporations) nation with a working class to their liking.

They envision the next and subsequent generations living in rented homes (owned by them) buying the products they sell (made by us at wages lower than now paid in China) and our children being educated (indoctrinated) with altered history to their liking and a new economy based upon their failed "trickle down economics" formula.

It's really time for all of us to awaken and pick up our pitch forks and toss these insidious bastards from our land and our nation. They are nothing more than 21st Century "Carpetbaggers" looking to eliminate all form of government control, protection and assistance to the majority and replace that with corporatocracy....

10:02 AM PT: Update: Watch this short video of ALEC and Heritage Foundation co-founder, Paul Weyrich speaking about why they opposed Hillary Clinton in 2008. See how Weyrich worries that their activities would be redefined as terrorism:

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ALEC gets gift from Nuclear Energy Institute

Postby Allegro » Sun Nov 17, 2013 1:17 am

Most of the information in this article is old, but I think I highlighted the newish.

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ALEC gets gift from Nuclear Energy Institute
Industry trade group contributed $10,000 to controversial think tank
Center for Public Integrity, Michael Beckel | Updated: 5:29 pm, November 12, 2013

    The American Legislative Exchange Council, known for churning out industry-friendly legislation, received $10,000 from the Nuclear Energy Institute last year, according to a new tax filing obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

    The Nuclear Energy Institute — the nuclear industry’s main trade association — disclosed the payment to the controversial think tank in an annual report recently submitted to the Internal Revenue Service.

    ALEC, which is organized as a charity under Sec. 501(c)(3) of the tax code to promote “free markets” and “limited government” in the states, is not required to publicly identify its funders.

    Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Kerekes said his group contributed to ALEC as a way to “increase awareness of energy and environmental considerations among state and local” officials.

    A spokesperson for ALEC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    One of the main goals of the Nuclear Energy Institute is “to achieve a predictable and stable regulatory environment,” according to materials published on its website. Another is “to achieve durable, bipartisan political support for nuclear energy.”

    ALEC, which is composed mainly of business interests and state-level Republican lawmakers, maintains an “Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force” that seeks “to ensure states remain the first among equals with the federal government on environmental regulation.”

    For its part, ALEC raised $8.4 million in 2012 — a year during which it faced fierce criticism for its activities.

    Several major corporations — including McDonald’s and Coca-Cola — and dozens of state officials dropped out of ALEC last year after the shooting death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin. Liberal groups had called for boycotts of ALEC-affiliated companies because ALEC had championed the “stand your ground” law at play in the case.

    In 2012, ALEC was also the subject of an IRS complaint from a handful of liberal-leaning ministers in Ohio that was written by attorney Marcus Owens, the former director for the tax agency’s exempt-organizations division. The complaint alleged that ALEC “elevates commercial gain for a few over the well-being of society’s less fortunate” and should be stripped of its 501(c)(3) charity status.

    Overall, IRS records show the Nuclear Energy Institute spent $55.5 million in 2012 and doled out a total of $627,200 to 26 nonprofit organizations, including ALEC.

    Its top beneficiaries were Third Way, a Democratic-aligned group that claims to represent “Americans in the ‘vital center,’” which got $155,000, and the Bipartisan Policy Center, a charity whose founders include Republican Bob Dole and Democrat Tom Daschle, which got $120,000.
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Re: Koch Brothers thread

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Wed May 28, 2014 4:16 pm

I downloaded it on my phone today but haven't used it yet.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconno ... ping-cart/

In her keynote speech at last year’s annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft MSFT -0.36% programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.

Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, one of the world’s largest fiber and textiles companies, in 2004 from DuPont).

At the time, Burner created a mock interface for her app, but that’s as far as she got. She was waiting to find the right team to build out the back end, which could be complicated given often murky corporate ownership structures.

She wasn’t aware that as she delivered her Netroots speech, a group of developers was hard at work on Buycott, an even more sophisticated version of the app she proposed.

“I remember reading Forbes’ story on the proposed app to help boycott Koch Industries and wishing that we were ready to launch our product,” said Buycott’s marketing director Maceo Martinez.

The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said. Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.

Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and Google GOOG -0.75% Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.

Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

Deciding to add that campaign to your Buycott app might make buying your breakfast nearly impossible, as that list includes not just headline grabbers like agricultural giant Monsanto but just about every big consumer company with a presence in the supermarket aisle: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft, Heinz, Kellogg’s, Unilever and more.

Buycott is still working on adding new data to its back end and fine-tuning its information on corporate ownership structures. Most companies in the current database actually own more brands than Buycott has on record. The developers are asking shoppers to help improve their technology by inputting names of products they scan that the app doesn’t already recognize.

And if this all sounds worthy but depressing, be assured that your next trip to the supermarket needn’t be all doom and gloom. There are Buycott campaigns encouraging shoppers to support brands that have, say, openly backed LGBT rights. You can scan a bottle of Absolut vodka or a bag of Starbucks coffee beans and learn that both companies have come out for equal marriage.

“I don’t want to push any single point of view with the app,” said Pardo. “For me, it was critical to allow users to create campaigns because I don’t think it’s Buycott’s role to tell people what to buy. We simply want to provide a platform that empowers consumers to make well-informed purchasing decisions.”

Forbes reached out to Koch Industries and Monsanto for comment and will update this story with any responses.
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Re: Koch Brothers thread

Postby JackRiddler » Wed May 28, 2014 4:25 pm

Wow, I've been waiting for this for decades. I've always thought there should be a labeling requirement that all goods state who the ultimate corporate owner is!
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