|
printable version
- js reader version
- view hidden posts
- tags and related articles
by Rich Cowan / Rightwing Watch
Wednesday, Jun. 13, 2001 at 3:34 AM
rich@organizenow.net
The DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) a splinter group of "centrist" Democrats whose membership has included Joe Lieberman, Al Gore, Bob Kerry, John Edwards, and now Hillary Clinton. One of the sponsors of their upcoming annual "Strategy Session" is Koch Industries of Kansas, owned mainly by two arch-conservative brothers (David and Charles) who are major donors to to the Bush campaign and the Bob Dole campaign, and provided startup funding for both the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy, anti-labor advocacy groups with close ties to the Bush administration.
RWWATCH - June 11, 2001 (please forward)
A RWWATCH reader forwarded an email that was sent by the Democratic Leadership Council email list earlier today. FYI the DLC is not the Democratic National Committee, but a splinter group of "centrist" Democrats whose membership has included Joe Lieberman, Al Gore, Bob Kerry, John Edwards, and now Hillary Clinton.
The news is that the DLC is holding their annual "Strategy Session" in a few weeks:
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 14:29:03 -0500
From: ndol_admin@dlcppi.org (New Democrats Online)
Subject: Important DLC Strategy Session
[ http://www.ndol.org & http://www.ppionline.org ]
Special Event Invitation:
Please join DLC Chairman Evan Bayh in Indianapolis next month for an important gathering of New Democrat elected officials and community leaders:
The DLC's 5th Annual National Conversation
July 15-17, 2001
Westin Indianapolis Hotel
Indianapolis, Indiana
The interesting thing about this event is that it is actually touting the fact that it is funded by Koch Industries of Kansas. This company is one of the anchors of the CONSERVATIVE movement, and is a major contributor to the Bush campaign. To be fair, Koch is only one of more than a dozen sponsors. Here is the list of event sponsors, straight from the DLC web site at
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=3397&subid=166&kaid=126 :
Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield
Baker & Daniels / Sagamore Associates
Barnes & Thornburg
Steven & Phoebe Crane
Dominion
Eli Lilly & Company
Emmis Communications
Indianapolis Colts
International Association of Fire Fighters
Koch Industries Inc.
PSComm, LLC
Sallie Mae
Sheet Metal Workers International Association (SMWIA)
United Water
But it seems odd to have have an ideologically conservative outfit -- one of the largest private companies in the US, owned mainly by two arch-conservative brothers (David and Charles) who support "free market" policies no matter the cost -- lined up on the same sponsor list as a liberal international union.
The Sheet Metal Workers Union (see www.smwia.org) is a member of the AFL-CIO and even lists includes a link to "BushWatch" (see http://www.aflcio.org/bushwatch/index.htm) on its home page.
By contrast, the Koch industries organization was a major donor to the Bush campaign and the Bob Dole campaign, and provided startup funding for both the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy, anti-labor advocacy groups with close ties to the Bush administration. (see http://www.forbes.com/2001/01/04/0104faces.html and http://www.dallasnews.com/specials/bush_campaign/finance/0801bushdonate.htm)
It certainly might be worthwhile to see if the DLC staff and the SMWIA are aware of the background of Koch Industries. Try: DLC Press Secretary Matthew Frankel at (800) 546-0027. Or Michael J. Sullivan, Pres. of SMWIA, 1750 NY Ave. N.W., DC 20006 202-783-5880
Better yet, if any of you are attending the DLC event (anyone may register for a fee), or you will be in Indiana on July 16, the date of DLC's 0/plate "Celebrate the Success" dinner, it might be a great opportunity to hand out information on the fiercely partisan activities of the Koch brothers, or on the whether the DLC's "strategy" of welcoming support from the far right wing makes any sense.
One link, and one full article, below. -rich cowan]
Robert Parry Investigative Piece on Koch-related Lawsuit
http://past.thenation.com/issue/960826/0826parr.htm
Wall Street Journal - August 9, 1999
http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/9909/0422.html
HOW KOCH INDUSTRIES TRIES TO INFLUENCE JUDICIAL SYSTEM
By John J. Fialka
Staff Reporter Of The Wall Street Journal
In September 1997, Judge Michael Corrigan left his courtroom in Kansas's State District Court in Wichita to join a small group of hand-picked state judges for a special seminar at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Then, last December, he attended the second phase of the seminar at the 0-per-night Sundial Beach Resort in Sanibel, Fla.
