Koch Brother Waged Political War Against Martin Luther King and the Entire Civil Rights Movement

How Charles Koch Backed the John Birch Society at the Height of Its Attacks on Martin Luther King

By Lisa Graves
As noted in the new book, Dark Money, by The New Yorker's Jane Mayer, Charles and David Koch have spent millions on public relations in the past few years to try to re-make their image as many Americans have grown increasingly concerned about their efforts to distort democratic elections to serve their corporate and ideological agenda.

This week's issue of the magazine focuses on that campaign, which has generated positive press for the Kochs for supporting the bipartisan "criminal justice reform" movement.

The Kochs' interests in certain changes to the law was exposed by CMD (the Center for Media and Democracy) last month, when CMD documented the substantial Koch-backed effort to change criminal intent laws that would make it harder to prosecute corporations and CEOs, like Koch Industries and the Koch brothers, for any financial or environmental crimes. (The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on criminal intent this Wednesday.)

As Mayer notes, the Kochs have also secured positive press for a major grant to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) in 2014.

UNCF is led by Michael Lomax, who received $1,310,130 in total compensation in 2014, along with twelve other executives who help administer UNCF donations and receive between $187,290 and $378,776 per year, in addition to nearly $5 million in fees for "management" to non-employees of the charity. (The previous year, Lomax had received $783,470 in total compensation.) UNCF spent about $50 million on grants to individuals plus about $70 million in grants to institutions that year, such as $776,107 to Bethune-Cookman University, $357,427 to Morehouse College, and $359,989 to Spelman College. UNCF spent over $3 million on travel that year.

As Inside Higher Ed reported, Koch Industries and the Charles Koch Foundation gave UNCF $25 million grant, but they will play a substantial role in selecting the African American scholarship students, who must express an interest in the Kochs' economic agenda. Two Koch Industries employees sit on the committee to review candidates.

The President of AFSCME, Lee Saunders, issued a "stinging rebuke" to Lomax after he appeared at one of the Kochs' "Freedom Partners" gatherings of right-wing billionaires, saying: "The Koch brothers and the organizations they fund have devoted themselves for more than a decade to attacking the voting rights of African Americans. They support voter identification laws. They seek to restrict early voting and voter registration. They support laws that threaten organizations that register voters in the African American community."

For example, the Kochs' top lobbyist, Michael Morgan--who recently touted Kochs' record before seizing and running off with the phone of Greenpeace researcher Connor Gibson, who was interviewing him--has served on the Board of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which pushed a measure that made it harder for Americans to vote through ID restrictions following the election of President Barack Obama, the first African American to hold the nation's highest office.

And, as CMD broke last year, the Kochs' new effort to spy on its opponents is led by a voter fraud huckster.

"In many ways," CMD has noted, "the playbook deployed by the Kochs today through myriad organizations resembles a more sophisticated (and expensive) playbook of the John Birch Society back then. Even the recent announcement of the Kochs to give a $25 million gift to the United Negro College Fund (with strings attached requiring the recruitment of free market African American college students) echoes that past. In 1964, in the face of criticism for its assault on the civil rights movement, the John Birch Society also funded a scholarship program to give college funds to African Americans who were not active in the civil rights movement."

In fact, CMD has traced the Koch legacy against the civil rights movement back to the 1960s, documenting how Charles Koch fundraised for the John Birch Society at the height of its attacks on the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., (and Rosa Parks)--breaking that story on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

"Many commentators have noted that the father of the controversial Koch Brothers, Fred Koch, was a leader of the John Birch Society from its founding in 1958 until his death in 1967. But, in fact, Charles Koch followed his father's footsteps into the John Birch Society for years in Wichita, Kansas, a hub city for the organization in that decade of tremendous societal unrest as civil rights activists challenged racial segregation.

"Charles Koch was not simply a rank and file member of the John Birch Society in name only who paid nominal dues. He purchased and held a "lifetime membership" until he resigned in 1968. He also lent his name and his wealth to the operations of the John Birch Society in Wichita, aiding its "American Opinion" bookstore--which was stocked with attacks on the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, and Earl Warren as elements of the communist conspiracy. He funded the John Birch Society's promotional campaigns, bought advertising in its magazine, and supported its distribution of right-wing radio shows."

As CMD has noted:

In 1961, at the age of twenty-six, Charles moved home to Wichita, Kansas, to work for Rock Island Oil and Refining Company, which was led by his father, Fred Koch, who was on the national council of the John Birch Society. Charles subsequently opened a John Birch Society bookstore in Wichita with a friend of his father, Bob Love, the owner of the Love Box Company in Wichita.

The John Birch Society's "American Opinion Bookstores" were stocked with material opposing the civil rights movement.

Birchers had put up billboards in Kansas and elsewhere calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who had ordered the desegregation of the public schools in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

There's no indication that Fred or Charles objected to the Birch campaign to impeach Warren.

There is no indication they objected when it ran ads in Dallas in 1963 with President John F. Kennedy's head depicted like two mug shot photos, with the word "Treason" below, shortly before the assassination of the President ...

Or when it opposed the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, based on the Bircher claim that the movement was created as a forty-year front for the communists.

Or when it supported billboards calling Martin Luther King a communist.

None of these things was cited by Charles Koch and Bob Love in their resignation from the John Birch Society in 1968, according to correspondence with Robert Welch, who had launched the organization a decade earlier with Fred and a few other businessmen.

Oddly, it was Welch's "Win the War" strategy of signing up people to support the Vietnam War that caused the breakup between Charles Koch and the John Birch Society.

In 1968, Charles Koch bought a full-page ad, "Let's Get Out of Vietnam Now," based on the isolationism of a competing flank of the far right movement, but he made no similar gesture expressing any opposition to its long-standing, high priority anti-civil rights agenda, which his financial support made possible.

Charles also gave public speeches espousing the view that government's only proper role was to police the interference with the free market—an ideology that inherently rejects civil rights laws, child labor laws, minimum wages or safety rules, the protection of union rights, and more.

TIMELINE: The Koch Family, the John Birch Society, and the Civil Rights Movement

1958

Fred Koch attended the initial meeting of right-wing businessmen called by Robert Welch, who proposes creating the John Birch Society to fight the spread of communism in the U.S., after the ignominious death of Senator Joe McCarthy, who was censured. Fred joins the Executive Committee, which met monthly to plan Birch Society strategy.

1961

Charles Koch moved home to Wichita to work for his dad and joins the John Birch Society, which his father, Fred, co-founded. (According to Sons of Wichita, Charles joined the Birch Society when he moved home.)

That year, Fred Koch published and circulated his pamphlet, "A Businessman Looks at Communism," which claimed the U.S. Supreme Court was pro-communist, that President Dwight Eisenhower (the former allied commander in WWII) was soft on communism, that the public schools used many communist books, and that many teachers were commies.

Also that year, David Koch–a student at MIT–helps incite an anti-communist, anti-Castro protest that turns into a riot where students are arrested.

Also that year, African American and white "Freedom Riders" began traveling between the Southern states to test the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Boyton v. Virginia that the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment barred laws requiring segregated travel interstate. The buses were attacked by white mobs and the Ku Klux Klan.

The John Birch Society announced that its top priority that year was the launch of its "Movement to Impeach Earl Warren," the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, appointed by President Eisenhower; Warren was previously a Republican governor.

One of the core documents promoted that year and for years afterward was by the founder of the John Birch Society, Robert Henry Winborne Welch (of the Junior Mints/Sugar Babies candy fortune). That document was titled "A Letter to the South on Segregation" (1956). It claimed that the "easy-going colored man" of the South will be "easily misled by agitators," that the phrase "civil rights" is a communist slogan, and that the push for racial integration "embarrassed" good African Americans.

