ERIC O'KEEFE 2
this is bak and update
CRC
omg const convention(mercer/ koch $)
villain poster boy 10/18 on lead (indirect?)
ddt petition
merri ok
below: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Eric_O%27Keefe
off radar for while?
rivkin john doe blows out 501c4 coordination, up dark $
john doe hunker down?
key in dump trump?!
together at last James
press suppr? went after john doe investigator, raid BS
---
duck 1 24
https://thebillwaltonshow.com › guest › eric-okeefe
Eric O'Keefe | The Bill Walton Show
O'Keefe is also a founding board member of the Center for Competitive Politics and Citizens in Charge Foundation. Websites. ... Episode Appearances. Episode 159: "Marxism's Long March" with Mark Meckler and Eric O'Keefe. View or Listen to Episode. 11/05/2021. #Marxism. Guest(s): ... Produced by Resolute Protector Foundation 501(c)(3).
www.citizensincharge.org › book › export › html › 535
Eric O'Keefe. Eric O'Keefe is the Treasurer of Citizens in Charge Foundation and Citizens in Charge, and the chairman and CEO of the Chicago-based think tank, the Sam Adams Alliance.O'Keefe is well-known for his support of term limits, and he is a founding board member of U.S. Term Limits.Eric's plan for a term limits sweep across the country in 1992 and 1994 led twenty-three states to ...
www.citizensincharge.org › about-us › cic-board-of-directors › eric-okeefe
Eric O'Keefe | Citizens in Charge - Initiative
Eric O'Keefe is a private investor, and Chairman and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance (SAM). He also Chairs the board of a new organization, the Health Care Compact Alliance, which is working to move regulation and funding of health care from the federal government to the states.
https://www.opensecrets.org › news › 2012 › 06 › rich-rewards-one-mans-shadow-money-network
Rich Rewards: One Man's Shadow Money Network • OpenSecrets
By Russ Choma June 19, 2012 2:59 pm This is the eighth story in an exclusive series about the funding behind politically active tax-exempt organizations that don't disclose their donors. You can read the other stories in the series here.
www.citizensincharge.org › about-us › cicf-board-of-directors › eric-okeefe
Eric O'Keefe | Citizens in Charge
Eric O'Keefe. Eric O'Keefe is the Treasurer of Citizens in Charge Foundation and Citizens in Charge, ... - President Teddy Roosevelt Citizens in Charge 13168 Centerpointe Way, Suite 202 Woodbridge, VA 22193 Phone: (703) 492-1776 Fax: (703) 910-7728 Email: info@citizensincharge.org.
https://www.nndb.com › people › 776 › 000173257
Eric O'Keefe. AKA Eric S. O'Keefe. Born: Dec-1954. Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Activist ... Parents in Charge Foundation President Ryan for Congress Sam Adams Alliance Chairman and CEO US Term Limits Founding Board of Directors Irish Ancestry.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Eric_O'Keefe_(political_activist)
Eric O'Keefe (political activist) - Wikipedia
Health Care Compact Alliance O'Keefe is the chairman of the Health Care Compact Alliance, a non-partisan 501 (c) (4) organization that works "to create health care compacts that would shift Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health care funds to states to use as they wish." [11]
https://conventionofstates.com
COSAction - Convention of States
Eric O'Keefe has a 37 year history as an active strategist, board member, and donor with organizations working to advance individual liberty, promote citizen engagement, and restore constitutional governance. ... O'Keefe is also a founding board member of the Center for Competitive Politics and Citizens in Charge Foundation. Rick Santorum ...
https://projects.propublica.org › nonprofits › organizations › 134070270
Citizens In Charge Foundation - Nonprofit Explorer - ProPublica
Since 2013, the IRS has released data culled from millions of nonprofit tax filings. Use this database to find organizations and see details like their executive compensation, revenue and expenses, as well as download tax filings going back as far as 2001.
https://ballotpedia.org › Citizens_in_Charge
Citizens in Charge - Ballotpedia
Tax status. Citizens in Charge is a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt nonprofit organization.Its 501(c) status refers to a section of the U.S. federal income tax code concerning social welfare organizations. Organizations that have been granted 501(c)(4) status by the Internal Revenue Service are exempt from federal income
---
https://www.prwatch.org/news/2020/07/13600/bradley-foundation-bankrolled-right-wing-reopen-effort-despite-rising-coronavirus
The Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry**Bradley Foundation, a major source of funding for right-wing groups with over $854 million in assets, gave grants to FreedomWorks Foundation and the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Foundation this year to specifically assist with their efforts to rapidly reopen the economy amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
The political pressure generated by the lobbying and litigation efforts of Bradley-funded groups and President Trump led many states to prematurely roll back stay-at-home safety measures and reopen businesses. As a result, the three-day average of COVID-19 cases has more than doubled over the past three months, from 20,316 on April 24 to 59,474 on July 14, leading a number of states to now shut down again.
"Save Our Country"
In a list of Quarter 2 grants posted to its website, Bradley staff lists $100,000 to the FreedomWorks Foundation to "support the Save Our Country initiative."
Save Our Country was launched in April by FreedomWorks Foundation, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Tea Party Patriots, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, and other right-wingers to push for a "quick" reopening of the states after many had enacted stay-at-home orders as confirmed coronavirus cases rapidly increased. Bradley added another $275,000 to FreedomWorks Foundation for "general operations."
In June, The Guardian reported guk that Save Our Country had raised "just over $800,000 towards a $5m goal for projects including new ad efforts – online, radio and print – to rev up grassroots pressure to reopen states faster, plus curtail more federal spending and promote business-favored tax cuts." Bradley is the first Save Our Country donor identified.
One five-figure
placed last month featured ALEC's favorite economist and Committee to Unleash Prosperity founder Stephen Moore claiming that New York "Governor Cuomo allowed thousands to die in nursing homes," and ended with the statement, "Tell your governor to reopen society & get America working again."
Save Our Country switched to using "reopen society" instead of "reopen the economy" after polling FreedomWorks commissioned in late April found that reopening the economy amidst the pandemic was unpopular, files obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) detail.
Records examined by CMD show that Scott Rasmussen, editor-at-large of Ballotpedia, presented his polling to ALEC state legislative leaders stressing the message that, "We need to talk about reopening society and not the economy."
The poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted by Rasmussen found that "People do not necessarily care about going to businesses, but to be with each other," so, "When you introduce any action-emphasize social aspects and not the almighty dollar."
ALEC played a major role in the right-wing campaign to reopen the economy by organizing a sign-on letter urging Trump and state leaders to reopen and in hosting calls with Vice President Mike Pence, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and others from the Trump administration on the topic.
To date, ALEC has received $500,000 from Bradley in 2020 for "program activities."
Ballotpedia, which received $100,000 from Bradley in 2019, is a project of the right-wing Lucy Burns Institute. Leslie Graves, its founder, president, and CEO, is married to the Republican operative Eric O'Keefe, who serves as chairman of the board for Convention of State Action.
Convention of States Action launched openthestates.com to facilitate the planning and discussion of efforts to "reopen America for business," CMD reported.
In addition to FreedomWorks Foundation and ALEC, the following Save Our Country Coalition members received Bradley money in 2020:
- Council for National Policy: $75,000 to "support the Conservative Action Project and Key Influencers Program"
- First Liberty Institute: $50,000 "to support general operations"
- National Review Institute: $250,000 "to support the Buckley Legacy Project and the Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellowship"
Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce Foundation
The Bradley Foundation also disclosed a grant of $50,000 to the WMC Foundation "to support efforts to reopen Wisconsin safely after COVID-19." WMC Foundation is the 501(c)(3) sister organization of Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), the state chapter of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
WMC announced its "Back to Business" plan for the state on April 24, calling for Wisconsin to reopen businesses on May 4. In a press release for the plan, WMC's president and CEO Kurt Bauer said, "We need to protect lives, but we also need to protect livelihoods."
WMC's plan was based on a number of risk factors so that business owners would have an idea of when and how they could reopen.
Dr. Patrick Remington, a retired UW-Madison medical school professor, told the Wisconsin Examiner, "There's really no evidence to suggest that this risk model actually translates to true risk. It's a model based on assumptions, and it's not based on evidence."
A protest to reopen Wisconsin drew 1,500 to the state capital the same day, April 24, which was promoted in part by Convention of States-Wisconsin State Director Joanne Laufenberg on openthestates.com.
Wisconsin State Senator Kathy Bernier (R-Chippewa Falls), who delivered remarks at the protest, announced that she was working on a "Back to Business" plan at the rally and directed people to wmc.org to view it.
WMC is one of the largest dark money political spenders for Republican candidates in Wisconsin and was infamously investigated in bipartisan "John Doe" proceedings for illegal campaign coordination with former Governor Scott Walker's campaign and O'Keefe's Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Bradley also gave WMC Foundation $600,000 in 2011-2012. "WMC, the trade association, was one of the biggest spenders for Republicans in the 2011-2012 recall period. Bradley could not give the association or its campaign arm funds, but funneled funds to the 'charitable' arm," CMD reported as part of its Bradley Files investigation. "Bradley records indicate that WMC Foundation Inc. also received matching funds of $600,000 in 2011 from M&I Foundation (a foundation associated with M&I Bank, now BMO Harris)."
Lawsuit Against Wisconsin's "Safer at Home" Order
GOP legislative leaders filed a legal challenge to the state's April 16 "Safer at Home" order resulting in 4-3 State Supreme Court ruling on May 13 striking it down.
A number of Bradley-funded groups backed the GOP's legal maneuver, by filing amicus briefs, including WMC, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), and Charles Koch's Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin.
Bradley and its affiliated Bradley Impact Fund has granted WILL $7.7 million and Americans for Prosperity Foundation $1.4 million between 2011 and 2020, according to tax and grant records examined by CMD.
Following the Supreme Court decision, confusion ensued as people flocked to Wisconsin's bars and pubs, and counties and cities scrambled to set their own rules to replace the state's order.
Since then, the seven-day average number of coronavirus cases in Wisconsin has more than doubled, from 286 on May 13 to 755 on July 13.
==
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2020/07/15/data-wonk-why-wisconsin-u-s-failed-against-covid-19/
no lnx
DATA WONK
Why Wisconsin, U.S. Failed Against COVID-19
Conservative network, including key state operatives, quietly fought solutions other advanced countries pursued.
By Bruce Thompson - Jul 15th, 2020
COVID-19 continues to surge in the United States, as the chart below shows. The bars show the number of new cases reported each day, based on data compiled by the New York Times. The dotted line shows the 7-day moving averages of new cases.
New COVID-19 Cases in US.
graf]
The first case of COVID-19 in the U.S. was reported on January 21. Over the next month, a total of 30 new cases were reported, an average of one a day. But then exponential growth kicked in. By March 21 new cases were appearing at the rate of 6,500 a day and increasing at the rate of 2,000 per day. Unfortunately, the United States government wasted the weeks between January 21 and early March and was caught without sufficient supplies of all types.
Other advanced countries have been much more successful in controlling the spread of the virus. When adjusted for population size, the daily number of new American cases is about 18.6 per 100,000 population, by far the highest of any advanced country. The equivalent number for Canada is 0.58. The United Kingdom’s current rate is around .8 new cases per 100,000, the highest in Europe. New Zealand reports a rate of 0.02.