The topic: hard-nosed, market-based economics, a subject Judge Corrigan says he never took in college. "Talk about a mental challenge," the judge raves. Equally interesting, however, was the identity of the founder and key patron of the two-week seminar: a Koch family foundation headed by an official of Koch Industries Inc. of Wichita, an oil, natural gas, minerals and agribusiness giant that aggressively lobbies government.
In between the sessions, Judge Corrigan handled the pretrial phase of two cases involving Koch. He was aware of Koch's involvement in the seminars, the judge says, but didn't inform any of the parties to the cases. "I considered it to be a matter of the University of Kansas," he says.
Efforts to Influence
The seminars illustrate how, in recent years, Koch has sought to influence thinking in the judicial system. Since 1995, 550 judges have attended the two-part, nearly expense-free "Economic Institutes for State Judges." Koch also has been directly involved in launching a parallel rating system for judges that grades them on how their decisions affect the business community.
There's nothing illegal about this, of course, but some see at least the potential for a conflict of interest. A lawyer opposing Koch in one of the cases that came before Judge Corrigan, Darrell Miller, of Mankato, Kan., says he saw no bias in the judge's handling of the case, in which his client, a grain company, agreed to pay Koch 0,000 to settle an accounting dispute. Still, he wishes he had been told about the judge's involvement in the seminar. "This is something that all trial counsels would like to know."
Henry N. Butler, who holds the chair of "Koch Distinguished Teaching Professor of Law and Economics" at the University of Kansas, directs the economic seminars under the auspices of a university foundation heavily endowed by Koch Industries. He and other instructors run the sessions, which are very popular among judges.
Picking Up the Tab
One reason: Nearly all of the judges' expenses, about ,000, for the two weeks, are paid by some 90 major corporations, law firms and foundations. A Koch foundation contributes the most, about ,000 toward each judge's tab, according to Mr. Butler. Tax returns show that two Koch-controlled family foundations have contributed at least .3 million toward the seminars.
Last month, 66 judges cooled off at the Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort, just outside Salt Lake City. Among other things, the judges were told in their morning sessions that judges let too much "junk science" into cases involving damage claims against companies and that the rules of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration are enormously expensive and often ineffective.
"Wow. We probably had the benefit of a whole course in economics this morning," said Superior Court Judge William D. Birney of Norwalk, Calif., as he and his wife rode up the mountain on a cable car to begin their afternoon of leisure. Mr. Butler says that Koch has no role in the selection process. But a list of judges who have taken the seminars, which were described in an article in the Wichita Eagle last week, shows that many successful applicants come from Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Minnesota and Louisiana -- all states where Koch Industries' business is concentrated.
Weighing 'Overdeterrence'
One of the courses Mr. Butler teaches is about "the costs of overdeterrence" by judges who punish companies for harming people or the environment. "Many potentially hazardous activities offer great benefits to society," states the Institute's syllabus for the session.
Koch Industries has settled some of the most expensive environmental lawsuits in the country, including cases in Minnesota and Texas where huge oil spills have cost it over .9 million in civil penalties and million for damages and cleanup costs.
Koch (pronounced "coke"), a closely held concern said to have annual revenue of billion, is before the courts in hundreds of pending cases, large and small. Mr. Butler sees no conflict between those cases and his seminar. "What we teach is basic microeconomics," he says. "We are providing an important public service by keeping judges intellectually alive."
Many of his former judicial pupils agree with him, including Judge Corrigan, who says he now views cases "in a way that is different than I have in the past."
The chairman of the ethics committee of the American Bar Association, Baltimore lawyer M. Peter Moser, says that in cases where a donor appears in court before someone who has been a recipient, "it creates an issue as to whether the judge should be disqualified, so it needs to be disclosed."
Grading Judges
Some judges say they decided to attend the seminars after receiving low grades from a new system that ranks judges on how their decisions affect the business community. Currently being used by political groups in judicial elections in half a dozen states, the ranking system, like the seminars, was developed with considerable help from Koch.
In 1996 Justice Alma Wilson, a member of the Oklahoma Supreme Court, scored a 39, one of the lowest scores in the state. She was outraged when an advocacy group -- Oklahomans for Judicial Excellence -- gave her the grade. She later got angry with Mr. Butler when he wrote a letter to the Daily Oklahoman applauding the scoring system and saying his seminar was a way judges could raise their scores.
She attended one of Mr. Butler's seminars, but the 30-year veteran of the bench says the whole process left a bitter taste: "I don't need any rehabbing."
Judge Keith Rapp, who sits on the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals in Tulsa, went to the Sanibel seminar in 1997 after getting a score of 42. He liked socializing with the other judges at their beachfront condominium and felt he gained from the classes in economics.