The John Birch Society's Movement to Impeach Earl Warren also promoted Rosalie Gordon's defense of segregated public schools "Nine Men Against America" and the right-wing Regnery publishing house's book by James Kilpatrick ("The Sovereign States") defending the Southern States' "right" "to believe that they were proceeding constitutionally in erecting and maintaining a system of racially separate schools." The Birch Society also promoted the extremist and segregationist "Dan Smoot Report."

In 1961, James Meredith, who had served in the U.S. Air Force, asked Medgar Evers for help after he was denied admission to Ole Miss, the University of Mississippi. Evers asked Thurgood Marshall to take Meredith's case and the NAACP filed a federal lawsuit.

Accordingly to a Time magazine profile that year, the John Birch Society launched reading rooms and book stores "manned … by local members of our organization" promoting the 100 books approved by the Society to be sold, along with membership, posters, pamphlets, and Birch magazines. The approved material included the Bircher monthly magazine, "American Opinion," and "Dan Smoot's Report," which ran numerous pieces attacking the integration of schools. The John Birch Society also pushed many right-wing radio shows.

According to Time magazine's profile, Wichita was designated a "pilot" town for the John Birch Society and it mentioned Fred Koch's leadership of the organization. Professors at the city college, Wichita University, reported being harassed by Birchers for their books and what they taught. At a major Birch event there, Fred Koch introduced the John Birch Society founder, Bob Welch, at a town hall meeting of 2,000 people. Friend of the Koch family and fellow Bircher, Bob Love of the Love Box Company shut down a news filming of the speech in which Welch was tape recorded claiming "The Protestant ministry is more heavily infiltrated by Communists than any other profession in America." The Wichita Eagle-Beacon editorialized that "Welch is selling snake oil, and that a lot of people are buying it."

1962

In 1962, based on the reasoning in the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a federal appeals court ordered that the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) admit African American student James Meredith. Mississippi's segregationist governor, Ross Barnett, responded by trying to stop the integration of the state college.

When James Meredith sought to enroll in Oxford, Mississippi, Governor Barnett personally blocked his entrance and was joined by World War II veteran Major General Edwin Walker, who issued this statement: "I am in Mississippi beside Governor Ross Barnett. I call for a national protest against the conspiracy from within. Rally to the cause of freedom in righteous indignation, violent vocal protest, and bitter silence under the flag of Mississippi at the use of Federal troops…." Riots ensued and two people were killed. Only President John F. Kennedy's executive order for the National Guard to escort Meredith allowed him to enroll in the state university and he had to have ongoing protection from federal agents.

The John Birch Society hailed General Walker as a hero for standing up in Oxford to what it described as the communist creation of the civil rights movement. The Dan Smoot Report promoted by the John Birch Society claimed the desegregation order was illegal and equated the whites protesting Meredith's admission to the students protesting in Hungary in 1956. It also defended General Walker as standing up to American "tyranny."

The John Birch Society promoted a pamphlet by Alan Stang called "It's Very Simple" attacking the civil rights movement. Among other things, Stang called Martin Luther King, Jr., a communist and claimed that his goal was to pressure Congress "to install more collectivism." Stang, in John Birch Society publications, claimed Rosa Parks was trained by communists before she refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery in 1955.

The John Birch Society also announced that it had erected more than 100 billboards calling for the impeachment of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. Birch leader Bob Welch noted "We believe that the Warren Court is gradually destroying all the safeguards which made this a republic instead of a mobocracy."

1963

Martin Luther King helped organize demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, was arrested, and wrote on non-violence and injustice in "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" (which was published by The Progressive along with other of his writings).

The John Birch Society claimed that its "detailed study of ‘the life and lies' of Martin Luther King … will convince any reasonable American that this man is not working for, but against, the real welfare and best interests of either the Negroes in the United States, or of the United States as a whole." (Robert Welch, "Two Revolutions at Once" published in 1965) In its publications of Alan Stang's writings the John Birch Society claimed Martin Luther King was the "biggest" "liar in the country" and what "he really wants is to be a black plantation boss giving orders to ‘his people."'

Medgar Evers, the NAACP's Mississippi field staffer, is assassinated at his home.

Bull Connor directed Birmingham, Alabama, police to use attack dogs and high-pressure fire hoses on civil rights marchers, including children.

The John Birch Society claimed that "The truth is that the infamous picture of a dog attacking a Negro, while the dog was held in leash by a Birmingham police officer, was so carefully rehearsed until the ‘civil rights' agitators got exactly the picture they wanted, that the leg of the Negro victim's trousers had even been cut with a razor in advance, so that it would fall apart more readily at the first touch by the dog. Yet this picture was shown on the front pages of newspapers all over the United States – most of which did not know it was a contrived phony – and became an extremely important part of the Communist propaganda about ‘civil rights.'" (Robert Welch, "Two Revolutions at Once" published in 1965)

In July 1963, the John Birch Society launched the "Support Your Local Police" Movement providing bumper stickers, window stickers, and flyers through its bookstore and by mail. The posters often appeared with "Impeach Earl Warren" billboards and touted the need for "law and order" in Birmingham, Alabama, and other cities.

Thousands travel to Washington, DC, for the March on Washington for Jobs where Reverend King delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

As segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond spoke out against civil rights and the "collectivist" menace on the Senate floor, the John Birch Society invites him to join its council, but he declines to retain his "independence."

Four little girls are murdered in a bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

A John Birch Society front group runs advertisements in Dallas before President Kennedy's arrival, depicting his head in mug shots with the word "TREASON" below, along with claims that Kennedy is guilty of treason for purportedly being soft on communism.

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Fred Koch then helped spearhead a national advertisement in the New York Times blaming Kennedy's assassination on the communists.

1964

John Birch Society ads blaming communists for the assassination of President Kennedy run nationally. The Society also promotes material called "Marxmanship in Dallas."

The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizes voter registration drives in Mississippi and plans for "Freedom Summer" demonstrations.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights workers investigating the firebombing of a church where they were organizing voter registration, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.

Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 over the objections of South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond and other racists.

That year, the Supreme Court also issued its ruling in Reynolds v. Simms, which is famous for its principle of "one person, one vote."

The John Birch Society created a "scholarship" fund for anti-communist/capitalist African American students, and its first recipient received $1000 in September 1964.

1965

The John Birch Society touts that 26 million Americans voted for a conservative, Barry Goldwater, even though Goldwater criticized the Society.

Jimmy Lee Jackson, an unarmed African American who was protesting the arrest of civil rights worker James Edward Orange, was killed by police. Hundreds of SNCC activists, including John Lewis, marched from Selma to Montgomery in protest, and were stopped on the bridge by police wielding fire hoses, clubs, and tear gas. Martin Luther King joins them.

The John Birch Society's main publication claims that "the march from Selma to Montgomery led by Martin Luther King" was a "sham and farce."

Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The John Birch Society claimed that the few "handicaps to Negro voting" "could be and were being corrected" without federal legislation and that "To tear a whole great nation to pieces, and to try to plunge a large part of it into civil war, over the few such injustices as do exist, is on a par with sinking a mighty ship in order to get a rat out of the scupper." (Robert Welch, "Two Revolutions at Once" in American Opinion and then published as a stand-alone John Birch Society pamphlet in 1966.)

Among other things in 1965, Charles Koch helped promote the John Birch Society bookstore in Wichita, which was managed by Bob Love. The bookstore peddled John Birch Society pamphlets like Earl Lively's "The Invasion of Mississippi," which claims the racial integration of Ole Miss was unlawful and sides with the white racist protestors. Other titles included Robert Welch's pamphlet, "A Letter to the South on Segregation" and a tract titled "Is the Supreme Court Pro-Communist." It also offered "Support Your Local Police" stickers from the campaign begun in 1963.