The first peak in the above chart of US cases is mainly due to the explosion of cases in populous northeast states like New York and New Jersey. The current rapid growth in cases, on the other hand, is mainly concentrated in Southern and Western states. This can be seen in the next chart, which shows the daily new cases per 100,000 people in “red states” and “blue states.” Red states are those, including Wisconsin, that were won by Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. The District of Columbia is included among the blue states.
Daily New Cases per 100,000 Persons--Trump vs Clinton States
graf]
While the blue states as a group are adding cases at a far lower rate than the red states, both groups are failing by international standards.
The problem, I think, was the apparent decision by President Trump and those who follow him to politicize the pandemic and to prioritize reopening the economy over controlling the disease. This was shown early on by his repeated claims that the disease would just “disappear.” Logically, then, there was little need to prepare for a disappearing disease.
After briefly acknowledging that a lockdown was needed, Trump turned back to promising that churches could reopen by Easter. There followed a series of protests against the lockdowns in several states, including Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
A New York Times article on April 21 described Trump allies fighting the lockdowns under the title, The Quiet Hand of Conservative Groups in the Anti-Lockdown Protests. Among the groups mentioned in this article are FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
One of the players mentioned is Stephen Moore, a coauthor of ALEC’s annual “Rich State Poor State” report that rates states for “business-friendliness” and whom the Trump administration once considered for a top post at the Federal Reserve. According to the article, he
was communicating with a group of local activists in Wisconsin involved in organizing a protest at the State Capitol set for Friday. On a conservative YouTube program … , Mr. Moore said he had “one big donor in Wisconsin” who had pledged financial support for the protesters, telling him, ‘Steve, I promise, I will pay the bail and legal fees of anyone who gets arrested.”
The article also mentioned a “law firm that advises the Trump Organization,” Milwaukee-based Michael Best & Friedrich, as representing members of a new protest group in North Carolina.
The following day, the Washington Post published an article under the title: The anti-quarantine protests seem spontaneous. But behind the scenes, a powerful network is helping.
The article described a series of Facebook ads that sounded “populist and passionate”:
The posts, funded by an initiative called Convention of States, were not the product of a grass-roots uprising alone. Instead, they represented one salvo in a wide-ranging and well-financed conservative campaign to undermine restrictions that medical experts say are necessary to contain the coronavirus …
The Convention of States project launched in 2015 with a high-dollar donation from the family foundation of Robert Mercer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican patron.
The article mentioned a pair of Wisconsin connections:
In recent days, conservatives have set their sights on Wisconsin, where a few dozen protesters turned out at the Capitol to air their frustrations with Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, after he extended his state’s stay-at-home order until late May.
Another Wisconsin connection was Eric O’Keefe. O’Keefe took a lead in fighting Wisconsin’s John Doe investigation of coordination between Scott Walker and various supposedly independent conservative organizations.
More recently, demands for reopening seem to have morphed into opposition to the use of masks. This seems odd because, if anything, widespread use of masks would likely make some reopenings more feasible by reducing the probability that a person with COVID-19 before symptoms appear will infect others. (Here are some discussions of masks from the Mayo Clinic, Las Vegas Sun, Health Affairs study, Examine.com, and Masks for all).
Was the United States ready to be reopened? Before getting to the individual states, let’s take a look at the United States as a whole. One common standard for reopening is that the number of cases has made a statistically significant decline over a two-week period. As is clear from the first graph in this column, American cases are far from declining and have increased since the beginning of June.
The US as a whole also fails a second standard: that the number of new cases per day should be sufficiently small, generally defined as be 4 per 100,000 population. Instead, as mentioned earlier, the United States currently has over 16 new cases per 100,000. Note that this standard is doable, as demonstrated by Canada, European countries, and advanced nations on the Pacific Rim.
What about the red and blue states shown in the second chart? It is clear that many of the blue states, having been hard hit early in the pandemic, are doing a better job of keeping the virus in check than the average red state. However, better is not good enough. The blue state cases are rising from a base—10 per 100,000 people—which is already too large.
What, then, about Wisconsin? The chart below shows the number of new COVID-19 cases each day in Wisconsin. Since the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against the governor, the daily numbers have more than doubled.
New COVID-19 Cases in Wisconsin.
New COVID-19 Cases in Wisconsin.
Although some of this increase in reported cases may reflect increased testing in the weeks following the court’s decision, since early June testing has drifted down, as shown in the graph below, based on data from the Covid Tracking Project. Thus, the reported gain starting in June is real, not an artifact of increased testing.
Testing for COVID-19 in Wisconsin.
Testing for COVID-19 in Wisconsin.
This conclusion is supported by the next chart showing that percentage of positive tests has been increasing in recent weeks. If a higher proportion of the tests find COVID-19, the logical conclusion is that more COVID-19 is out there. This also means Wisconsin fails a third standard, that the percentage of positive tests should be under 5 percent.
Percent of Wisconsin Tests Positive.
Percent of Wisconsin Tests Positive.
If present trends continue, and in the absence of a vaccination or effective leadership, the future of Wisconsin and much of the United States is bleak. Next week, I plan to explore the forms that leadership might take.
---
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-protests-astroturf.html
Opinion
Who’s Behind the ‘Reopen’ Protests?
They are anything but spontaneous.
By Lisa Graves
Ms. Graves is the executive director of True North Research and curator of KochDocs.
April 22, 2020
A protest against Michigan’s stay-at-home order outside the State Capitol last week.
]
I first became aware of the political influence of Charles and David Koch in 2009 when I started looking into who was behind the protests at health care town halls.
The Tea Party, formed after America elected its first black president, used a series of health care town halls to spur angry Republicans to oppose the Affordable Care Act as a socialist takeover of American medicine. Little matter that it was modeled on a plan devised by Mitt Romney, a Republican, when he was the governor of Massachusetts.
Such false claims about the act have not aged well, as millions of Americans now depend on the law for health care coverage as the coronavirus contagion sweeps across the nation. And yet aTea Party co-founder, Mark Meckler, is using the same tactics and same phony claims to stir his followers to protest against governors seeking to mitigate the Covid-19 death toll by closing businesses and banning public gatherings.
That public anger is both real and manufactured. The same was true in 2009, when the Koch fortune fueled the Tea Party’s attacks on the Obama administration’s health care law.
Still, the legend that the Tea Party was a spontaneous uprising took hold and continues to be peddled. As we face Tea Party 2.0, let’s not be fooled again.
The protests playing out now have the same feel as the Tea Party protests aided by Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity and others a decade ago — and with good reason: Early evidence suggests they are not organic but a brush fire being stoked by some of the same people and money that built the Tea Party.
Look no further than the first protest organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund — whose chairman manages the vast financial investments of Dick and Betsy DeVos, the Education Secretary — to see that the campaign to “open” America flows from the superrich and their front groups.
Stephen Moore — a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Koch ally and a Trump adviser — admitted as much in a video I obtained comparing these new protesters to Rosa Parks, as first reported in The Times.
Mr. Moore, who is now leading an enterprise to end the virus precautions called Save Our Country, which includes the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council, boasted that he has been working behind the scenes with a conservative donor who agreed to cover bail and legal fees for demonstrators who get arrested for defying Wisconsin’s virus protective measures.
Others are providing legal assistance as well. The Times reports that a private Facebook group called Reopen NC has retained the legal services of Michael Best & Friedrich, a Wisconsin law firm whose clients include President Trump. The firm is well known for its work with dark-money groups that fought the recall of the Koch ally Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and waged war on unions.
Then there’s the Convention of States, established in 2015 with a big contribution from the conservative hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. The group recruits activists at gun shows to support a balanced-budget amendment and is promoting the protests online via “Open the States.” COS is an offshoot of Citizens for Self-Governance, which Mr. Meckler co-founded with a longtime Koch operative, Eric O’Keefe.
To give you a flavor of what’s unfolding to help orchestrate these events, this week one of Mr. Meckler’s organizers told supporters via Facebook that “optics are everything” and that they should be sure to wear a mask to the protests and stand six feet apart — because it will make the crowds look bigger.
COS and a Koch-financed public relations firm, In Pursuit Of, are also purchasing domain names tied to protests to open the states, suggesting they are investing for a long battle — even as the death toll rises.
The consequences are already starting. One week after a Kentucky protest, the state experienced its largest spike in coronavirus cases. Other states may soon see similar spikes.
Those fanning these flames, including President Trump and Fox News hosts, are unlikely to get burned by infection themselves, though they may be goading their followers to risk their health by attending mass demonstrations.
America is now facing three calamities: a deadly contagion, a capricious president and a well-funded right-wing infrastructure willing to devalue human life in pursuit of its political agenda. Some very rich men and women are making this medical disaster worse through their reckless bellows, inflaming people to demand that states open now no matter how many lives that costs.
Lisa Graves is the executive director of True North Research and curator of KochDocs, and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice.
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
==
==
The donors investigated by CMD provided more than half of the contribution revenue over the researched time period for several conservative news operations, including the Lucy Burns Institute and the American Media Institute.
Here are some of the biggest recipients of grants from these funders.
Lucy Burns Institute—$13.4 million
The Lucy Burns Institute, a Madison, Wisconsin-based nonprofit and member of the right-wing State Policy Network, received the most money from these nonprofit donors out of all media recipients. From 2015-18, the Institute took in nearly $13.4 million, mostly from DonorsTrust and DCF but also from the Coors Foundation, Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust. The Institute’s 2018 tax return is not yet publicly available, but grants from these six donors amounted to 76 percent of the Institute’s contribution revenue from 2015-17.
The Lucy Burns Institute runs the mainstream political database Ballotpedia. Its president, Leslie Graves, is married to GOP operative, Koch and Tea Party ally Eric O’Keefe, and Institute staff have been trained by Koch institutions.
The Lucy Burns Institute Board of Directors has members who are fixtures in the Koch-backed conservative political movement. Director Tim Dunn, the founder and CEO of an oil and gas company in Texas, is chairman of the Empower Texans Foundation, a group funded by DonorsTrust that has worked with Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, and vice chairman of the Koch-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation. Board member Jack McHugh is senior legislative analyst at the Koch-backed Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Director Todd Graves is an attorney who represented the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a Koch network nonprofit whose leadership includes board member O’Keefe, the founder of the media group now known as the Franklin News Foundation, in Wisconsin’s John Doe investigations. Plaintiffs in the case accused then-Gov. Scott Walker of illegally coordinating with the Wisconsin Club for Growth. Conservative nonprofits researched by CMD gave over $1.1 million to the Franklin News Foundation, which publishes conservative news wire and website The Center Square, from 2015-18.
==
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/08/15/wisconsin-gop-just-nominated-alecs-iron-lady-take-tammy-baldwin
The Kochs have exercised a lot of influence in Wisconsin, working with Governor Scott Walker to crush wages, bust unions, gut school spending, and promote vouchers. But the Kochs may have had their biggest victory of all handed to them last night by another billionaire couple.
Koch loyalist and Wisconsin State Senator Leah Vukmir won the Wisconsin GOP primary for U.S. Senate by a whopping 50-42 percent, beating veteran, “Send in a Marine,” Kevin Nicholson who vastly outspent her. Vukmir will be taking on the Kochs’ top target, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin, in the fall.
According OpenSecrets.org, outside groups and the three candidates spent an astonishing $36.9 million so far in the state’s most expensive primary in history.
