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Kochs Plan to Spend $900 Million on 2016 Campaign

disneydude said:
Choosing a President is a little more important than choosing peanut butter. We are already influenced by China and other countries over the products we purchased. Do you want to allow them to buy our Presidency as well?
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this is about the 2016 election, or peanut butter. How did it become about the president?
 
Hard Truth said:
Although there is a legal difference, there is little real-world difference between donating to a candidate and donating to a PAC supporting a candidate. I'm aware that PACS can not coordinate with, or be directed by, a candidate's campaign, but the candidate is aware that the corporation made a donation to support his run for office and still owes the corporation a favor. That is still true even when the money came from the corporation's employees or otherwise indirectly.

I am not against the Citizens United decision, because the Supreme Court was correct that it is a first amendment issue, but I am concerned about the fact that a small number of very rich people and large corporations having too much influence on our government.
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I'm not against the CU decision either, even though I knew it meant that Unions would benefit greatly, and I usually tend to oppose the candidates who are the Union darlings. There are winners and losers in every SCOTUS decision.
 
Paschendale said:
There is ample evidence. There was a century-long ban on corporate spending on elections on Montana because the coal companies were literally buying up elections. Just recently, John Oliver did a segment on a state lawmaker who lead the charge against regulating payday loan companies because of his own stake in several of them. This is the military industrial complex that Eisenhower was warning against. The evidence is everywhere. The only way not to see it is to shut your eyes.

Some people learn to love their chains.
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I have no idea who John Oliver is. Please post a link to this segment he ran showing how the Koch Brothers influenced a lawmaker in Montana to cast a vote or sponsor a bill that he would not otherwise have done.
 
tres borrachos said:
I have no idea who John Oliver is. Please post a link to this segment he ran showing how the Koch Brothers influenced a lawmaker in Montana to cast a vote or sponsor a bill that he would not otherwise have done.
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Here is a video about the Koch brother influencing schools with lots of money and professors being forced to teach only one point of view, which is the Koch brothers view.


 
americanwoman said:
Here is a video about the Koch brother influencing schools with lots of money and professors being forced to teach only one point of view, which is the Koch brothers view.


[video=youtube_share;6f_7uE2rqWw]http://youtu.be/6f_7uE2rqWw[video]
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:doh
:lamo
Regardless of the veracity of the claims, that is on the school.
 
Excon said:
:doh
:lamo
Regardless of the veracity of the claims, that is on the school.
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True, the school doesn't have to accept the money but it just shows there are many greedy ones out there that do and have been influenced by it.
 
americanwoman said:
True, the school doesn't have to accept the money but it just shows there are many greedy ones out there that do and have been influenced by it.
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No it doesn't show that.
For all we know, (as I said, regardless of the veracity of the claims) it may well show that the school realized that they were only providing one viewpoint which needed to be corrected.
Who funds it is irrelevant to that.

Realizing something isn't being taught does not mean they were influenced by the funding to teach it.
 
vesper said:
Jasper, are you not aware of the numerous voters that come out for a presidential election that can't even tell you what country bombed Peal Harbor in WW11 let alone who is considered to be the "father" of the Constitution? Have you watched the numerous pathetic responses to questions given from people like Leno to many others of people going out into the public targeting the young and dumb college crowd but are old enough to vote and they couldn't pass a 6th grade history exam? These people vote for feel good ideas not what is right for the country. Thanks to our education system too many are too ignorant to make sound judgment. If you promise these folks two free years of community college these folks are on board. If you promise the single moms more entitlements they are on board and so are the dads of all these fatherless "love" children cause that means the daddies are off the hook. If you make a claim that we need public daycare provided by the taxpayers, you got a whole lot of folks ready to vote for you and all are willing to stick it to the one who put his life on hold to achieve an education to land a good job before ever thinking about reproducing. Who was left with a boatload of student loans for his education that will take 15 years to pay off. But yet he becomes successful making good money only to have others willing to tax him/her at a higher rate so they can get the freebies. Says a lot for the condition of our society doesn't it. But lets not blame everything on the young and dumb because there are a lot of senior citizens in our society that think even though they didn't prepare for their retirement that somehow they are special and think the younger generation and the generation after them is suppose to pick up the tab. What's wrong with this picture? But yet most of the media is promoting such an agenda.
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I'll just say lots of informed, intelligent, reasonable people have major disagreements about what is right for the country, and have had similar disagreements for generations at least. Beyond that I'm not sure how to respond. It's like we're having two different conversations.
 