Charles Koch's confidante and assistant George Pearson joined the John Birch Society and began volunteering at the American Opinion Bookstore in Wichita, too.

The John Birch Society also promoted its new "What's Wrong with Civil Rights" campaign in its bookstores and newspapers. The campaign claimed African Americans are better off in the U.S. than in other countries and have personal security on par with whites:

"The average American Negro has a tremendously higher material standard of living than Negroes anywhere else; and far higher, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth's population of all races combined."

"The average American Negro not only has a far higher standard of literacy, and better educational opportunities, than Negroes anywhere else; but a higher level of literacy, in fact, than at least four-fifths of the earth's population of all races combined."

"The average American Negro has complete freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and freedom to run his own life as he pleases."

"His security of person, and assurance of honorable treatment by his fellow citizens in all of the utilitarian relationships of the living, have been exactly on par with those of his white neighbors."

"[T]he agitators behind the civil rights movement demand complete and absolute disregard for those differences [‘in the economic, literate, and social level of the two races" and "the natural or human-natural results of these differences"], and a pretense that they do not exist, must be forced by federal law upon the total population everywhere, and with respect to every activity of human life."

"[T]he civil rights movement in the United States, with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps towards the appearance of a civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists …"

"[T]he American Negroes as a whole did not plan this, have not wanted any part of it, and are no bigger dupes on yielding to the propaganda and coercion of the comsymps among them, than are the white people of the United States in swallowing portions of that propaganda labeled idealism."

Also, in 1965, the riots in Watts in Los Angeles over the treatment of an African American and his family by a police officer resulted in more than 30 deaths, primarily of African Americans.

1966

James Meredith is shot during the "March against Fear" to register African American voters.

The John Birch Society continued its campaign to Impeach Earl Warren and also pushed to raise $12 million to take over Congress through launching political action in 325 districts.

Charles Koch sent out a fundraising letter with Bob Love to raise money for the John Birch Society. They said they had contributed $3500 toward the goal of $5000 (the average annual wages of an American worker that year).

The John Birch Society also promoted its "Liberty Amendment," opposing graduated income taxes as a marxist plot to impose collectivism. It also took out "Support Police" ads and opposed "Civilian Review Boards" that would impose citizen oversight against police brutality.

That year, with his father ill, Charles Koch took on the leadership of the family corporation that would become Koch Industries.

1967

The Supreme Court struck down laws against inter-racial marriage in Loving v. Virginia.

Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Martin Luther King begins the "Poor People's Campaign."

The John Birch Society calls President Johnson's "War on Poverty" a scam to promote collectivism and promoted Dan Smoot's claim that it would create a socialist dictatorship.

Fred Koch died on November 17, 1967. Donations in tribute were requested by the family in his name for Wichita's John Birch Society American Opinion Bookstore.

Charles Koch became Chairman of the family business.

1968

Martin Luther King came to speak during the Memphis sanitation workers strike, and he was assassinated.

April 11, 1968, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 barring discrimination in housing.

The John Birch Society promoted opposition to anti-discrimination legislation, with publications like "Open Occupancy v. Forced Housing," which extolled "freedom of choice" and property rights.

On May 19, 1968, Charles Koch and Bob Love ran a full-page ad in the Wichita Eagle headlined "Let's Get Out of Vietnam Now," calling for an unconditional pullout because it was too expensive. Love also stated that pulling out was necessary to prevent the U.S. from adapting to communism philosophically through wage and price controls and taxes to pay for the war: "This country will surely vote for a dictator, if the chaos and confusion of inflation continue to mount."

Charles Koch resigned his "life membership" in the John Birch Society and also withdrew his advertising from the John Birch Society's "American Opinion" monthly magazine and from supporting its radio programs. Robert Welch wrote to ask him to reconsider, but he did not do so.

Charles Koch announced he was renaming the family company "Koch Industries."

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

Father of Koch Brothers Built 15 Oil Refineries for Josef Stalin During His Purges in 1930s: That Money Built the Koch Empire

The Elder Koch Built an Oil Refinery for Adolf Hitler: The Money Was Used to Build the Koch Political Empire 

Soul of a Koch.
(Illustration by Ronald David Jackson)

By Travis Gettys
The father of billionaires Charles and David Koch helped the Nazis build a major oil refinery, according to a new book about the rise of wealthy and influential conservative activists.

Author Jane Mayer describes in “Dark Money” how rich donors such as the Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife and Harry and Lynde Bradley have steered modern conservatism through their considerable campaign contributions, reported the New York Times.

Fred Koch, whose sons wield great influence in the current Republican Party, made a fortune overseas in the years before World War II, the author writes.

The American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis hired the elder Koch to build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich that served as “a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine,” the newspaper reported.

The oil refinery was approved by Adolph Hitler himself — but that’s not the only candidate for history’s greatest monster with whom Fred Koch did business.

The elder Koch, a founding member of the anti-communist John Birch Society, also built 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.

Read More

Hitler Had an Oil Refinery Build by Father of Koch Brothers: The Money Was Used to Build the Koch Political Empire

The elder Koch, a founding member of the anti-communist John Birch Society, also built 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.

Soul of a Koch.
(Illustration by Ronald David Jackson)

By Travis Gettys
The father of billionaires Charles and David Koch helped the Nazis build a major oil refinery, according to a new book about the rise of wealthy and influential conservative activists.

Author Jane Mayer describes in “Dark Money” how rich donors such as the Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife and Harry and Lynde Bradley have steered modern conservatism through their considerable campaign contributions, reported the New York Times.

Fred Koch, whose sons wield great influence in the current Republican Party, made a fortune overseas in the years before World War II, the author writes.

The American Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis hired the elder Koch to build the third-largest oil refinery in the Third Reich that served as “a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine,” the newspaper reported.

The oil refinery was approved by Adolph Hitler himself — but that’s not the only candidate for history’s greatest monster with whom Fred Koch did business.

The elder Koch, a founding member of the anti-communist John Birch Society, also built 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union during Josef Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.

Read More

The Militia Occupation in Oregon: Koch Brothers' Role in Fanning the Flames — They Want Public Lands

Ammon Bundy and the Koch Brothers: Koch operatives are hands-on in encouraging rebellion over land controlled by the federal government. The Koch Brothers want that land at cut-rate prices.

By Chris Zinda
The armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has me once again feeling compelled to write about how Utah politicians and the Koch machine manipulate the people and debate surrounding federal lands. I promise this might be the last time.

I forward in Constitutional Crisis in the Heart of Dixie that it is no surprise the anti-public lands sovereign movement centers in Utah, the State of Deseret, and chronicled the inception of the Western Freedom Festival, a uniquely Utah anti-public lands event. In it, I warned of Malheur takeover member LaVoy Finicum, his friendship with Cliven Bundy, and their mutual appeal to the sovereign movement.

The Party

The Western Freedom Festival describes itself as defending the heritage of the west that include christian values and local lands control. Using tax dollars, Utah County Commissioners and Ivory – in his capacity of head of the American Lands Council – coordinate and pull it off. The call themselves The Posse.

I attended the panel discussions and had second row seats for the concert, next to someone who identified himself as Cliven Bundy’s cousin, and behind Ivory and other Utah County Commissioners.

A panel speaker spoke of the power of the individual with conviction, and if you have public conviction one should expect to be attacked. That, there is virtue when you stand with conviction.

At that very same time Marjorie Haun, a Koch propagandist sitting with Commissioners, was attacking me via Twitter, comparing me to “monkey balls”.