Much of this money was spent by billionaires Liz and Richard Uihlein, owners of the ULINE packaging firm based in Pleasant Prairie Wisconsin, in support of their hand-picked retainer Kevin Nicholson. Nicholson, deemed a “dream” candidate by Politico, is a decorated combat veteran with a photogenic family and impressive degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth. The only problem? His stint as the head of College Democrats of America.
Vukmir’s chief pitch to Republicans was–well–that she was one. Her theme was a simple: “We need to send a proven, consistent conservative to beat Tammy Baldwin this fall!” suggesting that Nicholson is neither proven, consistent nor conservative. Vukmir spentabout $ 1.5 million in the race, and the Wisconsin Next PAC supporting her spent $2.5 million. (That group received $1.5 million from Diane Hendricks, chairman of Beloit-based ABC Supply Company, as well as $1.1 million from Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce.)
In contrast, Nicholson spent $3 million, and his billionaire benefactors the Uihleins spent more than $11 million via their Super PAC “Solutions for Wisconsin” and other groups, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
For the disciplined foot soldiers of the Wisconsin GOP, a Democrat turned Republican was a bridge too far, and it is somewhat astonishing that it took $11 million dollars for Uihlein to figure it out. It is almost unheard of for an established, experienced donor to spend that kind of money on an unproven commodity, but apparently the Uihleins thought that Vukmir was a terrible candidate to take on Baldwin.
ALEC’s “Iron Lady” Advances
Although the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity formally stayed out of the race, not endorsing either Vukmir or Nicholson in deference to the Uihleins, who have contributed to other Koch electoral efforts, the billionaire brothers’ presence was felt. Various Koch front groups, most importantly Concerned Veterans of America, spent millions on air pounding Baldwin. More was spent against Baldwin by Koch front groups than any other Senate candidate, according to Baldwin’s team.
Vukmir herself has taken a leadership role in Koch world. She served on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) board of directors for years, serving as ALEC’s National Chair in 2016. She sponsored a dozen or so ALEC bills in Wisconsin, including bills to crush wages and advance vouchers. Her efforts advancing the ALEC agenda garnered her ALEC’s “Iron Lady” award in 2017. (Learn more at SourceWatch).
Former Americans for Prosperity Chief Executive Officer Luke Hilgemann and Chief Operating Officer Sean Lansing were hired to run the Vukmir campaign, even after they spectacularly failed to elect Michael Screnock for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Plus, Vukmir had the tacit backing of the Walker machine. Diane Hendricks, another Koch-network billionaire donor, was one of Vukmir’s biggest backers. She is the same billionaire who was caught on tape demanding that Walker pass ALEC’s “right-to-work” bill to create a red state in 2011, prompting Walker to explain his plan to “divide and conquer” Wisconsin workers. Although Walker formally did not endorse in the primary, his wife did, his son Alex worked for Vukmir, and kingmaker Michael Grebe, the long-time CEO of the Bradley Foundation and Walker’s campaign chairman, endorsed Vukmir, along with dark money man Eric O’Keefe.
Breitbart and Uihlein Draw Blood
Uihlein’s hard-hitting ads and attacks by Breitbart News raised doubts about Vukmir that may linger.
Early in the campaign, Vukmir interviewed for the endorsement of Steve Bannon’s Great America PAC, but was turned down. While both Nicholson and Vukmir ardently embraced Trump and the Trump agenda during the primary, Breitbart News was instrumental in undercutting Vukmir, surfacing a damaging video of her being critical of Trump and audio where she called calling his supporters “Trumpkins.” Breitbart gleefully pointed out the damage it did to her in the polls. Breitbart also called her outfor driving a Toyota and for masking the Toyota logo in campaign commercials after she said in a fundraising appeal that she drove an American-made Ford.
One of Uihlein’s final ads used the same video to attack Vukmir for her derisive comments about Trump. “He offends everyone; he offends women; he offends men; he offends little people; he offends fat people,” said Vukmir in March 2016. The ad, which can be seen here, concludes, “She sounds like Hillary. If you think you can expect Leah Vukmir to support President Trump, the joke’s on you.” Vukmir’s hypocrisy will be remembered by Trump fans in the state.
Uihlein is one of Club for Growth‘s biggest backers, so it was no surprise that he used that national vehicle to go after Vukmir as well. Ironically, a recent Club for Growth ad featured a lawsuit brought by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) in 2013 when Vukmir refused to turn over public records related to the bills she agreed to author for lobbyists at ALEC. Vukmir was the Treasurer of ALEC at the time.
After Senator Vukmir’s staffers made headlines by chasing a process server and pushing him to the ground, Vukmir not only denied having any materials related to CMD’s open records request, she garnered the support of the Republican Attorney General and put forward the argument that she was not subject to the Wisconsin open records law while the legislature was in session. If she had succeeded with this unprecedented claim, she would have gutted Wisconsin’s exceptional open records law, treasured by both Democrats and Republicans.
CMD prevailed in its lawsuit, obtaining hundreds of pages of responsive emails and documents withheld by Vukmir, available here. The previously undisclosed records from ALEC’s Spring 2013 meeting show a Florida-based lobbying group instructing Vukmir and others to introduce a “model” resolution to thwart Medicaid expansion in their states. Vukmir is a former nurse. The lobbyist even wrote an entire ‘script’ for legislators to parrot–contradicting claims by ALEC that the organization was “legislator driven” and only legislators propose model policy. The judge threw the book at Vukmir, applying an unprecedented fine of $2,500 in punitive damages. The suit overall cost taxpayers $15,000.
“Nurse Ratchet” to Face Baldwin
The Uihleins appear worried about Vukmir’s ability to tackle Baldwin, who is best known for her advocacy for health care for all and her long-standing opposition to free trade deals. Vukmir, in contrast, has backed every ALEC measure to lower wages in the state and block the expansion of health care coverage nationally, and has failed to take a stand against Trump as he calls for a boycott of Harley Davidson as it battles the effects of Trump’s tariff wars. No wonder Vukmir was dubbed “Nurse Ratchet” by her Republican colleagues, after the cold, heartless fictional character made famous in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
“The contrast between the Baldwin and Vukmir, when we are talking about women coming out to vote in record numbers this year, couldn’t be clearer,” said Madison attorney Lester Pines.
Vukmir’s ads attacking Baldwin are so over the top they have drawn criticism from Republicans as well as Democrats. For instance, the Vukmir campaign released an attack ad in May suggesting that Baldwin was on “Team Terrorist” for not supporting Trump’s nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel. When asked to comment on Vukmir’s ad, Republican Senator Ron Johnson said, “I wouldn’t do that” and the “Right Wisconsin” media outlet called Vukmir’s ad “an irresponsible campaign blunder.”
Since winning election in 2012, Baldwin has raised $23 million for her 2018 reelection bid, far more than her GOP rivals. Her biggest givers are retirees, women, and University of Wisconsin employees. She will also garner big money support from Emily’s List, the League of Conservation Voters, and other Democratic groups.
Now, however, Vukmir will have the full support of the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity group and their many resources in the state. AFP wasted no time in pushing out an enthusiastic endorsement on election night and an unprecedented ad barrage will no doubt soon follow.
==
const convention?!
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/07/17/how-trojan-horse-project-rewrite-our-constitution-could-actually-happen-if-trump
It’s often said that if Trump is reelected, it’ll be the end of democracy in America. But how could Trump get reelected, and how could democracy get wiped out in the USA?
Turns out, there’s an actual project to rewrite our Constitution, turning America into a corporate-run oligarchy.
They’d end the income tax, eliminate federal regulatory agencies like the EPA, end all labor protections (including laws against child labor), let states ignore anti-discrimination and other federal regulations, and impose term limits so the only “institutional memory” for legislatures will be the corporate lobbyists.
All it needs to succeed—within just a few short years—is for Trump and the GOP to win big in 2020. And the prospects of that happening are going up every day. With a big Trump win will come a rewrite of our Constitution itself, if the billionaires funding it have their way.
But how could he win? With another $2 billion worth of free publicity, just like in 2016.
One example is how Trump’s reelection campaign got a great boost recently when the media, just like in 2016, went all-Trump-all-the-time around his ICE raids, and when he told four congresswomen of color to “go home” to the countries of their ancestors—a racist trope for centuries.
The ICE raids were merely arrests of undocumented people who actually have committed crimes (beyond crossing the border) and currently have legal deportation orders already in place; they’re arrests like the ones Presidents Bush and Obama did daily.
There was nothing unique about them, and year over year, Trump has actually deported fewer people than Obama did.
Trump tweeted the media into a frenzy, and like obedient hounds, they frantically ran after the bits of hamburger he threw their way.
But Trump tweeted the media into a frenzy, and like obedient hounds, they frantically ran after the bits of hamburger he threw their way.
As Ayanna Pressley noted Monday, the media shouldn’t “take the bait.” Nonetheless, literally every week—virtually every day—since Trump was elected, he’s gotten the media to put his name on the front page of the nation’s newspapers and at the top of the TV news shows.
And in America, as P.T. Barnum (whom Trump has cited as a role model) said, it doesn’t matter if publicity is positive or negative, “As long as they spell my name right.” And they always spell Trump’s name right.
As we saw with the 2015–2016 Republican primary, that Barnum-like daily publicity was all he needed to take down an entire field of competent, professional, and well-financed Republicans. Taking down Democrats may be even easier if he can paint the Democrats with his “open borders” and “Soviet-style socialism” lies (among others).
NBC trained Trump well; they spent millions teaching him how to do a reality show, from cliff-hangers to pitting “heroes” against “goats.” It’s one of the few things he’s actually good at. And instead of his old “Apprentice” weekly show, he’s now producing a daily show from the White House.
But to what end?
It’s looking more and more like the endgame here for Trump—and the right-wing billionaires who support him and the GOP—is not just to get reelected, but to actually rewrite our Constitution and end the American experiment.
The group leading this charge for the billionaires is called Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG), which SourceWatch.org says, “is a right-wing political organization ... that is campaigning for an Article V convention to amend the U.S. Constitution.”
SourceWatch notes that, “Through its ‘Convention of States’ project, CSG promotes an effort to amend the U.S. Constitution pursuant to Article V, which provides that thirty-four states (two-thirds) can trigger a convention to propose an amendment, which must then be ratified by 38 states (three-fourths).”
They add, CSG director Eric O’Keefe “has deep ties to Charles and David Koch and has been a founder and funder of numerous right-wing groups including Wisconsin Club for Growth,” and the CSG, “Through its Convention of States project, is pushing for a constitutional convention in order to severely restrict federal power, for example by redefining the Commerce Clause to prohibit Congress from enacting child labor or anti-discrimination laws, or by adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.”
And they’re actually doing it, complete with annual dress rehearsals in the Washington, D.C., area. As Wikipedia notes:
“In December 2013, nearly 100 legislators from 32 states met at Mount Vernon to talk about how to call a convention of states. … In February 2014, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn announced that after his retirement from Congress, he would focus on promoting the Convention of States to state legislatures.
“In December 2015, Marco Rubio endorsed CSG’s efforts to a call [for] an Article V Convention. In January 2016, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called for a Convention of States to restrict the power of the federal government.”
And their rehearsals now include delegates from every state in the union.
“In September 2016, CSG held a simulated convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution in Williamsburg, Virginia. An assembly of 137 delegates representing every state gathered to conduct a simulated convention. The simulated convention passed amendments relating to six topics, including requiring the states to approve any increase in the national debt, imposing term limits, restricting the scope of the Commerce Clause [to its original meaning], limiting the power of federal regulations, requiring a supermajority to impose federal taxes and repealing the 16th Amendment [end the income tax], and giving the states the power to abrogate any federal law, regulation, or executive order.”
