Koch Footprints Lead to Political Powder Keg: the Far Right's Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



CounterPunch / By Pam Martens

Koch Footprints Lead to Political Powder Keg: Exposing the Far Right's Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive
A secretive libertarian nonprofit bankrolled a fear-mongering effort to get McCain into the White House. Until now, where the money came from has been a hotly debated mystery.

October 27, 2010 |


A secretive libertarian nonprofit with ties to Charles Koch bankrolled what was widely perceived to be a fear mongering effort to throw the Presidential election to Senator John McCain in 2008. Until now, where the money came from has been a hotly debated mystery.

Seven weeks before the Presidential election of 2008, approximately 100 newspapers and magazines in the U.S., including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, and St. Petersburg Times, distributed millions of DVDs of the documentary, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.” The DVDs were included in the Sunday editions. Altogether, including a separate direct mail campaign, 28 million DVDs flooded households in the swing voter states.

The newspapers did not know who was funding this massive propaganda campaign and, apparently, did not care. They inserted the DVD in their Pulitzer properties with the casualness of throwing in a sample of suds free detergent. The nonprofit organization named on the packaging of the DVD as the entity behind the film, the Clarion Fund, Inc., had no known history of operations and had a virtual office address in New York City with no physical presence and no employees on site. Documents submitted to the IRS to obtain its tax-exempt status show the Clarion Fund demanded total secrecy from its vendors:

“At all times, whether during or after the provision of services to Clarion, Service Provider shall keep in confidence and shall not disclose or use, for his or another’s benefit, any nonpublic knowledge, data, material, document or other information of any type that is related to Clarion, or its subsidiaries, directors, members, managers, agents, employees or other affiliates or that Service Provider otherwise acquires in the course of providing services (collectively, the ‘Confidential Information.’).”

..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/148649/koch_footprints_lead_to_political_powder_keg%3A_exposing_the_far_right%27s_secret_slush_fund_to_keep_fear_alive_/

[opihimoimoi]

1. THE COCK MFKRS>>>>WTF IS THEIR PROBLEM??? Are they not RICH enough? They want MORE?

[deminks]

2. The MEdia is complicit in all things rethuglican.

They are complicit going way back. They don't just sell ads and papers anymore.

It will be interesting to know for what else the Koch brothers have paid.

[Botany]

3. Boycott Koch Products, they fund Head Stompers and deny Global Warming's

realty. Please pass this info around the "internets."



http://www.worldofkoch.com/

Other Products @ the link

[felix_numinous]

4. K + R