A cursory review of Ms. Haun’s Franklin Center / Watchdog stories and social media reveal a direct connection between she, ALEC and the ALC – including the Festival. Most of her subjects pertain to and support their agendas, including fracking and resource extraction, healthcare, schools and public lands.

The Center for Media and Democracy established a connection between the larger Donor Trust network of which ALEC, the ALC and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity and its sattlite of “journalism” Watchdog.org sites are a part. In effect, Franklin Center propaganda masquerades as nonprofit journalism.

Before the concert, I stood with Southern Utah University student protesters who were objecting to the use of tax dollars for the political event. While walking to the protest, a posse of black hatted cowboys lead by a County Commissioner told this hippie to go home. Later, this same bunch joined other Commissioners, extremist State Representative Mike Noel, and Haun heckling, bullying, and berating those who were protesting. The propagandist Haun monkey-called, for real.

Tellingly, festival organizers were so brazen with public tax dollars that they bought country music performer Darryl Worley twice: once for a private dance in the back room and another for the public show where they gave away 80 percent of the tickets to whomever they wanted. And, they spent 80 percent of their taxpayer-funded budget doing so.

To their credit, they didn’t let LaVoy Finicum attend.

Courting Anarchy

During a conversation with a Commissioner, he let on that LaVoy Finicum asked to promote his cause at the Festival and that they denied his request.

I introduced Finicum in Dixie and warned of his impending fight with the government. I never imagined he would end up in eastern Oregon as the Public Information Officer for those holding the Malheur and he’d be nationally proselytizing his anti-public lands message.

Finicum is a pious man. You can hear it in the way he speaks. He very carefully and passionately expresses the sovereign issues of “natural law,” “prior appropriation” and “county governance.” He describes himself as a principled.

A Youtube video/audio was posted by Finicum in November in which he and Arizona militia organizer Cope Reynolds were recruiting support among southern Utah ranchers to stop paying their grazing fees and accept the assistance of national militias to protect them from the consequences of their actions.

Finicum, accompanied by Reynolds, insisted that the Utah Attorney General send a letter to the Federal government saying the state was taking over federal lands. “Don’t ask their permission! Just act that way! Don’t go through a court, don’t go through a court of law, you’re the State of Utah!” he pleads as the crowd applauded.

Reynolds called out Utah Commissioner and convicted ATV protest rider Phil Lyman as someone who needed to “stand up” so that militias can come and support him. Finicium went so far as to say that he encouraged Lyman to not show up in Federal Court for sentencing.

The telling disagreement came from Finicum with Ivory’s efforts. You see, Finicum doesn’t believe that the ALC is taking the right position regarding public lands, as they start from a position that the Federal government owns lands within states that then, through Congressional and Judicial channels, should be lobbied for their “return.” That’s neither Constitutional nor direct enough for Finicum.

Perhaps one day he will he look back at his so far failed Utah recruitment with some irony, as at one point a rancher says, “I don’t know what we need to do as a group, but the last thing I want to do is have another Bundy deal…and I don’t want to face those guns again.”

Due Process

Unlike their 2014 support for Cliven Bundy, this time the Oath Keepers and Richard Mack of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association are not acting in a seditious manner. Both have not come to the aid of Finicum and those engaged in the Mahleur standoff.

Mack was present and spoke at the January 2 Hammond rally in Burns and we haven’t heard from him since Harney County Sheriff Mark Ward has asked the occupiers to leave – as is Ward’s right according to the principles of the CSPOA.

The Oath Keepers have officially stayed out of the Burns event entirely, creating a rift within the larger militia movement. “I think the gun issue is a far, far stronger one to focus on at this time, when it comes to hard stands,” said Stewart Rhodes.

The Idaho and Oregon Three Percent officials who did attend the rally in Burns were astonished and later admonished the Malheur event participants and their actions, stating, “They do not mirror our vision, mission statement, or views in regards to upholding the Constitution, The Rule of Law, or Due Process.”

It seems many are not willing to send the guns in to support anti-public lands ranchers.

Jon Ritzheimer and Blaine Cooper are much more rhetorically and physically violent than the LDS contingent has ever been. The LDS crowd present would never burn Korans and wear shirts that say, “Fuck Islam”.

Thankfully and even after months of anti-Islam rhetoric within the militia movement, I am pleased that the Mahluer militants and their pleas appear to have not resulted in much action. Perhaps some agree with the Oath Keepers and III% while for others eastern Oregon in January is unappealing.

The Malheur standoff suggests there now is a schism within the militia movement, perhaps three factions: The sovereign public lands theologians, the second amendment militia, and the I don’t give a rats ass, let’s get this party started crew.

For everyone’s sake, let’s hope Ritzheimer and Cooper have been converted by the Bundy’s and Finicum.

Read More

The Bundy Militia Raid and Occupation: What the Media Left Out — It's A Land Grab By Freeloaders

By John Borowski
Public lands are some of our most treasured lands in the nation. Opal Creek, Crater Lake, the Siuslaw National Forest here in Oregon to name just a few. The truth behind the Bundy influenced takeover of the Malheur refuge HQ should be exposed for what it is.

I spend numerous days camping, hiking and photographing wildlife in Malheur Refuge. The place is heaven. The community people are friendly and the refuge staff is dedicated to the protection of wildlife as they accommodate the needs of the local community. I say: what are the facts?

1. Ammond Bundy’s false narrative should be exposed. He is the son of a rancher that grazes on your public lands: at a reduced cost. He has avoided paying his fees. I am older: I call those types….dead beats or true welfare queens. They are not patriots: they are acting like thugs and bringing in outside influences who don’t give a damn about Oregon.

2. They are breaking onto our land and our tax payer funded building in Malheur. Their excuse? The Cliven Bundy crew is defending the conviction of the Hammond family (a father ands son). They destroyed OUR PUBLIC PROPERTY to cover up their illegal hunting/killing deer. FACTS MATTER. Witnesses at trial, including a relative of the Hammonds, testified the arson occurred shortly after Steven Hammond and his hunting party illegally slaughtered several deer on BLM property. Jurors were told that Steven Hammond handed out “Strike Anywhere” matches with instructions that they be lit and dropped on the ground because they were going to “light up the whole country on fire.” One witness testified that he barely escaped the eight to ten foot high flames caused by the arson. The fire consumed 139 acres of public land and destroyed all evidence of the game violations.

3. The Bundy crew is being manipulated by powerful interests who want to privatize public lands. This is not new. In the 1970s: it was called the Sagebrush Rebellion. In the 1990s: the Wise Use Movement. These are efforts by mining, timber, grazing, oil and gas interests to privatize your public lands.

4. Our public lands are crucial for wildlife, purifying water and air, providing recreation and tourist dollars for local economies. Know this: more and more extraction is occurring ON OUR PUBLIC lands. Time to stop this.

5. The false narrative here is that big, bad government types are trying to stir up trouble. In reality: from Ted Cruz to powerful extractive industries: they are desperately seeking ways to give these lands, our lands: back to the states. Then: let the extraction begin with sales of our prized lands to the highest bidder.

6. Contact your Congressperson. Contact the White House. Write letters to the editor.

7. Don’t be duped by the Bundy narrative. We are a nation of laws. Those public lands belong to your children and grandchildren. If they want change: use the democratic process. I wonder: if I went to Malheur and cut fences of private land owners to help mustangs: I would be a criminal. I would be labeled an “environmental terrorist,” Let’s call this action by Bundy and ilk for what it is: an act of terrorism. Peaceful protests don’t include bringing assault weapons and threatening to harm federal police for doing their jobs?

Enough is enough. Get off our public land and follow the laws like most of us do.