The Convention of States website notes that as of 2019, 15 states have signed on, and enough to hit the critical 38 are lined up, just waiting for right-wing billionaire takeovers of their state legislatures.
And taking over state legislatures in 2020 just became a huge priority for those billionaires because of the recent Supreme Court decision legalizing radical gerrymandering. Expect hundreds of millions of dollars to pour into state legislative and gubernatorial races (thanks to Citizens United), with virtually no opposing funding from the handful of left-wing billionaires.
Progress to rewrite our Constitution was slow but steady when Georgia’s legislature was the first state to join, in March of 2014. States that signed on before Trump’s election included Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.
Expect hundreds of millions of dollars to pour into state legislative and gubernatorial races (thanks to Citizens United), with virtually no opposing funding from the handful of left-wing billionaires.
Since Trump took over the White House, however, they’ve added Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, and, just in the first three months of 2019, Arkansas, Utah, and Mississippi.
As of now, the call for a Convention to rewrite the Constitution has also passed at least one chamberof the legislatures in New Mexico, Mississippi, Iowa, South Dakota, Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, and New Hampshire.
And with Trump in power, the Convention of States website notes that just this year (2019) they are working to bring in Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Illinois and Hawaii.
If Trump is as successful in manipulating the media as he was in 2016, and the GOP can ride his coattails (along with hundreds of millions from right-wing billionaires) to sweep the Democratic-controlled states they’re targeting, they could hit the 38 states needed to replace the Constitution in the first year or two after his reelection (there are 40 states in the lists above).
A probably apocryphal quote often attributed to Arnold Toynbee says, “When the last man who remembers the horrors of the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.”
Similarly, when the last American who remembers how quickly democratic constitutions were replaced in Europe in the 1930s dies, the replacement of democracy in America becomes inevitable.
This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.
==
last man standing:
11/18 ding dong chedder mafia dead; wonder what kind of pension plan gig, koch think thank?
==
---
see lead NL simmons wi cfg
---
where is he and cfg on trump now? bigtime infiltration by kock ppl:
wiki never trump
Efforts
By political organizations
Our Principles PAC and Club for Growth were involved in trying to prevent Trump's nomination. Our Principles PAC spent more than $13 million on advertising attacking Trump.[23][24] The Club for Growth spent $11 million in an effort to prevent Trump from becoming the Republican Party's nominee.[25]
By Republican delegates
In June 2016, activists Eric O'Keefe and Dane Waters formed a group called Delegates Unbound, which CNN described as "an effort to convince delegates that they have the authority and the ability to vote for whomever they want."[26][27][28] The effort involved the publication of a book, Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate by Republican delegates Curly Haugland and Sean Parnell. The book argues that "delegates are not bound to vote for any particular candidate based on primary and caucus results, state party rules, or even state law."[29][30]
...
---
4/15 huffpo
Walker’s Dark Money Allies Orchestrate Coup of the Courts
Two court cases next week — one being heard in open court, another being considered in silence behind closed doors — will decide the future of Wisconsin campaign finance law, the independence of the Wisconsin judiciary, and will impact the future of presidential candidate Scott Walker.
The stakes could not be higher, but the converging cases have garnered little national attention.
Walker Criminal Probe to Be “Heard” in Silence
The Wisconsin Supreme Court is slated to take up the “John Doe” criminal investigation of alleged coordination between Friends of Scott Walker and “independent” groups during the tumultuous 2011-2012 recall elections.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has detailed the bipartisan state investigation into the Walker campaign and the secretive big money groups that bankrolled his 2012 recall victory. Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG), headed by Walker campaign manager R.J. Johnson and the “third Koch Brother” Eric O’Keefe, spent at least $9.1 million on Wisconsin’s unprecedented recall elections, and funneled almost $10 million more to other politically-active groups, including Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. Yet, WiCFG, which enjoys tax free status, told the IRS that it spent $0 in political activity during that period.
Prosecutors allege that Walker secretly raised millions for WiCFG from out-of-state donors like Donald Trump and Paul Singer, and allegedly coordinated with WiCFG in order to evade Wisconsin’s donor disclosure laws.Talking points prepared for the governor advised him to “stress that donations to WiCFG are not disclosed,” and to tell donors “that you can accept_{ corporate }_contributions and it is not reported.”
These dark money schemes left voters completely in the dark about who was truly influencing elections in the state, CMD argued in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Wisconsinites never knew that aFlorida-based mining company lobbying for a massive open pit mine in Wisconsin secretly gave $700,000 to WiCFG,nor did they know that John Menard gave $1.5 million to the group, and in turn received at least $1.8 million in tax credits from Walker’s job development agency.
The investigation has been halted by a passel of lawyers hired by the groups under investigation and its fate now rests with Wisconsin’s Supreme Court.
In an unprecedented move, the court’s right-wing majority decided not to hear oral arguments in order to protect the defendants against leaks, over the strong objections of the Chief Justice.
While WiCFG leader Eric O’Keefe is constantly “partisan witch hunt” to the Wall Street Journaland even likened the investigation to being raped, the fact is that the chief prosecutor is the case is Francis Schmitz, a well-respected Republican anti-terrorism prosecutor who received the “U.S. Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service” from Michael Mukasey’s Justice Department in 2007. Schmitz even admitted to voting for Walker in the recall election.
Schmitz and his team took note that four of the right-wing justices were elected to office with huge expenditures by the very big money groups under investigation. He has demanded that these justices recusethemselves from the case, but the request has been ignored.
In “hearing” the John Doe, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will consider not only the future of the investigation and the fate of Walker, but also the future of Wisconsin campaign finance law, and whether candidates (including the justices themselves, when they are up for reelection) will be able to coordinate with dark money groups whose job it is raise and spend unlimited dollars from powerful special interests.
Wisconsin’s Common Cause director Jay Heck explained:
What is at stake here is the independence of the Wisconsin judiciary. The Wisconsin Supreme Court was once considered the model for the nation in terms of its impartiality and independence. That history could be wiped out by a single decision by this court to open up the doors to coordination with outside groups and effectively render campaign contribution limits meaningless.
Walker and Dark Money Allies Orchestrate Coup of the Courts
In a related case, Walker’s big money allies are busily engineering a coup of the courts tostrip the independent Chief Justice, Shirley Abrahamson, of her title and authority.[succeeded, she resigned]
Wisconsin elects Supreme Court Justices for 10 year terms. For 126 years under the Wisconsin’s Constitution, the title of Chief Justice has been given to the longest serving member, but sticking to that plan would leave critical thinkers in charge for decades to come. Abrahamson was reelected as Chief to a 10 year term in 2009 with 60% of the vote. After Abrahamson, Justice Anne Walsh Bradley, who has fought to keep partisan politics out of the courts, would be next in line.
As CMD previously reportedthe threat of having a Chief who was not under their thumb was simply too much for Team Walker and his dark money allies. The GOP controlled legislature urged on by WMC and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity backed a Constitutional Amendment to get rid of the Chief and rushed to get it on the low-turn out spring ballot.
As veteran Milwaukee journalist Bruce Murphy put it:
Proponents of the measure have said it’s about displacing seniority with democracy, but declined to make it effective in 2019, when Abrahamson’s term ends, leaving no doubt this was a get-Shirley amendment.” And let’s not forget the unseemly, undisclosed lobbying by other justices hoping to be Chief, including Pat “Patience” Roggensack.
To orchestrate a constitutional coup a phony “vote yes” group was formed by Rogensack’s former campaign manager and WMC piled on the cash in a $600,000 ad blitz saying it was all about “democracy.”In the final weekend before election day, the liberal Greater Milwaukee Committee fielded an extra $200,000 in ads, but it was too late to make a difference.
Perhaps if the WMC ads had explained that they were unseating the chief and purchasing the best court money could buy, the result may have been different. But it was no surprise when, as the *Capital Times*explained: “They secured a narrow53 percent to 47 percent victory in a low-turnout election; barely 10 percent of Wisconsin’s voting-age population supported the deliberately confusing amendment.” Court observers tracking the “We Hate Shirley”amendment assumed that she would soon lose her title and her authority.
But the feisty 81-year old Chief Justice is not taking the dark money onslaught lying down. She filed a federal lawsuit (documents here) brought by one of the nation’s most respected constitutional lawyers, Robert Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation,arguing that changing the rules concerning how a Chief is selected in the middle of her term violates the Equal Protection and Due Process rights of the chief herself and the voters who elected her under the U.S. Constitution.
While WMC lobbyists and right-wing politicians are fuming at this audacious move, respected constitutional scholar David Schwartz, Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin had a different view.
Chief Judge Abrahamson’s decision to file a suit in federal court is a “sensible and appropriate way” to resolve a complicated question of how to interpret the new Wisconsin amendment which was silent on when it should take effect. “Changing the rules in the middle of the game violates fundamental fairness that is guaranteed by the Due Process Clause. It would violate both her rights and the rights of voters who elected her in the expectation that she would be Chief Justice,” Schwartz tells CMD. “Note that the Chief Justice’s suit challenges only the retroactive application of the law, and does not question the right of the people of Wisconsin to restructure its court system in general, or to change the rules for selecting a chief justice at the next vacancy of that position.”
In addition, Schwartz explained that “by suing in federal court, Chief Justice Abrahamson seeks a resolution by neutral judges who have no personal stake in the outcome of the case. Since the Wisconsin Supreme Court justices have a personal stake in the case, it would be problematic for them to try resolve the question themselves.”
Walker to Anoint Lawyers in the Abrahamson Challenge?
But the dark money men at the WiCFG are also not backing down. WiCFG director Eric O’Keefe is apparently so awash in money that he has teams of both state and federal attorneys “building a court they can bend to their will,” as judicial watcher Nan Aron from the Alliance for Justice put it.
Last year, O’Keefe hired federal lawyer **David Rivkin to unleash a swarm of frivolous lawsuits related to the campaign finance probe. Rivkin, last spotted defending Bush’s torture memo in the New York Times, filed suit in federal court to try blocking the investigation. O’Keefe had someinitial success with a far-right judge who regularly attended Koch judicial junkets,but he was eventually slapped down by famed conservative jurist Frank Easterbrook on the 7th Circuit.
But O’Keefe, who funded infamous hatchet man James O’Keefe the year he took down a Republican State Senator standing in Walker’s way, is not done.
Last week, Rivkin went after the Chief Justice herself in a federal suit. In a bizarre twist, Rivkin’s suit cited newspaper articles describing an incident when Justice Prosser called the Chief “a bitch” and threatened to “destroy her” and another article when Prosser nearly choked Justice Bradley to somehow make the case that it was Abrahamson and not Prosser who was out of control. (He missed Prosser’s latest ethical stumble.)
Rivkin purported to represent Wisconsin voters who backed the constitutional amendment. But Milwaukee reporter Bruce Murphy quickly spotted the usual cast of characters, deeply tied to both Scott Walker and Eric O’Keefe. Eric O’Keefe is on the CRG [CFG?]Board, says Murphy. In 2014, Rivkin helped CRG file another lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the legality of state laws banning coordination between political candidates and dark money groups. CRG was last in the news working with the David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity group to stop — horrors! — a proposed trolley system in Milwaukee.