Inside the Koch brothers' campus crusade | Center for Public Integrity

“Donor gifts, regardless of their size, have always been accepted with the clear understanding that the gift will not compromise academic integrity or infringe on the academic freedom of our faculty,” said Florida State University spokesman Dennis Schnittker, whose school in 2012 received more than $297,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation that primarily funded graduate student fellowships in its economics department.

But this isn’t always clear.

When, for example, the Charles Koch Foundation in 2011 pledged $1.5 million to Florida State University’s economics department, a contract between the foundation and university stipulated that a Koch-appointed advisory committee select professors and conduct annual evaluations, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

And to be sure, the Koch foundations’ educational grants, regardless of whether they’re made with conditions, aren’t exactly supporting studies of, say, proletarian emancipation or historical materialism.

Instead, they routinely support academic programs or centers that teach theories and principles aligned with the Kochs’ convictions about economics and public policy.


The Charles Koch Foundation, which among the various Koch-connected private foundations spent the most on higher education, did tell the IRS in a 2012 filing that it primarily supports “research and education programs that analyze the impact of free societies” and focuses on “a select number of programs where it believes it is best positioned to support positive social change.”

Charles Koch in 2012 contributed more than $60 million to his eponymous foundation, which ended that year with more than $216 million in reported assets.

Competition from Democratic political bankrollers

The Kochs are hardly alone in funding academia: Other prominent political donors — liberal and conservative both — operate private charitable foundations that in part support educational programs and institutions.

Billionaire financier and Democratic megadonor George Soros is chief among them. He’s pumped tens of millions of dollars into educational interests in recent years through a network of private foundations that together boast several times the reported assets that the Koch foundations do.

But the most significant educational contributions Soros made either in 2011 or 2012, when most recent tax forms are available, didn’t fund U.S. colleges and scholars like the Kochs, but foreign ones.

Central European University, an English-language university in Hungary that Soros himself founded, leads all his recipients, taking almost $9 million from the Soros-funded Foundation to Promote Open Society. The university describes itself as promoting “the pursuit of truth wherever it leads, respect for the diversity of cultures and peoples, and commitment to resolve differences through debate not denial.”

The Open Society Institute, another Soros-fueled private foundation, spread about $9.43 million through 900 foreign student grants. The students received the money with the charge they “improve academic, social and democratic environments in home countries,” according to the organization’s tax filings.

Soros’ domestic educational investments, while significant, aren’t as sizable.
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To be clear I am against all big money, liberal or conservative or right or left, trying to influence the way our country is run and the education our children are getting.
 
Excon said:
No it doesn't show that.
For all we know, (as I said, regardless of the veracity of the claims) it may well show that the school realized that they were only providing one viewpoint which needed to be corrected.
Who funds it is irrelevant to that.

Realizing something isn't being taught does not mean they were influenced by the funding to teach it.
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Read the article I linked above.
 
americanwoman said:
Here is a video about the Koch brother influencing schools with lots of money. . . . .
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Sort of like how homosexual perverts influence kids in schools to accept their perversion?

Or how about this one:

"El Rancho Verde Unified School District will stop requiring its high-school students to take geography and instead require them to take a class on diversity and inclusion."
>> School District Replace Teaching of Geography With Diversity | The Federalist Papers

Pure leftwing propaganda replacing authentic studies in school.


At least the Koch brothers are on the correct side. If kids are influenced by that, then God bless the Koch brothers.
 
TerryOfromCA said:
No, I'm not. Do you think a good economy is BAD for unions?
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You cut out the rest of my comment. The GOP is openly and proudly hostile to unions - would kill them off entirely if given the opportunity.
 
tres borrachos said:
Okay, but I wasn't talking about schools.
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No, but you have the argument in this debate that money does not influence. Is this because they are, or claim to be, libertarian? If this was Jorge Perez dumping hundreds of millions to promote immigration and a bilingual America with results showing he is influencing policy and education with children learning only Spanish, would you still be defending him and his right to do that? I myself would not support that because even though I would be on the same side, I do not like the idea of us all being controlled by what a small number of people want.
 
TerryOfromCA said:
Sort of like how homosexual perverts influence kids in schools to accept their perversion?