TROJAN HORSE: Koch Brother 'Interest' in Criminal Justice Reform — Exposed as a Sham

By Brendan Fischer
Charles and David Koch have received positive press for backing a bipartisan effort to reform American criminal justice laws, which have helped make the U.S. the world's biggest jailer and whose burdens have fallen disproportionately on people of color.

But, as the Kochs ride the wave of momentum toward criminal justice reform, it is becoming increasingly clear that part of their agenda would actually make it harder to prosecute corporate violations of environmental and financial laws that protect the public from corporate wrongdoing. The changes would make it harder to hold executives and their employees responsible for violating U.S. laws and would protect their financial interests, at the public's expense.

Over at least the past five years, the Kochs and Koch-backed groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been pushing to increase the "intent" standard for criminal violations, particularly for so-called "white collar" crime and executive suite criminals.

This under-reported aspect of the Koch criminal justice reform agenda has been elevated in recent weeks, and could potentially reap big benefits for Koch Industries and other big corporate players.

"Intent" Requirement Would Block Many Corporate Criminal Prosecutions

Legislation to make the criminal justice system fairer passed the U.S. Senate with bipartisan support this winter. As the U.S. House of Representatives has taken up the matter, the bipartisan consensus has begun to fray with a controversial proposal lifted directly from the Koch playbook.

A bill that passed the U.S. House Judiciary Committee last month, sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), doesn't address mass incarceration, one of the primary concerns that progressives have been raising for years. His bill would instead overhaul many federal criminal laws by requiring prosecutors to prove that a person or corporation "knowingly" engaged in illegal conduct and additionally "knew" or should have known that the conduct violated federal law. Koch Industries is one of his top contributors in this election cycle.

The bill's default criminal intent standard is strikingly similar to the ALEC "Criminal Intent Protection Act," and tracks policies promoted by Koch-backed organizations for the past five years. As the Center for Media and Democracy has documented, Koch Industries is a major funder and leader of ALEC, and the Koch brothers have underwritten ALEC through foundations they control and organizations they fund.

The proposal "would make it much harder for prosecutors to criminally prosecute companies that swindle the public, endanger their workers, poison the environment or otherwise imperil consumers," said Rob Weissman, President of the public interest group Public Citizen.

Criminal laws for acts of violence typically have an "intent" requirement, which requires that prosecutors prove that a person intended to cause harm and violate the law before a long prison sentence can be imposed. This intent requirement is known in legal terms as "mens rea," which is Latin for "guilty mind."

But for a number of white collar crimes, such as environmental violations and financial crimes under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, federal law does not require that prosecutors prove that a company or its leaders intended to violate the law by polluting waterways, for example, or crashing the economy.

Instead, the fact of extensive pollution and the harms it causes can be enough to hold a corporation and its leaders criminally liable, because intent can be difficult to prove in a complex corporate structure, with varying layers of hierarchy and lines of authority. Corporate decisions rationalized in the name of cost-cutting or efficiency can lead to tragedies like the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, which killed 29 workers. That case recently resulted in a rare criminal conviction for the former CEO of Massey Energy.

"Requiring that prosecutors prove that a corporate executive is both consciously aware of the conduct of their subordinates and consciously aware that the conduct of those subordinates violates criminal law is very, very difficult," said Frank O. Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri.

"This would make [white collar] prosecutions more difficult than they now are, and they are already hard," Bowman said.

Overcriminalization vs. Mass Incarceration

Although civil rights activists have been focused on mass incarceration—such as changing the mandatory minimum sentences enacted during the drug war that have disproportionately affected people of color, policies that scholars like Michelle Alexander have described as a "new Jim Crow"—the Kochs, ALEC, and other Koch-backed groups have been largely discussing overcriminalization.

Despite how it sounds, "overcriminalization" isn't focused on the disproportionate rate of incarceration of people of color. It is instead focused on the idea that there are too many crimes—and, more specifically, too many white-collar crimes that might affect corporate interests.

"All of the attention here is on whether this will only benefit quote-unquote white-collar criminals, people at financial institutions, people at firms that are damaging the environment," Jeffery Robinson, deputy legal director of the ACLU, said about the Sensenbrenner bill.

"If it only benefits those people, then I haven't seen any evidence that there is any over-incarceration among that group. In fact, we see very few prosecutions of such individuals."

That is, corporations and their leaders are not often federally prosecuted and convicted. In fact, many Americans have expressed deep disappointment that more corporations and bankers were not prosecuted following the gambling on Wall Street that led to the economic crash in 2008, unlike the nearly 1,000 prosecutions following the Savings & Loan crisis in the late 1980s.

"To a considerable extent, deferred prosecutions—in which the Justice Department agrees not to prosecute in exchange for a promise by corporate defendants not to violate the law in the future—have replaced actual prosecutions, undermining any kind of deterrent effect" for criminal penalties, Public Citizen's Weissman added. Deferred prosecutions are almost unheard of outside of the white collar crime context.

Some have expressed general concern that there are too many federal offenses with criminal penalties and too many that don't specify an intent standard, an issue that is being studied in the Senate bill. However, Koch-backed groups have been strongly focused on white-collar crimes, and their "solution"—the blanket imposition of a strict intent standard on every federal crime, as opposed to less-stringent "negligence" or "recklessness" standards—would undermine the few corporate criminal prosecutions that do take place.

For example, the U.S. Department of Justice has noted that—if the Sensenbrenner bill had been law—it could not have secured a guilty plea in last year's case against Jensen Farms, whose failure to follow food safety standards with its cantaloupe led to a listeria outbreak that killed 33 people. Imposing a default intent requirement could affect prosecutions for violations of laws like the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Resource Recovery and Compensation Act (RCRA), and many others.

And such changes could also make it harder to prosecute Koch Industries.

As Forbes noted, in 2000, "A federal grand jury indicted the privately held company and four of its employees in September on 97 related charges for alleged violations that took place at the company's refinery in Corpus Christi, Tex." Koch Industries was facing "criminal charges, in which the petroleum giant is accused of spewing the toxic chemical benzene into the environment in 1995 and then trying to hide it from government investigators."

Koch and its employees may not have intended to "leak" 91 metric tons of toxic benzene into the air and water around their refinery but their failure to install key protections and fully monitor their emissions resulted in their refinery loading 15 times the legal limit of the toxic substance into the environment.

That is, Koch Industries exposed nearby residents to massive amounts of benzene, which "is a well-established cause of cancer in humans." It is a "group 1" carcinogen because studies have documented that it causes acute myeloid leukemia in humans, and it may also cause lymphocyte leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. It can also result in reduced production of bone marrow and suppress T-cells, which makes people more vulnerable to infections. It has also been found to lead to chromosomal aberrations and can reduce birth weight and cause other health problems.

But then George W. Bush became president and John Ashcroft was named Attorney General. In the 2000 election, David Koch was one of the top 30 donors to Bush and the Republican party in the U.S., contributing $378,500 directly and an untold sum through soft money operations resembling the Triad group that was tied to the Kochs following a Senate investigation, as the Center for Media and Democracy has documented.

The Bush administration reduced the charges, which could have led to fines of more than $500 million, and dropped the case to just one count for a Koch Industries subsidiary, Koch Petroleum Group. "Under the plea agreement, Koch will pay a total of $20 million dollars: $10 million in criminal fines and $10 million for special projects to improve the environment in Corpus Christi—a record amount imposed in an environmental prosecution," DOJ stated.

It is this experience—the massive emission of a known carcinogen—that the Kochs say sparked their interest in criminal justice reform. Over the years, Koch Industries has been investigated for numerous potential violations of federal and state law. And the Koch reform efforts could help prevent such prosecutions from ever occurring again.