But Rivkin’s gambit to intervene in the Abrahamson case was wisely rebuffed by the federal judge James Peterson.
And in the latest odd twist to the case Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreported that counsel for the Supreme Court justices named in the Chief’s suit will be appointed by none other than Governor Scott Walker.
Abrahamson and her attorney should protest. While Walker might think he runs the courts, he doesn’t yet. If private counsel is needed by any judge it is the policy of the state courts that the Director of the State Courts appoint outside counsel, not the governor.
---
john doe
https://www.wisconsingazette.com/tag/eric-okeefe/
Scott Walker backers set on ousting DA John Chisholm
April 29, 2016Wisconsin Gazette
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm may soon appeal the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that ended the five-county “John Doe” criminal investigation into whether Gov, Scott Walker illegally coordinated with supposedly “independent” dark money groups during the 2011–2012 recall elections to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As prosecutors ready their case, the secret money advocates at the heart of the investigation are planning their next move.
Dark money maestro Eric O’Keefe, who sits on the board of Wisconsin Club for Growth, has declared that Chisholm “is not fit for public office” and “should not be allowed to serve out his term.” He has threatened to get him disbarred, and he has tried to get Walker to fire him.
O’Keefe’s high-powered, D.C. lawyers are suing Chisholm in federal court on behalf of Cindy Archer. She claims to be a victim of a renegade prosecutor. But she was a top Walker aide caught up in Chisolm’s investigation of a sordid bid-rigging scheme detailed by the Center for Media and Democracy.
Now O’Keefe and his associates appear to be prepping to go after Chisholm in a low-turnout primary, using the new, relaxed electoral laws they worked so hard to pass in Wisconsin. They’re also expected to unleash a flood of coordinated secret money and phony “issue” ads.
Scott Walker John Doe headed to divided SCOTUS
In July 2015, the Wisconsin Supreme Court not only shut down the investigation of potentially illegal coordination between Walker and dark money groups, they took the extraordinary measures of firing the Republican special prosecutor, who was hired to coordinate efforts at the behest of a bipartisan group of five District Attorneys. They threw up roadblocks to any appeal by, for instance, telling prosecutors they could not use expert, outside counsel to help with the filing.
Those actions were unprecedented and reminded many of the Saturday Night Massacre, when Richard Nixon fired U.S. Attorney General Archibald Cox and his successors during the Watergate investigations.
“My career in the military and as a federal prosecutor fighting violent criminals and terrorists did not fully prepare me for the tactics employed by these special interest groups,” said special prosecutor Francis Schmitz.
“To somehow remove the lawyer representing one of the parties after the opinion (has been issued) is extraordinary,” said former state Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske.
The GOP-controlled legislature took action in 2015 to retroactively decriminalize the activities at the heart of the investigation. They made significant changes to Wisconsin’s campaign finance law, exempting political corruption from the John Doe statute and dismantling the nonpartisan Wisconsin elections board.
Now the three Democratic prosecutors are slated to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state Supreme Court ruling. At issue is the $10 million spent to elect the conservative majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court by the very same groups — Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce — that were under investigation in the John Doe probe.
According to the 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Caperton v. Massey, outsized spending in a judicial election could be significant enough to demand that judges recuse themselves. Schmitz asked both Justice David Prosser and Justice Michael Gableman to recuse themselves from the John Doe, but they refused. Furthermore, they offered no explanation for their refusal.
It’s unknown whether prosecutors will also appeal on the merits of the case. It is notable that coordination between independent groups and candidates is prohibited in most states and at the federal level. In 2016, a state legislator in Montana was convicted of breaking state law after engaging in similar coordination and, in 2015, a political operative working on a federal campaign was sentenced to 24 months in prison after being prosecuted under federal law.
Common Cause’s Jay Heck tells CMD that it makes sense that O’Keefe would go after Chisholm this election cycle. “The dark money groups want to protect the gains they have made in Wisconsin, changing the law to allow coordination between candidates and issue-ad groups. They want to stop an appeal before it goes any further.”
The prosecutors’ appeal is sure to have Wisconsin’s far-right yelling “partisan witch hunt” again. Yet, the reality is that Milwaukee DA John Chisholm has a long record of prosecuting Democrats for political corruption.
In 2010, Chisholm used the John Doe process to prosecute Democratic Milwaukee County Supervisor Toni Clark on felony charges related to the use of just $6,300 in campaign funds. Scott Walker didn’t call that a witch hunt; instead he said the case was “a reminder to all others in office that we must maintain the highest ethical standards.”
Dark money advocates take aim at John Chisholm in re-election race
Chisholm announced on April 18 that he would run for re-election. The primary is Aug. 9.
John Chisholm’s Democratic primary challenger is Verona Swanigan, an attorney and Milwaukee native who is new to electoral politics. Swanigan holds a law degree from Northern Illinois University (2005), and has practiced law independently with her own firm, Swanigan Legal Services, for about a decade. She registered her campaign in August 2015, and released a video announcing her candidacy in November that focused on reducing crime and addressing domestic violence.
Swanigan is an African American who has participated in community rallies calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate police brutality. She calls herself a “conservative Democrat,” but her campaign is backed by the well-known GOP political operative Craig Peterson, who has worked closely with Wisconsin Club for Growth’s Eric O’Keefe on efforts to reshape Milwaukee politics in recent years.
According to news reports, Peterson has long been associated with Zigman Joseph Stephenson, a public relations firm, but has had financial troubles in recent years. Peterson has ties to former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, who was caught up in the “caucus scandal,” an earlier John Doe prosecution of campaign finance abuses, and who now works for big money groups trying to privatize public schools.
Peterson had reported $250 in monetary contributions and $1,681 worth of in-kind contributions to Swanigan’s campaign as of Dec. 31, 2015, a substantial part of the campaign’s $5,476 total take for the year. (Reports covering the first part of 2016 are not yet available.)
Earlier this spring, Peterson spearheaded an effort to reshape Milwaukee’s city government through a secretive group called “Milwaukeeans for Self-Governance,” which spent at least $200,000 on radio ads to influence mayoral and aldermanic races. The group, whose name strongly echoes that of the O’Keefe group “Citizens for Self-Governance,” has not been formally registered, and its funders have not been disclosed, but their impact is being felt.
“It really feels like we’re running against him, and not his so-called candidates,” Ald. Bob Bauman, a veteran Common Council member told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Bauman’s opponent, who lost her race, was Peterson associate Monique Kelly, formerly known as Monique Taylor.
Using racial justice issues to advance a tea party candidate
In the 2014 Milwaukee County Sheriff’s race, a liberal dark money group spent big trying to unseat incumbent Sheriff David Clarke Jr. Clarke is a right-winger, a darling of Fox News and a Democrat in name only. The National Rifle Association rushed to his aid, and influential right-wing radio hosts urged Republicans in the county to turn out in the open Democratic primary.
Another unregistered Peterson group calling itself “Citizens for Urban Justice” also came to his aid, running radio ads attacking his opponent. In the ads, Monique Taylor presented herself as a community activist and listed the names of African-American men killed by Milwaukee police. “Now a lieutenant in that same police department wants to be our sheriff,” she said.
The ads had a big impact in the city’s predominantly African-American wards.
But Clarke, who is African-American, is famous for attacking the Black Lives Matter movement, which he has called “black slime.” He has never addressed police violence.
While he has been vague about the funding behind Milwaukeeans for Self-Governance and the city council takeover,Peterson has previously credited O’Keefe with arranging the funds to support Clarke. “Eric raised money for that campaign,” Peterson told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “And I spent the money. That’s another benefit to our relationship: He’s good at raising it. I’m good at spending it.”
Peterson also worked with the Wisconsin chapter of David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and Citizens for Responsible Government in an attempt to rally support against a modern streetcar project under development in Milwaukee. Instead of telling folks the truth — that the Kochs object to any type of clean energy transportation, including trolleys and electric cars — the Peterson crew slammed the trolleys for furthering segregation. Peterson paid for radio ads featuring the brother of police shooting victim Dontre Hamilton urging listeners to send Mayor Barrett and John Chisholm a message by writing letters opposing the streetcar.
While the ads stated they were “Paid for the Black Lives Matter Coalition,” Peterson paid for them himself, according to Urban Milwaukee.
With big money friends like O’Keefe and the Kochs, who are trying to turn secret election spending by wealthy special-interest groups into a principled fight for “constitutionally protected free speech,” Peterson is well positioned to unleash a tidal wave of phony “issue ads” at the last minute to sway a low-turnout election. In the August 2014 Milwaukee Democratic primary, less than 114,000 people voted. That compares with the 332,000 who voted in the November general election.
Stay tuned.
Jessica Mason contributed to this report. Learn more about Eric O’Keefe in the Progressive “Dark Money’s Front Man” and in Sourcewatch.
campaign finance caucus scandal Cindy Archer Craig Peterson dark money Eric O'Keefe illegal coordination John Chisholm John Doe Kochs Milwaukee D A political advertising Scott Walker Verona Swanigan wisconsin club for growth Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce
---
ref
Brendan Fischer: Assault on clean election laws is well funded
Jan 29, 2015
Five years ago this month, the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates to unlimited (and often secret) election spending by “independent” groups in the Citizens United decision.
Yet the court has consistently upheld limits on direct contributions to candidates, which means that anti-coordination rules are one of the final bulwarks against a completely lawless campaign finance landscape.
After all, if a candidate can coordinate with “independent” groups that — in the wake of Citizens United — take unlimited, secret donations, then the candidate contribution limits and disclosure requirements are rendered meaningless. Donors who max out on their campaign contributions would have another conduit for giving money. Special interests seeking political favors — but not public scrutiny — could curry favor with candidates without questions from the media.
Indeed, according to evidence that has been made public in the long-running John Doe investigation into alleged coordination between the Scott Walker campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth, out-of-state mining company Gogebic Taconitemade a secret $700,000 donation to the club during the recall elections.
This was 22 times the amount that the mining company had disclosed in donations to Wisconsin candidates. And the public never knew about this massive contribution as the hotly contested mining bill sought by Gogebic Taconite was being debated.
Although Walker claims not to have solicited the donation, he did fundraise for Wisconsin Club for Growth. And when he did, he was advised to call it “your 501c4,” and to emphasize that — in contrast with contributions to his campaign — donations would be kept secret, and that for-profit corporations could give, too.
The Walker campaign and Wisconsin Club for Growth have fought back against the probe not by denying coordination, but by arguing that the coordination rules don’t apply as long as the coordinated ads omit words like “vote for” or “vote against.”
If this were the case, there is nothing stopping a candidate, Democrat or Republican, from forming a nonprofit that takes secret, unlimited funds, and having it operate out of their campaign office. As long as their coordinated electoral ads stop short of express advocacy, it would be perfectly legal.
Plus, if groups running these so-called “issue ads” are entirely exempt from Wisconsin campaign finance law, there is really nothing stopping foreign interests from pouring money into Wisconsin elections. Chinese companies looking to buy up Wisconsin farmland could donate millions to the next gubernatorial candidate’s dark money nonprofit group without the public ever knowing.
This lawless campaign finance landscape is what Wisconsin Club for Growth is fighting for with itsbarrage of lawsuits against the John Doe investigation. And it's what’s at stake with their case currently pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Yet there are serious questions about whether the court can be impartial. Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce,the two primary groups under investigation in the probe, have spent over $10 million to elect the court’s Republican majority, in most cases spending more than the justices’ own campaigns.
