Dark Money and The Evil Men Do.
Listening to the BEHIND THE BASTARDS (fantastic, can’t recommend it enough) podcast recently it occurred to me how our society has evolved into legalized pathways to restrict freedoms or to avoid consequences for others collateral damages by the responsible parties.
I’m sorry, what?
PART 1
How it works.
In our society’s laws are added but rarely ever repealed, yet constantly adjusted. It’s like a brick wall being built over years and the new laws go on top while being supported by the very old ones down at the bottom.
Without the new bricks, the old ones are outdated, weak, and somewhat archaic. While without those on the bottom the ones up top wouldn’t make sense and have lots of foundational problems.
For instance….
In the early years of cars, there were no laws. Lots of people got hit even though they were going sorta slow and there were very few. So, where do you start? You don’t start with new traffic lights or add left-turn lanes. There were no roads, you had to start with basics. Drivers stay to the right when passing other cars. Later you can argue about max speed on urban freeways and parking violations.
Of course, sometimes you try something and it really doesn’t work or it’s unnecessary. Prohibition comes to mind. Adding new laws to capture cattle rustlers feels kinda dated and pointless. Also, I hope most Americans feel the further we get from Jim Crowe laws the better.
For better or worse we have elected officials who create and adjust the laws to benefit the most people. Because we have a system of checks and balances, where representatives are based on the number of people they serve, what the majority of Americans want, wins out. It’s the best possible system as we the people determine our course.
Right?
PART 2
How to make it not work
Well…..this system only works if those in place to work for the voters they represent are free of outside influence. Also, if the voters they serve have factual information to help them base decisions on. Either of those fails and things get murky.
In 1988 a man named Floyd Brown founded a group called CITIZEN’S UNITED. The early years weren’t too eventful but as 1999 ended, so did decency and morality.
In 2000 a truly evil man named David Bossey took over Citizens United. Prior to that, he had an unremarkable career highlighted by being fired by Newt Gingrich. He was fired for “unethical actions”. (Do you know how hard it is to get Newt to find your actions unsavory? Newt had 84 ethics charges brought against him as Speaker of the house and while visiting his first wife on the day of her Uterine cancer surgery told her he was divorcing her) Bossey, now fueled by very rich donors and lots of ‘Big Oil’ (The Koch Brothers and later the Presidential Coalition LLC. are a few of the many) money set out to weaponize propaganda. This soulless scum-sucking parasite set out to change the world. And he has.
A little bit about CITIZENS UNITED
Prior to 2010 Citizens United was little more than the dirty tricks arm of the GOP. CI would produce propaganda films but evolved into the GOP attack ad go to. Actual titles of feature-length documentaries produced by CI PRODUCTIONS:
- ACLU: At War with America (I will never understand why Libertarians hate civil Liberty so much)
- Battle for America (between ‘Constitutional Americans’ and liberals)
- Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration (guess what this is about?)
- Celsius 41.11 (they made an entire film to dispel claims made in a Michale Moorer film)
- Fire From the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman (A film dedicated to Michelle Bachman and Anne Couture not being evil). 2.3 stars
- The Gift of Life (yeah, it’s about that)
- Hillary: The Movie (an hour and half attack ad)
- HYPE: The Obama Effect
- Nine Days that Changed the World — hosted by Newt Gingrich and his wife, Callista Gingrich(not the wife he fired on day of cancer surgery)
- Occupy Unmasked (Steve Bannon directed attack on George Soros among others)
Shockingly, none got good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Although they never stopped making their “documentaries”, they did face legal opposition from the Federal Election Commission as to how they advertised the films. Since the films were propaganda that existed only for convincing people to vote the way the wealthy donors who financed the movies, the organization etc. want you to, technically, that makes these films giant commercials. They released the films timed for maximum benefit. It was money solely used to help one person lose and one person win an election and we have laws that control this use of money.
ESPECIALLY when the facts that are laid out in the “documentaries” couldn’t air in ads for the supported candidate or in TV commercials as they are bullshit.
Facts that are not “facts” = bullshit. Ads (whether they are 30 seconds or an hour and a half) that sell bullshit get pulled. Well, until Citizens United went hard and took this to the supreme court.