But later, when Mr. Butler came out in defense of the system for grading judges, Judge Rapp began to wonder. Economics are only part of what a judge must decide, he later wrote in an angry letter to Mr. Butler. A judge's oath of office also requires him to weigh such things as social benefits and racial integration, he argued.
Butler and Grading
While he knows Ron Howell, the Tulsa political consultant who developed Oklahomans for Judicial Excellence, Mr. Butler says his Law and Organizational Economics Center, based at the University of Kansas, isn't involved in it or any of the other groups rating judges. "I just don't follow this stuff closely," he says.
Both Mr. Butler's seminars and Mr. Howell's rating system were developed with early funding from Koch. Mr. Howell retired from an executive position with Koch in 1987 and set up his Tulsa consulting firm with Koch support.
He says the support gave him time to work on civic matters, such as the rating system. "We look at their clear pro-economy, anti-economy impact."
The rating system has been used by pro-business groups in judicial campaigns in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia and Kansas. Last November, it popped up in Michigan in a tumultuous, watershed election that saw the formation of the first Republican-controlled Supreme Court since 1976.
One link between the seminars that educate and entertain state judges and the scoring systems that rank them is Richard H. Fink, senior vice president of Koch Industries. A trusted protege of Charles Koch, the company's chairman, he runs Koch's Washington office.
He feels strongly that citizen-action groups, not academics or think tanks, are the best way to sell his free-market ideas. He defends the Koch foundation's right to help fund the seminars: "Our funding of these programs is completely lawful, absolutely ethical and fully disclosed."
He left a professorship at Virginia's George Mason University in the early 1980s and founded a pro-business Washington lobby -- Citizens for a Sound Economy -- with some seed money from Koch family foundations.
Spreading the Philosophy
In 1990 Mr. Fink was hired to run Koch's Washington office and immediately began to turn his attention to ways to spread Koch Industries' libertarian "market-based management" philosophy. "We felt we ought to compete whenever there's a discussion of ideas," Mr. Fink explains. Since he was president of two Koch family-related, multimillion-dollar foundations and vice president of a third, he could put his dreams into motion.
He lured Mr. Butler from Virginia's George Mason University to fill the Koch-endowed chair at the University of Kansas, awarding him a 0,000 grant from Koch Industries to set up a master's degree program. Then he awarded over million in grants from the Fred C. and Mary Koch Foundation to help Mr. Butler start the seminars.
Mr. Butler and at least one other professor he uses at the state judges' seminars, Barry Baysinger, have also been paid by Koch to teach the company's "market-based management" philosophy to managers at Koch's headquarters. At the same time, Mr. Fink had a hand in giving life to Mr. Howell's grading system for state judges. He says he arranged some seed money for Mr. Howell, who got more from Citizens for a Sound Economy, the group Mr. Fink founded.
Very little of this tangled history was known to the judges meeting last month at Snowbird. At dinner one evening Judge Stephen J. Sundvold and two colleagues on the bench of the California Superior Court in Orange County were surprised to hear of Koch's involvement in the seminars. Judge Sundvold recalled that in the first week's session in Kansas one judge rose and asked Mr. Butler, "Who is paying for this?"
Mr. Butler, he said, told the judges "that we didn't need to worry about it." Mr. Butler remembers the exchange differently. He says he explained that the seminar had a "broad base of support" from a number of companies and foundations but he didn't identify any. "I would have, if they had asked," he said.
=====================================================================
This message was sent via RWWATCH, a low-traffic forum that responds to right-wing campaigns (coming from any party) to misrepresent the truth in order to undermine democracy.
info page: http://www.topica.com/lists/rwwatch
subscribe: rwwatch-subscribe@topica.com (send a blank email)
unsubscribe: rwwatch-unsubscribe@topica.com
RWWATCH is a project of Organizers' Collaborative (http://www.organizenow.net) We are a new grassroots effort supported by over 160 contributors. You can help us foster online communication and resource sharing by social change groups by donating at our website. (http://www.organizenow.net/join)
Thanks! Organizers' Collaborative, PO Box 400897, Cambridge MA 02140
=====================================================================
www.topica.com/lists/rwwatch
Report this post as:
LATEST COMMENTS ABOUT THIS ARTICLE
Listed below are the 10 latest comments of 1 posted about this article.
