How The Koch Brothers Are Bait And Switching Voters

Huffington Post, OpEdNews, 11-3-14

   

   |

As the midterm elections approach, the volume of attack ads is deafening. Spending on broadcast TV and national cable ads for U.S. Senate, House, and gubernatorial races has now topped $1 billion for the 2014 election cycle, according to a report released Oct. 29 by the Wesleyan Media Project.

Of the 2.2 million political ads TV viewers have seen since early last year, 600,000 were aired by outside groups, not candidates themselves. Almost 40% of these came from so-called "dark money" groups, which are not legally required to reveal their donors.

Two years ago, big money Republican donors thought dark money funneled through Karl Rove's political operation was going to send President Obama packing and install a GOP Senate. Things didn't quite turn out that way. Nearly $175 million six of the eight Republican Senate candidates they tried to elect.

Karl Rove hasn't gone away, and this cycle, his groups have already spent a combined $31 million on TV ads alone. But in light of Rove's disastrous 2012 results, this year's mega-rich GOP donors initially flocked to the multi-billionaire Koch brothers, who promised a different approach. And the Koch network has stuck to this new strategy, which involves using non-ideological appeals to convince independent voters to support Republican candidates, even if these voters don't agree with the GOP candidates' right-wing policy agendas.

It is on display in the Koch-produced ads that have been pouring from TV screens in some of the nation's most closely contested Senate races.

     

     

The "closing argument" ads shown above have been airing in six states (Alaska, Arkansas, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire) since October 22. They will run through election day in a $6.5 million ad buy from Freedom Partners Action Fund (FPAF), the super PAC launched last June by the Koch brothers.

Here's how USA Today described them:

Instead of going on the attack, the ads use a gentle, testimonial style. They feature voters against a backdrop of classic Americana scenes, explaining how disappointed they are that the Democratic incumbent has strayed from local values.

Besides Charles and David Koch, who kicked in $2 million each, top donors to the FPAF super PAC include New York hedge fund mogul and rising GOP kingmaker Robert Mercer ($2.5 million), who was sued last year for allegedly stiffing his household help; Texas oil billionaire Paul Foster ($1 million), whose association with the Koch network has previously caused controversy because of his position as chairman of the University of Texas System Board of Regents; and Arkansas poultry magnate Ronald Cameron, who gave $1 million.

FPAF is on track to spend nearly $25 million to influence the 2014 elections, part of $290 million that Koch-backed groups claim they will spend altogether. It is more than either national party committee spent during the 2010 election cycle.

The Koch brothers' latest twice-annual retreat for big donors to their shadowy political network was held in California last June. Rising GOP stars came to audition and preen for a crowd of super wealthy right-wingers, knowing the cash these multi-millionaires and billionaires wield could be instrumental to turbo-charging their campaign funds. Senate Minority Leader and fierce campaign finance reform opponent Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) addressed the crowd. Three Republican U.S. Senate candidates also spoke: Iowa state senator Joni Ernst, and Congressmen Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Cory Gardner of Colorado. In August, secret tapes were released of what was said behind closed doors at this gathering, as the conservative plutocrats plotted how they could most effectively buy elections and advance their far right-wing agenda.

Of particular note were the remarks by top Koch brothers strategist Richard Fink, recently dubbed "Charles Koch's Brain" by Politico when he made #16 on their list of the 50 most influential thinkers, doers, and dreamers of America in 2014. He explained that by tailoring messages to the "non-ideological middle third of voters," they could sway them to support the fatcats' preferred candidates a lot easier than by using past methods.

"Yeah, we want to decrease regulations. Why? It's because we can make more profit, okay? Yeah, cut government spending so we don't have to pay so much taxes. When we focus on decreasing government spending, over-criminalization, decreasing taxes, it doesn't do it, okay? We've been reaching (this) third by telling them what's important - what we think is important should be important to them. And they're not responding and don't like it, okay? Well, we get business - what do we do? We want to find out what the customer wants, right, not what we want them to buy."