Years earlier under the Bipartisan Reform Act it was determined that mega-donors and Large Corporations could not endlessly fund an entire campaign. You also had tp account for all the money donated and then spent on the campaign. Donor restrictions and limits prevent bribery.
Allow me to explain.
It takes about $50 million dollars to run a California Govenatorial campaign. If I am a crazy person and own a scrap yard, but pay the entire $50 million dollars to fund a campaign, most likely the person I supported would be my bitch. And if the person whose campaign I am finding agrees that we should blow up the Golden Gate Bridge, (lots of good scrap metal) Bipartisan Reform Act was designed to prevent that. Because once you “donate” $30k, $50k, on up, it’s no longer a donation. It’s an investment. It’s just bribery.
Bribery = Bad.
PART 3
Who made it no longer work
in 2010 Citizens United won a supreme court case that repealed portions of the Bipartisan Reform Act. I think you can guess which part was repealed.
To be fair, you can’t just finance the campaign of a candidate. However, you can create a SUPER PAC (Political Action Committee) and although you have to log who is donating to the PAC, you can open it up to groups and corporations so the money sorta becomes, “Dark”. So if you own an oil refinery among other Petroleum businesses and wanted to inject…Say…$400,000,000 into a few campaigns, it wouldn’t be that difficult.
PART 4
Satan looks like your grandfather.
Once every couple of years The Koch brothers famously make all their GOP PUPPETS come to grovel at their feet at the Dana Point Ritz Carlton.
Per Time Magazine & OpenSecrets.org
-In 2012 the Koch Brothers (pronounced “COCK”, only by me, but I’m putting in the effort to get it to become a thing) and their “Network” were linked to 1 in 4 “Dark Dollars” totaling upwards of $400million that found its way into the campaigns and elections of Koch supported politicians and initiatives. In 2020 it was estimated that over $1Billion Dark Dollars were spent between both sides in aggregate on the campaigns. Some estimates have the brothers (by this time, it’s down to just Charles as Satan was calling in the marker on David’s soul I guess) personally spending $400,000,000.
If you are even slightly familiar with campaign finance laws in the US you saw the word “estimated” in the previous paragraph and had questions. You know we have very stringent rules in the US to track every penny donated to a politician so the corruption outlined won’t happen. And you’d be wrong again. Well, we did, Citizens United court case pretty much fucked that up for good. Without a Guillotine, there is no simple way to undo what the Robert’s led Supreme Court did in 2012. Once that many bricks and that much cement was let loose (especially when you bring states rights into it) the Genie has permanently left the bottle. At best it’ll be Whack-a-Moll with a moll that has been funded by billionaires.
Let me explain.
The above chart is by OpenSecrets and explains what they assembled right after the SCOTUS victory in 2012. I tried to find a comprehensive or updated equivalent and couldn’t.
What you see is the out-of-the-gate version. By now it’s much more complex. The Koch’s don’t pay it all out of pocket, they get rich assholes to help fund them. It’s now vast and seriously endless.
Assuming you don’t want a Russian oligarchy-like system deciding how US citizens will think, feel, desire, and live, you probably are waiting for my brilliant yet hilarious answer to all this. Problem is, there may not be one.
To see Charles Koch interviewed he seems reasonable and grandfatherly. Midwestern charm hiding behind a big smile. But don’t be fooled by his down-home charm, he went to MIT and has a master’s in both Chemical and Nuclear engineering. He isn’t Andy Griffith, he’s THANOS.
Until Charles Koch dies there is no possibility this can begin to heal. And by that time (it may be too late already) it’ll be a dice roll if it’s even possible anyway. Not that he pulls strings anymore, but he has been the tip of a massive iceberg he has built going back 40 years, spending billions to change the way America does things. He has created a generation of greedy, win at all costs elites and another group of twice that many who want more than anything to be elite.
Hey, when your father made his millions literally as a referral from Stalin to (at the time) his buddy Hitler, what kind of evil did you expect? Charles wasn’t raised by Mother Teresa, he was literally raised by a Nazi. But devoting your life to maintaining your family’s status because your oil and toilet paper empire prints more money than the Dallas Fed, is still pretty fucked up.
Link to Time magazine and OpenSecrets.org articles referenced
https://time.com/5121930/koch-brothers-fall-elections/
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/12/1-in-4-dark-money-dollars-in-2012-c/