In other words, the future of the investigation — and with it, the state’s anti-coordination rules — could be decided by justices whose elections were in large part financed by precisely the organizations facing criminal liability.
The stakes are high. But if you read right-wing media, you’d be led to believe this is entirely about “free speech,” and that the entire investigation was a “partisan witch hunt.” How did a bipartisan investigation get counter-factually contorted into a politically motivated "witch hunt" by Democrats against Republicans?
GET CAP TIMES
Key to the spin surrounding the probe has been the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity’s “Wisconsin Reporter” website, which has produced more than 165 stories (and counting) attacking the investigation as “Wisconsin’s secret war,” and recasting the coordination laws as unconstitutional and the investigation as illegitimate.
But Franklin Center/“Wisconsin Reporter” has failed to regularly disclose that it was launched and funded by Eric O'Keefe, Wisconsin Club for Growth’s director and the chief plaintiff in the lawsuits challenging the probe. Franklin’s president, Jason Stverak, previously worked for O’Keefe. Nor has the group disclosed that its director of special projects, John Connors, is also president of Citizens for a Strong America, another group facing criminal liability in the investigation and which is almost entirely funded by Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Read more in the Center for Media and Democracy’s new report, "The Assault on Clean Election Laws: The Well-Funded Campaign to Legalize Coordination in Wisconsin and Nationwide."
Brendan Fischer is general counsel for the Center for Media and Democracy.
==
==
OMFG:
rivkin john doe blows out 501c4 coordination, up dark $
boston globe
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A leading lead manufacturer was among a host of corporate leaders who donated to a conservative group that helped Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators fend off recall challenges, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The Guardian obtained more than 1,000 pages of leaked documents from a secret investigation into whether Walker’s recall campaign illegally coordinated with outside conservative groups. That investigation was halted in 2015 by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.[previously stacked? prosser?]
The documents show Walker was interested in getting Harold Simmons, the billionaire owner of NL Industries, which was a major producer of leadthat was used in paint before such practices were banned, to donate to the conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth. Simmons gave the group $750,000 in 2011 and 2012, the height of the recalls.
Walker and his fundraisers also solicited money from hedge-fund billionaire Stephen Cohen, who gave the club $1 million; Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone, who gave $25,000; and hedge-fund manager and Manhattan Institute for Policy Research Chairman Paul Singer, who gave $250,000.
such donations are legal under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision,which said restrictions on corporations’ political spending were unconstitutional.
Prosecutors had alleged Walker and his fundraising team asked potential contributors to donate to Wisconsin Club for Growth and other groups so they could run ads supporting him in the recalls, which stemmed from Walker’s signature law that stripped public unions of nearly all of their bargaining rights. But the state’s high court said Walker had done nothing illegal because coordination between candidates and outside groups on so-called issue advertising — ads that don’t expressly call for a candidate’s election or defeat — is permissible.[what did the ads actually say? TV? direct mail?]
Prosecutors have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let them re-start the investigation. Justices will consider that request on Sept. 26.
Walker campaign spokesman Joe Fadness issued a statement Wednesday calling the investigation ‘‘baseless’’ and that there is ‘‘no evidence of any wrongdoing. He didn’t comment on the documents.
Club For Growth attorney David Rivkin said in an email that prosecutors made up crimes that don’t exist and called their appeal ‘‘legally frivolous and just another publicity stunt intended to tarnish their targets’ reputations and salvage their own.’’
Walker signed a measure in January 2011, before Simmons made his donations, that made lead paint manufacturers immune from lead-poisoning liability lawsuits goingforward. The recalls took place later that year. And after Simmons’ last donation, the Wisconsin Legislature’s finance committee tucked language into the 2013-15 state budget making manufacturers immune from pending lawsuits.
Staff members for three Republicans on that committee who faced recall in 2011 didn’t immediately respond to email messages from The Associated Press inquiring about whether the lawsuit immunity was in return for the Club for Growth donations. One of them, Sen. Luther Olsen of Ripon, told the Cap Times of Madison it was not.
‘‘I think that’s quite a jump,’’ he said. ‘‘I voted for something in the budget and somebody else got some money ... that’s not pay-to-play.’’
Previously released documents show iron mining company Gogebic Taconite gave the club $700,000. Walker later signed a bill easing regulations to help clear the path for the company’s mine near Lake Superior. The company ultimately gave up plans for the mine, however.
Minority Democrats said during a news conference that the documents raise more questions about what other legislation may have been passed in exchange for donations to outside groups.
‘‘It appears we have more payback than policy,’’ Rep. Dana Wachs of Eau Claire said.
Spokeswomen for Republican Senate and Assembly leaders didn’t immediately respond to emails.
Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said in a statement that whoever leaked the documents committed a crime because the investigation is a John Doe probe — equivalent to a grand jury investigation.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2016/09/15/wis-governor-sought-corporate-donations-recall/qMt4DpRkWC5OqoHULJdg0H/story.html
==
http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/01/188520/dark-money%E2%80%99s-front-man
In November 2013, a little-known conservative activist named Eric O’Keefe brazenly disobeyed a court order and leaked information to The Wall Street Journaleditorial page about a secret “John Doe” investigation involving campaign finance violations by political operatives surrounding Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. O’Keefe’s group, the conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth, was among the parties being investigated.
It was the beginning of an extraordinary scorched-earth campaign by O’Keefe to harass and undermine the John Doe investigators, who had targeted alleged illegal coordination between Walker and conservative groups including Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. But O’Keefe had a bigger goal in mind: overturning decades of established law in America saying that independent advocacy groups could not coordinate with political campaigns.
O’Keefe launched a series of suits against the prosecutors leading the investigation, continued to leak information about the probe, and publicly denounced it as a “partisan” attack on free speech. He went on conservative talk radio to accuse prosecutors of imposing “a traumatic, unconstitutional abuse on people” and compared those being investigated to “a rape victim”—adding, “I am saying this deliberately.”
Together with his lawyer, David Rivkin, O’Keefe pushed the idea that the John Doe investigators conducted early morning “paramilitary raids” violating the constitutional rights of those being investigated, and which resulted in stories in conservative publications like National Review. Stories of these abuses were discredited by an audiotape in which investigators treated their alleged victim politely. Yet a majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in July released an extraordinary ruling that shut down the John Doe probe, with three of the four-member majority citing unproven violations of constitutional rights.
The Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce had together provided more than $8 million supporting these four justices in their last elections, accounting for anywhere from 48 percent to 76 percent of the total spent on each justice’s behalf.The justices returned the favor, writing a decision that seemed to ignore Wisconsin law and decades of U.S. Supreme Court decisions holding that independent advocacy groups cannot coordinate with political campaigns, since that would make them no longer independent.
It was a huge victory for O’Keefe and for Walker, one that has legalized the unlimited use of dark money in campaigns in Wisconsin and could influence how such cases are handled in other jurisdictions. Long after the end of Walker’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, O’Keefe’s national aspirations still have legs.
“Wisconsin has sort of become ground zero for the testing of how far outside groups could coordinate with candidates,” says Tara Malloy, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit advocacy group that has closely followed the Wisconsin fight. But she notes that what is happening here is part of a much larger conservative agenda. Across the country, Malloy says, “The envelope is being pushed on coordination in all areas.”
All of which has made O’Keefe a public figure, despite a long history of quietly effective conservative advocacy. He has been dubbed the “third Koch brother” for his efforts to lead and recruit donors to numerous advocacy groups connected to billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch.
O’Keefe founded the Sam Adams Alliance, which has trained Tea Party activists. He helped establish a network of rightwing journalistic publications, hired lawyers who are gradually chipping away at legal restrictions on independent advocacy groups, and created groups to challenge Obamacare. Though poorer than the Kochs, he is arguably just as indispensable to the rightwing agenda.
O’Keefe, sixty-one, was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit known as a wealthy community for auto executives. His father was an investor and Eric did well in the stock market, telling friends he was independently wealthy by age twenty-five. When David Koch ran as a Libertarian for vice president in 1980, O’Keefe served as the party’s national field coordinator. As The Washington Post reported, he “became friendly with the Koch brothers, with whom he has joined in many battles.”
O’Keefe has been at the center of a series of national rightwing policy efforts, including the fight for term limits and a so-called taxpayer bill of rights. Paul Jacob, executive director of U.S. Term Limits, has written that O’Keefe “should be known, but isn’t, as the man who came up with the plan to blitz the country with statewide ballot initiatives aimed at limiting the terms of politicians.”
O’Keefe was a founding board member of U.S. Term Limits, and also served as president of Americans for Limited Terms, which during the 1994, 1996, and 1998 congressional election cycles ran ads bashing candidates who opposed term limits. The movement also pushed twenty-three states to put congressional term limit initiatives in front of voters. The Koch brothers were “the main financial backers” of the effort, The New York Times reported.
Some $300,000 went into a series of attack ads targeting House Speaker Tom Foley, Democrat of Washington, for attempting to overturn the term limits law voters in his state had approved in 1992. The TV ads, relates O’Keefe on his website, “showed a tear rolling down the cheek of the George Washington face” on Mount Rushmore.Foley became the first Speaker to lose re-election since the Civil War.
O’Keefe also served on the board of Americans for Limited Government, founded in 1996 and funded by the Koch brothers.The group has backed “taxpayer bill of rights” ballot initiatives in Colorado and other states, with a goal of slashing state government spending. The group systematically savaged President Obama, calling him “‘the biggest liar of all” and comparing his vision of a national volunteer service agency to the Hitler Youth.
A fierce opponent of the McCain-Feingold law’s campaign finance restrictions, O’Keefe helped create theCenter for Competitive Politics in 2005. The group filed briefs in Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court case that allows unlimited campaign donations by corporations and unions to the kind of independent advocacy groups O’Keefe has used to target incumbents for defeat. This greatly expanded the political might of these groups, many of which do not disclose their donors. OpenSecrets.org found that 72 percent of all such spending in 2014 was by conservative groups.
O’Keefe also launched the Health Care Compact Alliance to combat Obamacare and undermine Medicare and Medicaid by letting states use the funding as they wished. The group’s approach reinforced the anti-Obamacare ads by Americans for Prosperity.
The Sam Adams Alliance, which O’Keefe created in 2006, helped train citizen activists and bloggers and provided key support to the Tea Party, as did the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity. In 2009, the group provided the seed money to create the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which has bankrolled a huge new network of conservative news publications. By 2012, Media Matters reported,there were “fifty-five news sites covering state government in thirty-nine states that have ties to the Franklin Center.”
The total amount of spending by the vast network of rightwing advocacy groups O’Keefe has helped create is unknown but formidable indeed. While much of the money came from the Kochs, O’Keefe has also “created a network of uber donors and of fundraisers,” says an O’Keefe sympathist who declined to speak on the record.
But when asked about concerns over wealthy donors spending fortunes to influence elections and government policy, O’Keefe told The Washington Post that voters don’t care. “That’s inside baseball,” he said.
R. J. Johnson, a longtime Republican operative, was likely the person who connected O’Keefe to Scott Walker, first elected governor in 2010. Walker’s campaign paid Johnson’s consulting firm more than $130,000 between July 2009 and January 2012. Johnson also worked as a top adviser to Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Justthree days after Walker introduced his bill gutting collective bargaining for public employees in February 2011, the Center for Media and Democracy reported, “Wisconsin Club for Growth began running slick ads accusing state workers of not having to sacrifice, and urging support for the legislation to make state workers ‘pay their fair share.’ ”
When the bill passed, and opponents tried to recall a group of state senators and Walker himself, Club for Growth spent an estimated $9 million on the recalls, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Johnson served as a key consultant to both Club for Growth and Walker’s campaign in his 2012 recall election.