"Overcriminalization: Liberty, and More, At Risk for Corporations and Their Employees"

At times, the Kochs have been clear about the connection between "overcriminalization," a mens rea intent requirement, and their corporate interests.

In September of 2011, for example, Koch Industries' Associate General Counsel, Marsha Rabiteau, gave a presentation titled "Overcriminalization: Liberty, and More, At Risk for Corporations and Their Employees." She had given a nearly identical presentation two years earlier, titled then "Mens rea and other Criminal Law Fundamentals on the Tines of the Public Pitchfork."

That presentation, to a meeting of the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel, warned that:

"The life of the corporation, the liberty interests of corporate officers and other employees can be in the cross-hairs of criminal prosecution over matters that often do not rise to true criminal activity."

The solution to the "overcriminalization" problem, Rabiteau said, was to create a default mens rea requirement, as would later appear in the Sensenbrenner bill and in ALEC model legislation.

Rabiteau suggested that attendees visit the Koch-backed Heritage Foundation's "Overcriminalization" project (at overcriminalized.com) and cited a report from Heritage and another Koch-backed group, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, called "Without Intent: How Congress Is Eroding the Criminal Intent Requirement in Federal Law."

(Rabiteau also suggested that corporations, as a legal fiction, could not form the requisite "intent" to be held liable for a criminal act—although corporations and Koch groups have supported the creation of a right to corporate "free speech" in the form of spending unlimited amounts in elections.)

The Koch Associate General Counsel argued that reforming corporate criminal justice law is needed "so that wrongdoers are punished with laws that are clear and adhere to our Anglo-American heritage."

Although Rabiteau was likely referring to the country's "legal heritage," an appeal to "our Anglo-American heritage" to protect white collar criminals from criminal prosecution—when the burdens of an unjust criminal justice system have largely fallen on non-Anglo-Americans—further indicates the divide between the corporate criminal justice crusaders and civil rights-oriented reformers.

Moreover, America's legal heritage viewed corporate power with deep skepticism and for many years required that corporations have limited charters and durations to prevent them from misuse.

Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Compromise, "Without Intent"

The Koch funding for criminal justice reform efforts ramped-up as the federal government began taking steps to reign in financial institutions following the collapse of Wall Street.

As the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill was being debated in 2010, two Koch-backed groups, the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Heritage Foundation issued a comprehensive joint report and project called "Without Intent" criticizing "overcriminalization" and the lack of intent requirements in the federal criminal code.

The co-author of NACDL's "Without Intent" report, which has been repeatedly cited in Congress' debate on criminal justice reform, is Tiffany Joslin, who is now Deputy Chief Counsel for the House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee, which is chaired by Rep. Sensenbrenner.

NACDL urged Congress to strike criminal provisions of Dodd-Frank that did not include an intent requirement, but Congress rejected that lobbying. When the law passed later that year, NACDL criticized the bill on these grounds:

"the overwhelming majority of the criminal offenses contained in the bill lack adequate mens rea, or criminal intent, requirements and, consequently, will fail to protect innocent or inadvertent actors from being criminally prosecuted or punished."

Why would the Kochs be concerned about Dodd-Frank and financial regulation? Because a big part of their multi-billion-dollar business comes from oil speculation. The Kochs have long been deeply involved in global financial markets, especially energy and commodity trading.


The Kochs are credited with creating the first oil derivatives in 1986. And they worked with U.S. Senator Phil Gramm to deregulate energy speculation with credit default swaps in 2000 with a measure that was later dubbed the "Enron loophole" after it aided the catastrophic collapse of the Texas energy giant. By 2009, a Koch executive boasted that the firm was one of the top five oil speculators in the world, with offices in London, Geneva, Singapore, Houston, New York, Wichita, Rotterdam, and Mumbai.

According to the Center for Public Integrity, the Kochs and their lobbyists "worked to favorably shape the [Dodd-Frank] bill, and have not stopped working since it was passed." Key aspects of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill attempted to bring transparency and stability to the $600 trillion "over-the-counter" derivatives market by dragging trades into the light of day, requiring supervision by a clearing houses, creating position limits for key commodities and requiring capital and margin requirements. Dodd-Frank also created some new criminal penalties, which were the focus of NACDL's objections.

On White-Collar Criminal Defense Lawyers….

The Kochs have received good press in recent months for acknowledging that they help fund NACDL (the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers), which does much more than promote better funding for underpaid public defenders representing indigent criminal defendants.

NACDL, in fact, has a substantial section devoted to aiding some of the wealthiest white-collar defense firms in the country and reshaping the law to address "overcriminalization."

Koch's Rabiteau, for example, urged others to "Join the Corporate Advisory Council to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers White Collar Crime project" in her presentations to the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel. NACDL has also hosted Koch Fellows at its DC office.

And NACDL has been particularly focused on the mens rea issue in recent years, as the Kochs have ramped up their funding of criminal justice reform. For example, the current Director of NACDL's White Collar Crime Project, Shana-Tara Regon (now Shana-Tara O'Toole), has testified on Capitol Hill in favor of an intent requirement for white-collar crimes. She has also co-authored op-eds with the Heritage Foundation favoring intent laws, and has represented the organization on the "Congressional Task Force on Overcriminalization." And she addressed ALEC's criminal justice task force—apparently the only time that NACDL presented to that task force—about this very issue, criminal intent.

In 2011, NACDL's Regon testified before Congress in favor of reforming another white collar crime law, the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits U.S. corporations from bribing foreign public officials. She claimed that "the FCPA is emblematic of the serious problem of overcriminalization," and called for Congress to "strengthen the mens rea requirements of the statute." FCPA experts criticized Regon's call for adding an intent standard, describing it as a means of undermining the anti-bribery statute's enforcement and reducing incentives for companies to take affirmative steps to halt bribery.

At the hearing, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) pressed Regon on how the FCPA could amount to "overcriminalization" when the Justice Department prosecutes an average of 14 cases per year. She replied simply that "a statute with no reasonable limitations is overcriminalization."

Notably, at the same time that Regon was testifying in favor of reforming the federal anti-foreign-bribery statute on "overcriminalization" grounds, the Kochs were embroiled in a bribery scandal in France.

Prior to the Kochs' public PR push on criminal justice this past year, few people outside of NACDL knew that it was funded by Koch money. The Koch role in funding NACDL as it advanced the Koch agenda on criminal intent changes did not come up during the hearing about those proposals.

The ALEC-SPN "Overcriminalization" Push

The year Dodd-Frank became law, in 2010, the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) formed its "Right On Crime" project to make a conservative push for criminal justice reform, with "overcriminalization" one of its priority issues. TPPF is one of the "think tanks" that is part of ALEC and a sibling of ALEC, the State Policy Network (SPN), which has also been funded by Koch money and other funding vehicles used by the Koch network of billionaires.

Thanks to an accidental disclosure of TPPF's donor list, theTexas Observer reported that Koch Industries directly funded TPPF to the tune of $160,000 that year, as did the Kochs' Claude R. Lambe Foundation, which gave $70,000. Funding from Koch Industries or the Kochs themselves is not publicly reported so it is not known whether Koch Industries or the Kochs funded TPPF in prior or subsequent years.

When the "Right On Crime" launched its website on this project in early 2011, the group made clear that a major focus was "Overcriminalization," which it described on the front page of its website as "The Criminal Prosecution of Corporations."

Right on Crime's first post on overcriminalization warned that "criminal prosecution of corporations has gotten out of hand" and decried the prosecution of Arthur Andersen in the Enron case.

The "conservative solution" to overcriminalization, Right on Crime stated, was to "Stop creating new criminal offenses as a method of regulating business activities. Regulation is better handled through fines and market forces, not the heavy stigma of criminal sanctions."