Or how about this one:

"El Rancho Verde Unified School District will stop requiring its high-school students to take geography and instead require them to take a class on diversity and inclusion."
>> School District Replace Teaching of Geography With Diversity | The Federalist Papers

Pure leftwing propaganda replacing authentic studies in school.


At least the Koch brothers are on the correct side. If kids are influenced by that, then God bless the Koch brothers.
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I don't like either side influencing policy. School is for learning, not trying to be influenced by some right/left wing propaganda.
 
americanwoman said:
No, but you have the argument in this debate that money does not influence. Is this because they are, or claim to be, libertarian? If this was Jorge Perez dumping hundreds of millions to promote immigration and a bilingual America with results showing he is influencing policy and education with children learning only Spanish, would you still be defending him and his right to do that? I myself would not support that because even though I would be on the same side, I do not like the idea of us all being controlled by what a small number of people want.
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I was only posting about the Koch brothers influencing elections which is what this thread was about.
 
vesper said:
Jasper, are you not aware of the numerous voters that come out for a presidential election that can't even tell you what country bombed Peal Harbor in WW11 let alone who is considered to be the "father" of the Constitution? Have you watched the numerous pathetic responses to questions given from people like Leno to many others of people going out into the public targeting the young and dumb college crowd but are old enough to vote and they couldn't pass a 6th grade history exam? These people vote for feel good ideas not what is right for the country. Thanks to our education system too many are too ignorant to make sound judgment. If you promise these folks two free years of community college these folks are on board. If you promise the single moms more entitlements they are on board and so are the dads of all these fatherless "love" children cause that means the daddies are off the hook. If you make a claim that we need public daycare provided by the taxpayers, you got a whole lot of folks ready to vote for you and all are willing to stick it to the one who put his life on hold to achieve an education to land a good job before ever thinking about reproducing. Who was left with a boatload of student loans for his education that will take 15 years to pay off. But yet he becomes successful making good money only to have others willing to tax him/her at a higher rate so they can get the freebies. Says a lot for the condition of our society doesn't it. But lets not blame everything on the young and dumb because there are a lot of senior citizens in our society that think even though they didn't prepare for their retirement that somehow they are special and think the younger generation and the generation after them is suppose to pick up the tab. What's wrong with this picture? But yet most of the media is promoting such an agenda.
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Excellent post! :thumbs: And at voting time, they round them all up, take them to the voting place, tell them who to vote for, and consider the job done. And it is. But as I keep asking, what happens when the freebies can't be paid for any longer? What will they do? It's going to become something we have never seen before in this country, IMO. How in H*** did we ever get started on this path that we are on - where you aren't responsible for yourself? :shock:
 
American said:
All you can do is promise someone a chance, you can't promise success.
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When you have to compete with billionaires for a "chance," most of the time you're going to lose.
 
Excon said:
Good fore them.
They should be able to support those they want.
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No one is stopping them from doing that, but they will not be able to buy the White House. :roll:

Wait and see. They aren't the only people in the USA with some cash.




"The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen." ~ Tommy Smothers
 
Maybe I should run for office so I can be able to buy that second house I've always wanted make a difference! :2razz:

Viva America!
 
polgara said:
Excellent post! :thumbs: And at voting time, they round them all up, take them to the voting place, tell them who to vote for, and consider the job done. And it is. But as I keep asking, what happens when the freebies can't be paid for any longer? What will they do? It's going to become something we have never seen before in this country, IMO. How in H*** did we ever get started on this path that we are on - where you aren't responsible for yourself? :shock:
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There are plenty of uninformed morons who pull straight GOP tickets, at least in my area.

And I don't quite get criticizing, say, single moms for voting for more 'entitlements.' This thread discusses the Koch brothers. We can be certain that the policies they support are good for Koch Industries and their personal fortune. And they're spending $900 million to advance an agenda that benefits them. Someone will have to explain to me why it's OK for the Kochs to spend massive sums to support policies that help them, but somehow illegitimate for a supposedly uninformed single mom to vote for those who she believes will benefit her?

I understand why others object to more 'entitlements' - their taxes pay for them. OK, so you're supporting your interest in lower taxes! It's no different than that single mom. If there is any problem, it's that we no longer feel the need to pay for things and run large deficits which removes the downside of many of our choices, but this is a bipartisan problem.

Anyway, those uninformed liberals are doing nothing more or less than the country's biggest donors and most powerful interest groups, and the latter are who wield by FAR the real power in this country.
 
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