Audio starts at 4:18 of Richard Fink's remarks

In the run-up to Nov. 4, North Carolina has seen 2014's most intense battle of the airwaves in a Senate race, as detailed by the Wesleyan Media Project's report. There were over 20,000 ads aired in the two weeks from October 10-23, with 36.3% of the ads coming from pro-GOP outside groups, and 30.2% from pro-Democratic outside groups. Freedom Partners Action Fund ads during this period have attacked incumbent Democratic Senator Kay Hagan over non-ideological issues such as high wait times at VA hospitals and the Affordable Care Act's supposed negative effects on the quality of N.C. education.

     

Any voter who might be swayed by these ads would surely be interested in knowing the facts they left out. Namely, that Hagan's opponent Thom Tillis has consistently called for massive federal spending cuts and embraced Paul Ryan's budget plan, which would negatively affect the VA system. Or that as Speaker of the Republican-led N.C. House, he passed a budget last year that shortchanged education spending by $481 million, according to The New York Times.

Iowa has experienced the second most intense Senate TV ad war, with over 17,000 ads aired during the same two week period in October. Pro-Republican ads have accounted for 9,581 of them, vs. 7,835 pro-Democratic ads, with 51.2% coming from pro-Joni Ernst outside groups and 34% from groups supporting her Democratic opponent, four-term U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley.

     

     

FPAF ads have been running non-stop accusing Braley of "disrepecting farmers" when he warned donors that a Republican-led Senate would see "a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law" become the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He was referring to Iowa's Republican Senator, Chuck Grassley. Another ad says Braley is setting "the wrong kind of examples for children" because he missed votes in Congress. An online ad labels him "not very Iowa" because he complained to his neighborhood association about a neighbor whose chickens were roaming freely into his yard, fowl which were also the subject of other residents' complaints. It appears to be part of a six-figure digital ad buy from the Koch brothers' dark money group Americans for Prosperity.

These ads don't say a peep about Ernst's extreme right-wing views. Or the undisputed facts that Ernst opposed the five-year farm bill that passed Congress earlier this year, and has stated she is philosophically opposed to "taxpayer subsidies" like the Renewable Fuel Standard - two things that directly benefit Iowa farmers. Or that as a state Senator, according to Politico, "Ernst missed nearly 40 percent of the votes in the Iowa state Senate during 2014," and "has also attended only a fraction of the meetings of the Iowa boards and commissions she has been appointed to since taking office in 2010."

And the chicken controversy is full of it, described by Slate as "how a guy mishandled the problem of chickens shitting on his lawn." At their Sept. 28 debate in Des Moines, Joni Ernst was ready to make hay over the issue. "Congressman, you threatened to sue a neighbor over chickens that came onto your property," Ernst said. "That's just not true," Braley replied. "I never threatened to sue anyone." Politifact rated Ernst's claim False, concluding "there is no material evidence that Braley threatened a lawsuit against the neighbor or was even considering one. Even the neighbor says that."

But as the Koch brothers and their ultra-wealthy cronies think they've figured out, a little chicken manure goes a long way when it comes to misleading voters into supporting the GOP.

###

12 Reasons Why Joni Ernst Is 2014's Most Extreme GOP Senate Candidate

The Huffington Post, 10-24-14

   

   |

As a female Republican candidate with extreme, far right-wing views and a love for guns, Iowa's U.S. Senate hopeful Joni Ernst is a lot like Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann. In fact, Ernst's top campaign strategist, David Polyansky, was Bachmann's deputy campaign manager during her 2012 presidential campaign.

Joni Ernst is different because she's more dangerous. Unlike those other two faded Tea Party stars, Ernst comes across as slightly less unhinged, and thus more electable. And she has worked tirelessly since her June primary victory to distance herself from the hard right positions she had previously taken on most issues.

But although she's done a good job of hiding them, Ernst's ideas are as far outside the mainstream as any of the nonsense that spews from Palin or Bachmann's Twitter accounts. An ad released over the summer by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee featured Ernst calling Palin the "type of people that we need in our federal government," and that she was "just absolutely ecstatic to have her endorsement" after Palin backed her in the Republican primary.