The Koch-backed ALEC soon jumped on the "overcriminalization" bandwagon. ALEC, which bragged in the 1990s that it successfully spread "three strikes you're out" and "truth in sentencing" bills that helped increase the number of prisoners and the length of time served in prison for a variety of crimes, was now decrying the lack of a mens rea requirement for white collar crimes. For years, ALEC not only pushed for bills that increased the prison population but it also pushed numerous measures to privatize prisons, which benefited its corporate funders like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). As part of its pay-to-play operations, when Walmart started funding ALEC, ALEC also pushed bills to create mandatory minimum sentences for shoplifting, enacted new penalties for retail theft, and even added sentencing enhancers for using an emergency exit when shoplifting.

But, in April 2011, ALEC held a presentation called "Overcriminalization: Not a Fair Fight: The Perils of Vague Criminal Statutes," featuring Regon, the head of the white-collar crime division of the Koch-backed NACDL. ALEC's agenda stated that "This presentation will discuss the proliferation of criminal law which has produced scores of criminal offenses that lack adequate "mens rea" (criminal intent) requirements. This discussion will provide legislators solutions to this attack on individual liberty and economic growth in their state."

A few months later, ALEC adopted the Criminal Intent Protection Act as a "model" bill for states. This bill—like Rep. Sensenbrenner's federal proposal—would impose a strict criminal intent requirement for any state criminal offense that doesn't specify otherwise.

Early the following year, in January of 2012, ALEC adopted a "Resolution on Transparency and Accountability in Criminal Law" decrying that "the creation of new criminal penalties is often obscured because these penalties are buried in legislation that is thousands of pages such as the convoluted Dodd-Frank bill enacted by Congress."

In 2013, ALEC released a report titled "Criminalizing America: How Big Government Makes a Criminal of Every American" urging state legislators to create a default mens rea requirement, specifically by enacting the ALEC "Criminal Intent Protection Act."

The report itself suggested ALEC's wanted a mens rea requirement because the corporate-backed group was concerned about average Americans. Yet ALEC showed its hand in a blog post announcing the report—they specifically noted that a default criminal intent requirement would affect the Clean Water Act, the same law that Koch Industries was accused of violating in 2000, writing that:

"to convict someone of violating the Clean Water Act, a prosecutor must only show that the accused has committed an infringement of the Act. Therefore, a person who did not know their conduct was illegal, or whose conduct was accidental, could find themselves facing criminal charges."

The New Jim Crow?

Notably, around the same time that the Kochs were ramping-up their spending on corporate-centered criminal justice policies, Michelle Alexander published her seminal book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," which helped push the problems with mass incarceration into the mainstream national consciousness.

That 2010 book detailed how the war on drugs effectively enforced a racial caste system, undermining many of the gains of the civil rights movement.

"No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities," Alexander wrote. "The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid."

At the same time that discussions about mass incarceration and "The New Jim Crow" were making their way into the popular imagination, Koch-backed groups like ALEC were working to institute another policy with echoes of the original Jim Crow era: voter suppression policies, like voter ID restrictions that make it harder for Americans to vote. As federal courts have documented, such restrictions have a disparate impact, blunting the voting power of people of color. ALEC proponents of such bills have attempted to justify such restrictions by citing the virtually nonexistent threat of voter fraud.

Notably, the high-level Koch operative currently leading the Koch network's domestic spying outfit, Mike Roman, built his career helping to perpetuate the myth of voter fraud, helping to propagate race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism after the election of Barack Obama as president.

Kochs Ride the Wave of Criminal Justice Reform and Score Positive Press

The conversation around criminal justice reform has shifted over the years.

Even as crime rates dropped, prison populations were growing and were costing states a significant amount of their budgets. The private prison industry was pushing to add new revenue streams through expanded detention of immigrants. After an expose by Beau Hodai showing the controversial SB 1070 was adopted at an ALEC conference before it was introduced in the Arizona legislature, CCA stopped funding ALEC (and claimed it did not vote on that bill though it was present for the secret vote), and ALEC stopped pushing prison privatization on legislators.

Around that same time, states were facing substantial budget challenges following the Wall Street crash, and "conservative" politicians were more open to concerns that had been raised for years by progressives that many states were spending more on prisoners than on school children. A number of religious groups had also expressed concerns that mass incarceration was not leading to rehabilitation. And, the so-called "war on drugs" was increasingly recognized as a failure, as a number of jurisdictions began pursuing marijuana legalization measures. Addressing the crisis of mass incarceration has also been a key plank of many civil rights organizations' policy platforms.

As the racial justice aspects of criminal justice reform became mainstreamed—and as the Kochs became increasingly focused on burnishing their public image—the Kochs began to reframe their criminal justice efforts, and reaped some PR benefits, in the aftermath of a mountain of negative press about the extent of their efforts to reshape the U.S. political system for their own benefit.

Some in the press have even treated the Kochs as civil rights activists, despite Charles Koch having been a member and funder of the John Birch Society through the 1960s, even running a JBS bookstore stocked with books attacking Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement as communist, as CMD has documented.

The Kochs have received accolades for supporting a bipartisan coalition promoting criminal justice reform on the federal level, and have also received positive press for their funding of NACDL, with most news outlets focusing on NACDL's indigent defense work and overlooking NACDL's substantial white-collar crime work that aligns with the Kochs' interests.

"Everything we do is designed to help people improve their lives, whether you're talking about our business or our philanthropy," Koch General Counsel Mark Holden asserted to The Atlantic in March.

When the U.S. Senate passed a bill earlier this year that primarily benefited the Americans most affected by harsh criminal justice laws, it might have appeared the Kochs' criminal justice push was genuine.

Yet with Koch-backed politicians in the House now insisting on a mens rea requirement that would benefit Koch Industries—and which is the fruition of years of Koch-funded efforts—it is becoming increasingly clear that the Kochs are interested in more than altruism.

"Is there an element of self interest there? Probably," said Bowman, the Missouri criminal law criminal professor. "But," he asserted, "it is probably less prominent than the most suspicious of my liberal friends would expect."

"There is absolutely no reason for the otherwise laudable criminal justice reform bill to contain any measure to weaken already feeble standards for corporate criminal prosecution," said Public Citizen's Weissman.

It would seem prudent to view Koch support for criminal justice reform with a skeptical eye, once more than a merely superficial view of their efforts is examined.

The overwhelming focus of Koch-backed groups has been on criminal justice issues that would directly benefit Koch Industries and other corporate interests. Koch financial support for measures that would not affect their bottom line appears negligible, especially in comparison to the Koch Network's plans to spend $900 million this election cycle. Indeed, Charles Koch is notorious for insisting on a return on his investments in the public policy arena, and he's been called "relentless in pursuit of his goals."

And the Kochs have been outspoken about their support for political candidates like Scott Walker, who oppose criminal justice reforms that would help communities of color and others affected by harsh criminal justice laws. Among other things, Walker pushed ALEC's truth in sentencing into law in Wisconsin as a state legislator and ALEC member, helping make Wisconsin the worst state in the country when it comes to racial disparities in incarceration. But that didn't stop Koch Industries from maxing-out on contributions to Walker's 2010 gubernatorial campaign or David Koch's Americans for Prosperity from spending $10 million supporting Walker during the 2012 recall elections.

And, the Kochs have spent significant sums helping to elect judicial candidates using messaging that studies have shown have pushed judges to hand-down harsher sentences, along with other ads.

The U.S. criminal justice system is genuinely in crisis, and for too long has devastated families and communities. The stakes are too high to do nothing when there is bipartisan support.