These comments are anonymously submitted by the website visitors.
|
|
|
Local News
GUIDE TO REBEL CITY LOS ANGELES AVAILABLE
A12 5:39PM
lausd whistle blower
A10 11:58PM
Website Upgrade
A10 3:02AM
Help KCET and UCLA identify 60s-70s Chicano images
A04 1:02PM
UCLA Luskin: Casting Youth Justice in a Different Light
A02 11:58AM
Change Links April 2018
A01 11:27AM
Nuclear Shutdown News March 2018
M31 6:57PM
Join The Protest Rally in Glendale on April 10, 2018!
M29 7:00PM
Join The Protest Rally in Glendale on April 10, 2018!
M29 6:38PM
Spring 2018 National Immigrant Solidarity Network News Alert!
M19 2:02PM
Anti-Eviction Mapping Project Shows Shocking Eviction Trends in L.A.
M16 5:40PM
Steve Mnuchin video at UCLA released
M15 12:34AM
Actress and Philanthropist Tanna Frederick Hosts Project Save Our Surf Beach Clean Ups
M06 12:10PM
After Being Told He's 'Full of Sh*t' at School Event, Mnuchin Demands UCLA Suppress Video
M02 11:44AM
Resolution of the Rent Strike in Boyle Heights
M01 6:28PM
What Big Brother Knows About You and What You Can Do About It
M01 3:30PM
Step Up As LAPD Chief Charlie Beck Steps Down
F14 2:44PM
Our House Grief Support Center Hosts 9th Annual Run For Hope, April 29
F13 12:51PM
Don’t let this LA County Probation Department overhaul proposal sit on the shelf
F13 11:04AM
Echo Park Residents Sue LA Over Controversial Development
F12 8:51AM
Former Signal Hill police officer pleads guilty in road-rage incident in Irvine
F09 10:25PM
Calif. Police Accused of 'Collusion' With Neo-Nazis After Release of Court Documents
F09 7:14PM
Center for the Study of Political Graphics exhibit on Police Abuse posters
F07 9:50AM
City Agrees to Settle Lawsuit Claiming Pasadena Police Officer Had His Sister Falsely Arre
F04 3:17PM
Professor's Study Highlights Health Risks of Urban Oil Drilling
F04 12:42PM
Claims paid involving Pasadena Police Department 2014 to present
F04 10:52AM
Pasadenans - get your license plate reader records from police
F03 11:11PM
LA Times Homicide Report
F03 1:57PM
More Local News...
Other/Breaking News
Biodiversité ou la nature privatisée
A20 11:22AM
The Market is a Universal Totalitarian Religion
A20 7:14AM
Book Available about Hispanics and US Civil War by National Park Service
A19 5:52PM
The Shortwave Report 04/20/18 Listen Globally!
A19 4:01PM
The Republican 'Prolife' Party Is the Party of War, Execution, and Bear Cub Murder
A19 11:48AM
Neurogenèse involutive
A18 9:21AM
Paraphysique de la dictature étatique
A16 10:13AM
Book Review: "The New Bonapartists"
A16 3:45AM
The West Must Take the First Steps to Russia
A14 12:25PM
Théorie générale de la révolution ou hommage à feu Mikhaïl Bakounine
A14 3:30AM
The Shortwave Report 04/13/18 Listen Globally!
A12 3:50PM
“Lost in a Dream” Singing Competition Winner to Be Chosen on April 15 for ,000 Prize!
A12 3:48PM
The World Dependent on Central Banks
A12 4:43AM
Ohio Governor Race: Dennis Kucinich & Richard Cordray Run Against Mike DeWine
A11 9:40PM
March 2018 Honduras Coup Again Update
A10 10:52PM
Apologie du zadisme insurrectionnel
A10 3:33PM
ICE contract with license plate reader company
A10 1:14PM
Palimpseste sisyphéen
A09 11:23PM
Black Portraiture(S) IV: The Color of Silence...Cuba No...Cambridge Yes
A09 5:32AM
Prohibiting Micro-Second Betting on the Exchanges
A09 4:18AM
Prosecutors treat Muslims harsher than non-Muslims for the same crimes
A08 10:33PM
Amy Goodman interview on cell phone safety
A08 10:29PM
Mesa, Arizona police officer kills unarmed white man
A08 9:50PM
Israeli leaders should be prosecuted for war crimes
A08 9:48PM
Paraphysique de l'autorité
A08 12:11AM
Two Podcasts on fbi corruption
A06 10:13PM
Fbi assassins assault & try to kill DAVID ATKINS
A06 7:29PM
EPA Head Scott Pruitt: Of Cages And Sirens
A06 2:15PM
More Breaking News...
|