Ernst, a first-term Iowa state Senator, faces four-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, founder of the House Populist Caucus, in a toss-up battle for retiring Senator Tom Harkin's seat. If she wins, the GOP will probably latch onto Ernst as its latest national figure. As the rise of Palin and Bachmann showed, the GOP desperately needs more women in its ranks to counter its image as the party of rich, old white men. Of the twenty current female U.S. Senators, sixteen are Democrats and only four are Republicans, out of 45 GOP Senators in total.

Here are the top twelve reasons Joni Ernst has had to battle the glaringly obvious perception that she's "too extreme for Iowa":

(1) Wants to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, IRS, and the U.S. Department of Education. In an April debate, Ernst called for shutting down all three federal government agencies.

(2) Opposes abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, and believes doctors who perform abortions should face criminal punishment. In 2013, Ernst co-sponsored a fetal personhood amendment to the Iowa State Constitution that would have outlawed abortion, and contained no provisions allowing for rape or incest exceptions. In a May debate, Ernst said, "the [abortion] provider should be punished, if there were a personhood amendment."

(3) Believes "the UN is behind" a conspiracy that involves, in Ernst's words from a November, 2013 campaign event, "moving people off of their agricultural land and consolidating them into city sectors and then telling them, 'You don't have property rights anymore'." This right-wing theory has been widely debunked as a myth.

(4) Not only opposes raising the hourly minimum wage in Iowa from $7.25 to $10.10, as her opponent Bruce Braley has called for, but wants to eliminate the federal minimum wage altogether. At a candidates' forum in March, Ernst said she thinks "$7.25 is appropriate for Iowa."

(5) Supports a flat tax on income, which would give enormous tax cuts to the super wealthy and shift the country's tax burden further onto middle class and low-income families.

(6) Wants to send U.S. ground troops back to Iraq. In the campaign's third and final debate earlier this month, Ernst said she agreed with those who had "advised that we keep troops on the ground." "There is overwhelming support coming from the American people," she claimed.

(7) Thinks President Obama "has become a dictator" who "is not following our Constitution," and that "he should face...repercussions, whether that's removal from office, whether that's impeachment." She expressed these views at a candidates' forum last January.

(8) Has repeatedly called for an Ebola travel ban, prohibiting all flights into the U.S. from West Africa, which experts and sane observers agree wouldn't work and would actually make the global outbreak worse, plus lead to more U.S. cases of the deadly virus.

(9) Believes George W. Bush's discredited fairytale that there were WMD's in Iraq when the United States invaded in 2003. "I do have reason to believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," Ernst told the Des Moines Register's editorial board in May.

(10) Would support legislation to arrest government employees trying to administer the Affordable Care Act.

In response to a 2012 questionnaire from a libertarian-leaning group, Ernst replied "yes" to the question "Will you support legislation to nullify ObamaCare and authorize state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement the unconstitutional health care scheme known as ObamaCare?" - Salon, 10/3/14

(11) Wants to privatize federal student loans. At an Iowa State College Republican Forum in April, Ernst said, "our students...we need to ensure that they're able to find student loans at reasonable rates within private banking entities. So let's get the federal government out of the business of student loans." Asked about her views on college affordability in August, Ernst replied, "Perhaps all of our students don't need four-year degrees."

(12) Can't see a need to change current campaign finance laws, because she believes in "political free speech," as she stated at her third and final debate with Bruce Braley, who is a strong supporter of campaign finance reform. Interviewed by Rachel Maddow in 2012 about how Citizens United had unleashed a whirlwind of big money into politics, Braley warned that "very powerful, monied interests are trying to buy the government they want. And have no restrictions, literally, on what they can spend."

In the most recent fundraising quarter, Ernst raised more than any other U.S. candidate for office in a single quarter during this election cycle. From July to September, her campaign took in a whopping $6 million, outpacing Braley's $2.8 million haul by more than 2-1. By comparison, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell only raised $3.2 million during the same period, despite being the top Senate Republican and facing a competitive, well-funded challenge from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Clearly, a lot of wealthy GOP donors very badly want Joni Ernst to be the next U.S. Senator from Iowa. And they are salivating at the possibility of her extreme right-wing views influencing the laws of our land at least through the year 2021. It's a thought that ought to give every sensible American cause for concern.