But, given the Kochs' corporate interests in changing the criminal intent requirements, and the heavy push for such a change by groups and politicians they fund, there appears to be good reason for concern that "reform" efforts could be a Trojan Horse, as Dan Froomkin put it, to allow white-collar criminals to get off the hook for financial and environmental crimes that hurt countless Americans.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

Why Are the Koch Brothers Advocating Change in Prison Sentencing? — To Protect Corporate Criminals

By Thom Hartmann
It looks like the Koch brothers have scammed us once again.

When news first came out that Charles and David Koch - the Koch brothers - were supporting criminal legal system reform efforts in Congress, many of us thought, "Wow, they're actually doing something good for once." And for good reason, too.

Criminal legal reform has, over the past few years, become one of the very few legitimately bipartisan issues in US politics, and given their public statements, it really looked like Kochs were joining that bipartisan consensus for all the right reasons.

Here, for example, is Charles Koch on a recent episode of "Morning Joe" talking about why we need to reform drug laws. Sounds pretty persuasive, right? Boy, were we naïve.

Charles and David Koch may very well want to change drug laws, but the idea that they're making this push for criminal legal reform out of the goodness of their own hearts appears to be totally and completely false. After all the publicity they've gotten from the media and the DC establishment, it now turns out that the Kochs appear to want to change sentencing laws to help protect potential white collar criminals like, well, themselves or their buddies.

As The New York Times reported, Koch Industries, backing as part of a package of criminal legal system reform legislation, a bill that would change the way the feds can use a legal doctrine known as "mens rea" in white collar cases. If the bill passes, white collar criminals could get away with breaking the law if they can simply say that they "didn't know" they or their business and colleagues were breaking the law when committing the crime in question.

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Koch Spy Agency Targets Liberals and Unionizers — And It's Led by a Voter Fraud Huckster

By Brendan Fischer
The Kochs have been complaining about a "lack of civility in politics" as they seek to boost their public image--but one of their top operatives helped propel perhaps the most egregious case of race-baiting voter fraud hucksterism in recent years.

At the same time that the Kochs have been on a PR blitz, publicly spinning an image of themselves as well-intentioned patriots trying to make the world a better place and decrying "character assassination," they've been quietly ramping up a clandestine surveillance and intelligence gathering operation focused on their perceived political enemies, Ken Vogel reports at Politico.

At the helm of this "competitive intelligence" operation is a man named Mike Roman, Vice President of Research for Kochs' Freedom Partners and who was paid $265,000 last year, according to Freedom Partners' recent tax filing.

But who is Mike Roman? He's been described generally as a longtime GOP operative. However, he's also the guy who was behind the release of the 2008 "New Black Panthers scaring old white ladies at the polls" video. The clip dominated Fox News for months and went on to fuel unfounded allegations that the Obama administration's Department of Justice was biased against white people.

Roman made a name for himself by releasing the video, which showed a New Black Panther Party (NBPP) member holding a billy club outside a Philadelphia polling place, on his voter fraud-peddling "Election Journal" website. He then worked with Republican vote fraud conspiracist J. Christian Adams to try uncovering evidence that voters were intimidated--which they could not find. But that didn't stop Roman, along with Fox News and the conservative echo chamber, from conjuring up a vast racist conspiracy inside the Obama administration, a theme that continues today.

As the conspiracy theories grew, Roman was given a column at Breitbart.com, where he continued to push a "scandal" narrative and to suggest a wide-ranging conspiracy involving ACORN, NBPP, and the Obama administration to steal elections. (Roman even launched a voter fraud app.)

In 2010, another vote fraud conspiracy theorist, the Wall Street Journal's John Fund, put right-wing video hitman James O'Keefe in touch with Roman for intel about a purported SEIU voter fraud scheme in Boston, which turned out to be bunk.

During this same period, the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was similarly targeting ACORN and pushing a model "Voter ID Act" to combat the nonexistent scourge of voter fraud--but which had the documented impact of disenfranchising potentially millions of students and voters of color who do not have the limited forms of IDs required under the law.

In 2010, Roman was named chief of staff to Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL) when he was elected to Congress for one term. Koch Industries and John Fund were among Schilling's top donors.


It is not clear when Roman was formally folded-in to the Koch network. Freedom Partners' new tax filing for 2014 is the first where he appeared as Vice President of Research. But tax filings as far back as 2012 describe Roman as the trustee of the mysterious "Public Engagement Group Trust," which has the same address and suite number as another Koch group, the Center for Shared Services Trust.

Apparently Roman's years of stoking unfounded paranoia about stolen elections prepared him for a high-ranking position in the Koch operation.

In his role as the Kochs' top spy, Vogel reported, Roman has "worked to keep himself and his activity low-profile even within the discreet Koch operation."

"They act all cloak and dagger–like the CIA," one source told Vogel. "There was a joke about how hardly anyone ever met Mike Roman. It was like, if you wanted to find him, he'd be in a trench coat on the National Mall."

Roman's GoodReads profile fits his carefully-cultivated cloak-and-dagger persona.

His favorite reads include books like "Data Mining and Analysis" and "Intelligence Analysis: a Target-Centric Approach," as well as Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, the left-wing organizer's manual that has gained traction on the right in recent years.

Mike Roman's favorite author? Charles Koch.

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CMD Executive Director Lisa Graves contributed research to this article.

Reprinted with permission from PRWatch.

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Do the Kochs Have Their Own Spy Network?

By Jane Mayer
Five years ago, when The New Yorker published my piece “Covert Operations,” about the ambitious and secretive political network underwritten by the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, the Koch brothers complained mightily about the story’s title, protesting that there was nothing at all covert about their political activities. Since then, the two have embarked on an impressive public-relations campaign meant to demonstrate their transparency and openness. But today, the Politico reporter Kenneth Vogel came out with a blockbuster scoop suggesting that the brothers, whose organization has vowed to spend an unprecedented eight hundred and eighty-nine million dollars in the 2016 election cycle, are more involved in covert operations than even their own partners have known.

After culling through the latest legally required disclosures, Vogel unearthed a new front group within the Kochs’ expanding network of affiliated nonprofit organizations—a high-tech surveillance and intelligence-gathering outfit devoted to stealthily tracking liberal and Democratic groups which Politico calls the “Koch Intelligence Agency.” The sleuthing operation reportedly includes twenty-five employees, one of whom formerly worked as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, and follows opponents by harvesting high-tech geodata from their social-media posts.

According to Vogel, the effort is so secretive that very few people know of it even within the Kochs’ own sprawling political operation. Housed with other Koch nonprofit organizations in a bland office building in Arlington, Virginia, the outfit is managed by a limited-liability partnership called American Strategies Group, LLC. The company is part of the Kochs’ main political group: a circle of ultra-conservative donors called Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, which describes itself as a “business league” and so claims that it can legally hide the identities of its members.

Reached for comment, James Davis, the spokesman for Freedom Partners, described news accounts comparing the organization’s operation to espionage as “inaccurate.” Davis said, “Like most other organizations, Freedom Partners has a research department that benchmarks our efforts against other organizations.”

While it’s big news that the Kochs are now running their own private intelligence-gathering operation in order to track political opponents, including labor unions, environmental groups, and liberal big-donor groups, it actually isn’t surprising, given their history.

For decades, there have been reports suggesting that Charles and David Koch and Koch Industries have employed private investigators to gather inside information on their perceived enemies, including their own brother, Bill Koch, with whom they fought over control of the family business and fortune. My forthcoming book, “Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,” which will come out in January, builds on earlier reporting about this, including my 2010 New Yorker piece. In fact, again and again, those who have challenged the Kochs and Koch Industries—whether they are federal officers, private citizens, or members of the press—have suspected that they have been under surveillance.

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