That would seem to make it impossible for coordination not to have occurred between the two groups, and such coordination was then considered illegal in Wisconsin. Emails later showed that Walker secretly fundraised for the Club for Growth; his staff advised the governor to “stress that donations to [Club for Growth] are not disclosed.” Walker met with donors who soon contributed to Club for Growth.
There was every reason to believe the John Doe might succeed. It was actually the second probe involving Walker launched byMilwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a reputed straight arrow who had previously angered Democrats by prosecuting several Democratic politicians.The first probe, which concerned Walker’s tenure as the Milwaukee County executive, led to the convictions of six people, including three members of his staff, for campaigning on government time.
While Chisholm was a Democrat, the special prosecutor he chose was Francis Schmitz, a longtime Republican who revealed that he voted for Walker in the recall election. Two Republican district attorneys and three chief judges of circuit courts with Republican credentials also took part in the multicounty, bipartisan investigation.
Yet Walker supporters condemned the probe as a “partisan witch hunt,” and this became a conservative mantra on talk radio and at WisconsinWatchdog.org, one of the rightwing news sites funded by the Franklin Center. To date, it has published more than 300 stories condemning the probe and repeating O’Keefe’s criticisms of it. Those criticisms have been echoed by The Wall Street Journal and National Review.
O’Keefe went on the offensive right away. He hiredRivkin,a top attorney in Washington, D.C., tosue Chisholm and all the prosecutors involved in the John Doe probe, accusing them of violating the civil rightsof those under investigation and demanding personal damages from the prosecutors. A WisconsinWatchdog story cheered this, warning that Chisholm and company are “in for a very unpleasant time. He’s got a tiger by the tail, and he’s not up to it.”
O’Keefe and Rivkin launched a barrage of suits, tied the investigation in legal knots, and eventually brought it to a halt. Frank Gimbel, a top Milwaukee defense attorney for more than five decades who represented one of the Walker aides convicted in the first John Doe probe, marvels at what O’Keefe has done.
“I have not ever seen an individual being investigated who has gone on the offensive like this,” Gimbel says in an interview. “Most of the time it’s an uneven battle with the police and prosecutors. But he has gone on the offensive with very high quality lawyering.”
Malloy of the Campaign Legal Center agrees. “It’s definitely become a bit of an ugly personal fight,” she says of O’Keefe’s effort “to hold the prosecutors personally liable.” A federal appeals court rejected this line of contention, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for review.
To further frighten Chisholm, O’Keefe and other conservatives threatened to bankroll a recall effort against him. It never materialized, but the threat hung over his head for a year or so.
O’Keefe also put a scare into Walker. In June 2014, as news surfaced that the governor was seeking an out-of-court settlement to the Doe probe, The Wall Street Journal editorial page excoriated Walker, charging that while O’Keefe’s group “fights for its First Amendment rights to speak out on the issue, the Walker campaign apparently seeks to negotiate a settlement with the prosecutors that will keep the issue out of the spotlight.” It concluded: “Mr. Walker has to decide whose side he’s on—his own, or the larger principles he claims to represent.”
or O’Keefe and other conservative activists, Walker’s re-
Walker’s collapse as a presidential candidatedoes not mean much to O’Keefe and company either. They have a loftier goal: doing away with campaign finance limits and other regulations that keep the wealthy from swaying elections.
Rivkin is probably the foremost proponent of the view that the First Amendment prohibits coordination between political campaigns and independent advocacy groups only when the groups expressly advocate for someone’s election, rather than simply running ads condemning or praising a candidate.
The U.S. Supreme Court, since the Buckley v. Valeo case of 1976, has repeatedly ruled that once groups have coordinated with campaigns the money they spend becomes subject to campaign finance disclosure laws. Yet the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision bought Rivkin’s argument and ignored both Buckley v. Valeo and a recent Seventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruling on the John Doe which found that “no opinion issued by the [U.S.] Supreme Court, or by any court of appeals, establishes. . . that the First Amendment forbids regulation of coordination between campaign committees and issue-advocacy groups—let alone that the First Amendment forbids even an inquiry into that topic.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patrick Crooks, who died suddenly in September, dissented in part from the court’s decision, calling it “erroneous” and “unprecedented.” As for O’Keefe’s complaint that the John Doe infringed on his First Amendment rights, Crooks wrote, “There is a simple solution to that problem: stop coordinating. In the absence of coordination, the contributor is free to discuss candidates and issues.” Crooks said the John Doe probe “should not be terminated.”
The ruling was a tremendous victory for O’Keefe, but there were more to come. In the fall of 2015, the Wisconsin legislature passed a law ending the use of John Doe probes into political corruption, a measure The New York Times dubbed “The Revenge of Scott Walker.” Another law dismantled the Government Accountability Board, a nationally praised nonpartisan watchdog of ethics and elections,which had been involved in the John Doe probe, replacing it with two toothless boards whose funding to pursue cases must be approved by the Republican-controlled legislature.
A third law lets independent advocacy groups coordinate with candidates they favor, clearly violating past U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and even opens the door toexpress advocacy groups (which openly tell people how to vote) to coordinate with candidates, so long as the candidate doesn’t specifically ask that the groups spend campaign money in a certain way.
“This is a loophole large enough to drive a Koch Industries truck through,” declared Matt Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Another longtime observer of state politics, Jay Heck of the group Common Cause in Wisconsin, said the new laws, all of which Walker signed, were products of “the Eric O’Keefe session of the Wisconsin legislature.”
Malloy thinks the U.S. Supreme Court might consider a review of the case, seeing it as an opportunity to rethink its past positions and open the floodgates to new kinds of campaign activity. And, she says, “Walker’s departure from the presidential race can only improve slightly the case’s chance of being heard, because the issues are at least somewhat less politically ‘hot.’ ”
O’Keefe’s many legal and legislative victories will allow the nation’s wealthiest people and corporations to secretly bankroll the candidates and political outcomes they favor in Wisconsin. But his long-term goal is to achieve a similar victory in other jurisdictions and, ultimately, turn the entire country into a land where dark money rules all politics. ω
==
==
At the heart of the John Doe files is Scott Walker, the governor who shot to national prominence – a hero for conservatives, pariah for liberals – soon after taking office in February 2011 when he introduced thehyper-partisanAct10. The legislation instantly made Wisconsin the battleground state in the fight between boardroom might and union muscle.
The state capital Madison erupted in weeks of protests in which the legislative building was overrun with thousands of protesters. Democratic lawmakers fled the state and took up residence in neighboring Illinois in a failed attempt to foil Walker's plans.
In the fallout of Act 10, progressive groups retaliated by dragging Walker and several other Republicans through a series of bitter recall elections. Six GOP senators were forced to defend their seats in 2011, and Walker himself was put through the recall furnace in 2012.
Those recall elections, and the question of whether Walker flouted campaign finance regulations in order that he and other Republican politicians could stay in office and preserve their anti-union legislation, were the focus of the investigation that generated the files now leaked to the Guardian. It was run by five Wisconsin prosecutors, led by Francis Schmitz, a former federal counter-terrorism expert.
It was known as a John Doe investigation because, much like a grand jury, its subjects were kept anonymous while officials weighed whether or not to press charges. In this case, prosecutors alleged that there was evidence to indicate that Walker and his team of advisers and associates had set up a coordinated effort with lobbyists and major donors to swing elections by secretly pouring huge amounts of corporate cash into the races.
The money was channeled through a third-party group, the DAs alleged, in order to circumvent state and federal rules that set limits on political contributions and require them to be publicly revealed.
The documents show the governor and his fundraising team going after, and receiving cash from, many of the most prominent rightwing donors in the country. In addition to Adelson, there was business magnate Carl Icahn who was approachedfor $100,000 though nothing in the files indicates that he donated; the hedge-fund billionaire Stephen Cohen, whoarrangeda wire transfer of $1m; and Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone who gave $25,000.
Paul Singer, hedge-fund manager and chairman of the Manhattan Institute, also crops up in the documents. Three months before Walker's recall election, Singer attended a forum of business leaders held by the American Enterprise Institute in a luxury resort off the coast of Georgia.
Walker was also there, arriving at the resort armed with a to-do list from his chief fundraiser Kate Doner. It bore thepithy command: “Paul Singer: Grab him”.
img
The governor presumably did as he was told. Two months later a check from Singer was banked for $250,000.
What particularly caught the attention of the prosecutors was that when the money came in it did not go directly to Walker's personal campaign committee, Friends of Scott Walker. To do so would have been problematic, as any campaign committee directly linked to a candidate is limited in Wisconsin to accepting contributions of up to $43,000 that have to be fully disclosed.
The prosecutors alleged in court filings published here for the first time that Walker's campaign found a way around these restrictions by banking the corporate cash through the third-party group, Wisconsin Club for Growth. WCfG describes itself as a “pro-liberty, pro-fiscal restraint” organisation, sharing the same small government and anti-union ideology as Walker. It is a tax-exempt group, or 501 (c) (4), that is supposed to be primarily concerned with “social welfare” rather than partisan politics and as such is not obliged to reveal its donors.
In court submissions, the prosecutors alleged that Walker's campaign used WCfG as a shadow committee that allowed him to solicit large sums of corporate cash without scrutiny or accountability. “Contributions were personally solicited by Governor Scott Walker to WCfG ... in order to circumvent the reporting and contributions provisions of Wisconsin statutes,” an investigator working for the prosecutors in the John Doe investigation, Robert Stelter, alleged.
A good example of the way things worked was the donation made by Donald Trump. On 3 April 2012, two months before the governor faced the electorate, Walker flew to New York for a rapid-fire string of fundraising meetings with big money interests.
He travelled the length of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, making stops at the investment bank Morgan Stanley, a hedge fund, a corporate law firm, and the residence of publishing tycoon Steve Forbes. He also enjoyed a 45-minute audience with Trump in his Fifth Avenue lair.
There is no record of the conversation between the two men. But it appears to have been a warm encounter, as the John Doe files show that Trump wrote a check for $15,000 on the same day. Who was the beneficiary of Trump's generosity? Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Another example of the pattern is the casual comment Walker dropped into an email to his fundraiser dated 14 June 2011:“Also, I got $1m from John Menard today”. Eight days later a check for $1m is cut on a corporate check of Menard Inc, the billionaire John Menard's home improvement chain Menards, and made out not to the governor's campaign committee but to Wisconsin Club for Growth. There the donation remained a secret until the publication of the Guardian's leaked files.
img
Friends of Scott Walker, Wisconsin Club for Growth and other parties named in the John Doe investigation have all vigorously denied any legal violations. They point out that no charges have been brought against any subject of the inquiries.
John Fadness, spokesman for the Scott Walker campaign, told the Guardian: “As widely reported two years ago, the prosecutor’s attorney stated that Governor Walker was not a target. Several courts shut down the baseless investigation on multiple occasions, and there is absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing.”
In June 2014, the special prosecutor Schmitz said through a lawyer that Walker was not a target of his John Doe investigation. Yet legal documents contained in the John Doe files identify as the anonymous “Movant No. 1” of the investigation “Friends of Scott Walker, the personal campaign committee of Scott Walker.”