###

Top GOP Donor Robert Mercer Sued Over How He Treats His Help

The Huffington Post, 10-23-14

   

   |

The race for Iowa's open U.S. Senate seat is among the closest in the nation, and one of a handful that could determine control of the Senate this fall. In her final debate with four-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, Republican state Sen. Joni Ernst recently said she doesn't see a need to reform current campaign finance laws, because she believes in "political free speech."

Since the Supreme Court's disastrous Citizens United decision in 2010, big money has flooded into politics at levels never seen before, giving the ultra-wealthy the green light to use their megabucks to fund the kind of "political free speech" that's capable of drowning out everyone else's.

And that's the game being played by one of Joni Ernst's biggest donors, New York hedge fund co-CEO and near-billionaire Robert Mercer. Described by Bloomberg News as "one of the most powerful men in Republican politics that nobody is talking about," and ranked #6 on ABC News' recent list of 2014's "Mega-Donors," Mercer is fast becoming a GOP kingmaker.

Robert Mercer in 2012

By contributing $5,200 to Ernst this cycle, Mercer maxed out his legally permissible individual contributions to Ernst's Senate campaign. Yet, as revealed in a report released this week by the Brennan Center for Justice, Mercer's extensive support for Joni Ernst won him the dubious distinction of being 2014's "biggest-spending double-dipper." Double-dipping means donating the legal maximum allowed to a candidate, then supporting them with even more money by dumping cash into a super PAC set up solely to benefit that same candidate. Such super PACs can accept unlimited donations.

According to the report, Mercer spent $350,000 this year to "virtually fully fund" a super PAC called American Heartland, which is supporting Ernst. Despite its name, American Heartland is run out of Washington, D.C.

In this year's Iowa Republican primary, Mercer was outed as the money man behind American Heartland when the super PAC spent $140,000 opposing former energy company CEO Marc Jacobs, Ernst's closest rival for the GOP nomination. Jacobs' campaign manager said "Ernst has relied on out-of-state special interests" who were behind the attacks, and implored voters to "ask themselves, before they vote, will Joni Ernst represent them or a New York billionaire...something doesn't smell right."

But Mercer's generosity towards Republican political candidates and conservative super PACs he supports allegedly doesn't extend to his domestic help.

Last year, Mercer was sued by former members of his household staff for supposedly not paying overtime and docking wages when maids and other employees failed to promptly restock shampoo bottles, change razor blades in shavers, straighten pictures, or committed any of a laundry list of other offenses.

From the complaint:

Defendants deducted money from Plaintiffs' semiannual bonuses as a form of punishment or "demerits" related to Plaintiffs' alleged poor work performance. Demerits initially began at $10 and during the course of Plaintiffs' employment, rose to $20 per demerit. Plaintiffs received demerits throughout the work year for alleged poor work performance, including but not limited to the following:

failing to replace shampoos and other toiletries if there was an amount of less than one-third of a bottle remaining; failing to properly close doors; failing to leave extra towels in the bathroom; failing to change the razor blades in the shaver; failing to level pictures; leaving cleaning items out; leaving items in the refrigerator; and improperly counting beverages.

The lawyer representing Mercer's former domestic employees, Troy Kessler, said, "This is a social justice case. Domestic, low-wage workers are frequently taken advantage of and (in) this case it's particularly egregious."

According to Forbes, Mercer was the 16th highest paid hedge fund manager in the country in 2011, with a total pay package of $125 million. In 2012, he took home $90 million.

Entrance to Owl's Nest in Head of the Harbor, NY

In addition to his Owl's Nest mansion, located on a Long Island estate, Mercer owns a 186-foot luxury yacht named the Sea Owl.

Mercer was the 16th largest donor to super PACs in the 2011-12 election cycle, as estimated by the Center for Responsive Politics. During that period, he gave $5.5 million to pro-Republican super PACs, including $2 to Karl Rove's American Crossroads, and $1 million to Restore Our Future, the pro-Mitt Romney PAC. He also donated $600,000 to the Club For Growth's super PAC, whose attack ads were crucial to the rise of national Tea Party mouthpiece Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

This year, Mercer and his wife rank #6 on the list of the country's 100 top political donors, with $3.75 million in reported contributions to federal candidates and PAC's for the 2014 cycle.

Mercer is also 2014's highest single contributor to Freedom Partners Action Fund, the super PAC that the Koch brothers set up over the summer. Mercer wrote a check for $2.5 million to the fund, which was set up to bankroll ads that explicitly attack Democratic candidates and support Republicans.

Ernst probably first met Robert Mercer when she attended the Koch brothers' August, 2013 big donor retreat in New Mexico. At the time, Ernst was a little-known, first-term Iowa state Senator who had just announced her candidacy for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination against three male rivals.

As Politico reported, the Koch-sponsored twice-annual meetings "generally attract top conservative talent, for whom they can be quite useful, providing an opportunity to build rapport with some of the movements' deepest-pocketed backers."

Returning to this summer's retreat in California, Ernst was one of three GOP U.S. Senate candidates to address the donors, along with Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Colorado's Cory Gardner. "It started right here with all of your folks," said Ernst, offering her gratitude for the support of what she termed "this wonderful network" of wealthy, right-wing multi-millionaires and billionaires. A few days after her appearance, Charles Koch, his wife, son and daughter-in-law all gave the maximum legal contribution to Ernst's campaign, $2,600 apiece. Koch Industries also kicked in $5,000.

Ernst has lots of extreme views that probably find favor with her right-wing donors. She wants to abolish the EPA, IRS, and the U.S. Department of Education. She opposes abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, believes "the UN is behind" a thoroughly debunked conspiracy to relocate farmers from rural lands into cities, and opposes a federal minimum wage (because she says "$7.25 is appropriate for Iowa").

But most pleasing to their ears must be the fact that Ernst supports a flat tax on income.

If Joni Ernst goes to Washington, Robert Mercer's support for her candidacy will have earned huge dividends. He'll be one step closer to paying taxes on his enormous fortune at the exact same rate as the domestic workers he's been accused of nickel and diming over shampoo bottles and razor blades. For one of 2014's top "Mega-Donors," that would count as a great return on investment.

###

Ebola Travel Ban Would Put Blood On GOP's Hands

The Huffington Post, 10-17-14

   

   |

How would President Mitt Romney respond to the global Ebola threat? Or President Ted Cruz? Dropping the hypotheticals, what about House Speaker John Boehner, who is not just the current highest-ranking Republican in the U.S. government, but second in the line of presidential succession?

All three GOP leaders and many other Republicans are parroting Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump's call for the United States to fight Ebola by banning incoming flights from West Africa. This ill-thought out, half-baked idea would encourage people who might be infected with the deadly disease to circumvent the ban by traveling to other countries first. Just as Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., traveled from Liberia to Belgium before flying into Dallas two weeks prior to his death.

Potentially infected travelers could then enter the United States without being properly screened or quarantined at domestic airports. Which in turn could exponentially increase the number of U.S. Ebola cases.

This preference for demagoguery over common sense is one of the many reasons American voters rejected Republican presidential nominees in 2008 and 2012. And why a Republican takeover of the Senate in this year's midterms could make it harder for the U.S. to contain the current Ebola outbreak.

Campaigning for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Scott Brown in New Hampshire this week, Mitt Romney said, "I haven't been briefed on all the reasons not to close down the flights, but my own reaction is we probably ought to close down the border with nations that have extensive Ebola spreading and that means not bringing flights in from that part of Africa." Maybe Romney skipped the briefing and instead read Trump's recent tweet on the subject, when he called President Obama either "stupid" or "arrogant" for not instituting a ban. Which was only Trump's latest idiotic pronouncement on Ebola.

Unless travel was banned from every country that has not itself banned travel from Ebola-affected countries, a West African travel ban would encourage people who are potentially infected with Ebola and trying to reach the U.S. to do so via connecting flights.

Unfortunately, public health officials haven't stressed this point enough. When CDC Director Tom Frieden was questioned on October 2 about the government's Ebola response, he primarily talked about how a travel ban would affect the flow of health workers travelling from the U.S. to help stop the outbreak. "The approach of isolating a country is going to make it harder to get help into that country," Frieden said. "It's going to make it harder to get people to respond because they're not going to want to come out. They're not going to be able to come out if they go in."

This reasoning makes perfect sense, yet doesn't drive home how a travel ban wouldn't work and could actually lead to increased U.S. Ebola cases if infected travelers arrive in the U.S. from other countries. When summoned before a House panel earlier this week, on October 16, Frieden finally made the argument clear. "We won't be able to check (individuals) for fever when they arrive. When they arrive, we wouldn't be able to impose quarantine," he said.

But his words fell on deaf ears. Top Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee responded with a letter to President Obama calling for...no surprise...a travel ban. "We have listened with interest to the arguments articulated by officials within the Administration in opposition to a ban on travel from affected countries," said committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and border subcommittee head Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. "Unfortunately, such arguments seem to have little, if any, merit."

In their haste to exploit public fears over Ebola and whip up anti-Obama sentiment for the midterms, right-wing Republicans and commentators have been competing to see who can come up with the craziest theory to explain why the Obama Administration hasn't yet followed their brilliant travel ban advice.

Writing in the tycoon-funded Fiscal Times, Fox News columnist Liz Peek (whose CEO husband's firm received $2.3 billion in taxpayer bailout funds through the TARP program in 2009) blamed Obama's supposed "ambition to be a hero to Africa" and alleged jealousy over George W. Bush's approval ratings on that continent for why there was no ban in place.

Louisiana Governor and probable 2016 GOP presidential candidate Bobby Jindal was one of the first GOP officials to call for a ban. In an October 3 statement, he pontificated, "The Obama administration keeps saying they won't shut down flights. They instead say we should listen to 'the experts.' In fact, they said it would be counterproductive to stop these flights. That statement defies logic. How exactly would stopping the entry of people potentially carrying the Ebola virus be counterproductive?"

Rush Limbaugh, as always, outdid them all, by claiming it was either "political correctness" on the part of the Administration, or that Administration officials secretly want Ebola to spread in the United States, as payback for America's involvement in slavery.

How despicable. Limbaugh commands an immense public platform, able to reach more than ten million listeners directly through his national radio show. Donald Trump is a celebrity, a public figure whose pronouncements are reported by media around the country. And yet, at a time when our world faces a global health crisis like the current Ebola outbreak, instead of helping disseminate vital facts to the public, right-wing idiots like these spread lies and disinformation.

To President Obama's credit, he has sent U.S. military personnel to lead the international effort to contain the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. A similar military-led disaster response effort was mobilized in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. But according to the right-wing echo chamber, this is all part of Obama's plan to infect our troops with Ebola. The reality, as National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins recently stated, is that an Ebola vaccine would likely have already been developed if not for the past decade's worth of largely GOP-imposed budget cuts.

We might still be able to shut this outbreak down more quickly if conservative pundits and GOP officials would devote even a fraction of the time they've spent spreading Ebola panic to letting people know they can do something immediately to help. Modeled after this year's enormously successful ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, one of the players on Sierra Leone's national soccer team, Michael Lahoud, has created the Kick Ebola In The Butt Challenge. It's an innovative way to encourage donations to groups like Doctors Without Borders who are sending badly needed medical professionals to West Africa, in order to deal with the crisis at its source. This is the kind of response that could harness social media to direct charitable resources where they can help the most.

If the Administration caves into the nonsensical GOP demands for a travel ban, the blood of future U.S. Ebola casualties will be on the hands of all the Republicans and their right-wing media enablers who have whipped up Ebola hysteria in a blatant attempt to influence the midterm elections. Shame on them.

###