David Rivkin, the attorney representing Wisconsin Club for Growth and its director Eric O'Keefe, said in a statement to the Guardian: “As the Wisconsin Supreme Court explained, theJohn Doe prosecutors made up crimes 'that do not exist' under Wisconsin law in order to target 'citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing.' Because the U.S. Supreme Court does not review matters of state law, it should be obvious that the John Doe prosecutors' appeal is legally frivolous and just another publicity stunt intended to tarnish their targets' reputations and salvage their own.”
Further insight into the position of the subjects of the investigation – the “movants” as they are technically known – is given in court papers including in the Guardian's John Doe Files.[x link] They criticise the prosecutors for making fundamental mistakes in their reading of campaign finance law. They said that regulatory restrictions on the size and source of donations only applied to groups that were expressly advocating for or against a named political candidate.
WCfG's director Eric O'Keefe said in an affidavit that the club's involvement had stemmed purely from its commitment to “advancing liberty and fiscal responsibility”. Its role in the recall elections was “to educate Wisconsin citizens ... The Club paid for advertisements that advanced its pro-liberty, fiscal responsibility, pro-Act 10 beliefs. None of the advertisements expressly urged voters to vote for or against any candidate.”
The movants also complained that in issuing over-broad subpoenas for evidence and conducting pre-dawn raids on the homes of some individuals, the prosecutors strayed well beyond their legitimate powers and into the realm of governmental abuse.
In the course of the John Doe investigation, the prosecutors obtained hundreds of emails and bank records under subpoena. An email sent by Kate Doner, Walker’s fundraiser, in April 2011, summed up the strategy.She said the aim was to raise $9m in six weeks, to pay for political advertising – she called it “issue advocacy efforts” – in the senatorial recall races.
Walker, she said, wants all the ads “run thru one group to ensure correct messaging”, [aka COORDINATION? ]and that group, the governor declared, should be Wisconsin Club for Growth. “The Governor is encouraging all to invest in the Wisconsin Club for Growth [which] can accept Corporate and Personal donations without limitations and no donors disclosure.”
The email trail shows a pattern of behavior developing: Walker meets up with big corporate donors and encourages them to contribute unlimited sums of money through WCfG in secret, then shortly after the checks start to flow. In June 2011, the emails show, the governor had dinner with the CEO of the largest privately owned trucking company in the US, Schneider National, in the hope of getting him and his peers to donate $250,000.
“Stress the donations to WiCFG are not disclosed and can accept Corporate donations without limits,” Walker's talking points said....
==
not new
http://progressive.org/magazine/dark-money-s-front-man/
Dark Money’s Front Man
by Bruce Murphy
January 22, 2016
In
November 2013, a little-known conservative activist named Eric O’Keefe brazenly disobeyed a court order and leaked information to The Wall Street Journal editorial page about a secret “John Doe” investigation involving campaign finance violations by political operatives surrounding Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. O’Keefe’s group, the conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth, was among the parties being investigated.
It was the beginning of an extraordinary scorched-earth campaign by O’Keefe to harass and undermine the John Doe investigators, who had targeted alleged illegal coordination between Walker and conservative groups including Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. But O’Keefe had a bigger goal in mind: overturning decades of established law in America saying that independent advocacy groups could not coordinate with political campaigns
---
Congratulations are in order for Jim DeMint: Saying that his move signals a “new mission” for the Tea Party, the former senator has gone from presiding over one of the most well-funded institutions in the dark-money ecosystem to advising one of the most radical. DeMint, the Republican who retired from the Senate in 2013 to run the Heritage Foundation has been named a “senior advisor” to the Convention of States Project—a nationwide effort backed by billionaires like the Kochs and the Mercers to revise the United States Constitution without the approval of Congress.
A hero to Tea Party Republicans, DeMint was already perceived to have led Heritage away from its policy-oriented beginnings, and according to Politico, his continued support for Trump drove a wedge between him and the Heritage Foundation’s board of directors. They voted early last month to remove DeMint as president of the organization amid a broader debate in the conservative establishment over what posture to take towards an increasingly volatile Trump administration.
“The Tea Party needs a new mission,” DeMint told *USA Today*, of his new role. “They realize that all the work they did in 2010 has not resulted in all the things they hoped for. Many of them are turning to Article V,” a legal loophole that would (theoretically) allow state legislators to bypass Congress. At the Convention of States Project, DeMint will join another former senator, Tom Coburn, who now travels to state legislatures across the country lobbying lawmakers to pass resolutions demanding that Congress hold a convention to amend the constitution. It’s not clear whether DeMint will be working as a lobbyist like Coburn. The Convention of States Project did not immediately respond to Fusion’s request for comment. >Various activist groups have sought to amend the constitution on specific points through an Article V convention before, but few have been as well-funded or as ideologically driven as the Convention of States Project, steeped in evangelical Christianity and backed by millions of dollars in dark money. Between 2011 and 2015, the group’s budget more than tripled to $5.7 million—buoyed by donations from the Mercer Family Foundation and various donor-advised funds linked to the Koch brothers. (Eric O’Keefe, a longtime Koch operative, co-founded the Convention of States Project’s parent organization, Citizens for Self Governance, and serves as chairman of its board of directors.) Two thirds of state legislatures (so, 34) must pass resolutions petitioning Congress to hold an Article V convention in order to make it happen; so far, 12 have passed the Convention of States application.
“Convention of States is a much more radical approach to a constitutional convention” than earlier efforts, Arn Pearson, General Counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy, told Fusion. “Their budget has increased dramatically. This is their effort to push the state agenda as far as they can while they hold peak power.”
One Convention of States lobbyist (a member of the Utah legislature in his spare time) lauded Texas governor and Article V proponent Greg Abbott’s plan for several proposed amendments, including one that would prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within a single state—a proposal that would effectively negate what little remains of progress made during the New Deal and the Civil Rights eras. “I see these guys as the new Confederacy,” Pearson said. “They want to have it so that states are no longer bound by federal law. They want the ability to opt out.”
“People are disgusted with Washington,” DeMint told *USA Today*. “They are ready to move power back closer to home.” A fitting cause for the gentleman from South Carolina—although, actually, the preferred terminology these days isn’t “states’ rights” but “local control.
---
ericokeefe
---
capt 617
poster boy? faded a bit with kochs, lie low on John Doe wisc? but convention?!
==
==
http://fusion.kinja.com/koch-brothers-former-right-hand-mans-new-gig-helping-r-1796032402
Congratulations are in order for Jim DeMint: Saying that his move signals a “new mission” for the Tea Party, the former senator has gone from presiding over one of the most well-funded institutions in the dark-money ecosystem to advising one of the most radical. DeMint, the Republican who retired from the Senate in 2013 to run the Heritage Foundation has been named a “senior advisor” to the Convention of States Project—a nationwide effort backed by billionaires like the Kochs and the Mercers to revise the United States Constitution without the approval of Congress.
A hero to Tea Party Republicans, DeMint was already perceived to have led Heritage away from its policy-oriented beginnings, and according to Politico, his continued support for Trump drove a wedge between him and the Heritage Foundation’s board of directors. They voted early last month to remove DeMint as president of the organization amid a broader debate in the conservative establishment over what posture to take towards an increasingly volatile Trump administration. Various activist groups have sought to amend the constitution on specific points through an Article V convention before, but few have been as well-funded or as ideologically driven as theConvention of States Project, steeped in evangelical Christianity and backed by millions of dollars in dark money. Between 2011 and 2015, the group’s budget more than tripled to $5.7 million—buoyed by donations from the Mercer Family Foundation and various donor-advised funds linked to the Koch brothers. (Eric O’Keefe, a longtime Koch operative, co-founded the Convention of States Project’s parent organization, Citizens for Self Governance, and serves as chairman of its board of directors.) Two thirds of state legislatures (so, 34) must pass resolutions petitioning Congress to hold an Article V convention in order to make it happen; so far, 12 have passed the Convention of States application.
“Convention of States is a much more radical approach to a constitutional convention” than earlier efforts, Arn Pearson, General Counsel at the Center for Media and Democracy, told Fusion. “Their budget has increased dramatically. This is their effort to push the state agenda as far as they can while they hold peak power.”
One Convention of States lobbyist (a member of the Utah legislature in his spare time) lauded Texas governor and Article V proponent Greg Abbott’s plan for several proposed amendments, including one that would prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within a single state—a proposal that would effectively negate what little remains of progress made during the New Deal and the Civil Rights eras. “I see these guys as the new Confederacy,” Pearson said. “They want to have it so that states are no longer bound by federal law. They want the ability to opt out.”
“People are disgusted with Washington,” DeMint told USA Today. “They are ready to move power back closer to home.” A fitting cause for the gentleman from South Carolina—although, actually, the preferred terminology these days isn’t “states’ rights” but “local control.
==
==
omg
http://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/03/23/kochs-bankroll-movement-rewrite-constitution/
By Alex Kotch, CMD contributor
A constitutional convention, something thought impossible not long ago, is looking increasingly likely. Under Article V of the U.S. Constitution, if 34 state legislatures “issue a call” for a constitutional convention, Congress must convene one. By some counts, the right-wing only needs six more states. Once called, delegates can propose and vote on changes and new amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which, if approved, are currently required to be ratified by 38 states.
There are two major legislative pushes for a convention at the state level. One would attempt to engineer a convention for a balanced budget amendment only, and the other tries to secure an open convention for the purpose of limiting the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. But once a convention is underway, all bets are off. The convention can write its own rules, resulting in a wide-open or “runaway” convention that can make major changes to the constitution and even change the number of states required to ratify those changes.
If America gets saddled with a runaway convention, the Koch coterie of funders will be to blame. Most of the groups pushing the convention idea are being underwritten by one or more institutions tied to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.
ATTEMPTS TO LIMIT TOPIC OF THE CONVENTION LIKELY TO FAIL
On Feb. 24, Wyoming became the 29th state to pass a resolution requesting a convention specifically to add a single balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Many of these legislative resolutions also attempt to set the rules for the convention and limit who can attend it to a select list of largely GOP state leaders.
Austerity advocates claim that they need only to convince five of seven targeted states—Arizona, Kentucky, Minnesota, Montana, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin—to get on board, and they will have enough states to convene a convention. As the Center for Media and Democracy has reported, three linked measures were just introduced in Wisconsin and were placed on a fast track to approval.
Another faction representing a broader “Convention of States” initiative is advocating an open constitutional convention to limit “the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.” Because this open convention format would be called on a particular subject rather than a particular amendment, representatives would likely vote on any number of measures.
Legislatures in nine states—Arizona, Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Louisiana—have signed on to the Convention of States resolution,. Texas appears likely to join in, as the state Senate approved a Convention of States bill in February. Republican Gov. Greg Abbottis fiercely campaigning for a convention and has deemed it an “emergency issue.” In 2016, he published a 70-page plan that includes nine proposed amendments aimed at severely limiting federal authority, even allowing a two-thirds majority of the states to override a Supreme Court ruling or a federal law.
Groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Common Cause, and the Center for Media and Democracy have raised the alarm about these efforts. No convention has been called since 1787 in Philadelphia where George Washington presided.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains why any convention call, no matter how narrowly written, is likely to result in a “runaway” convention. A convention is empowered to write its own rules, including how delegates are chosen, how many delegates attend and whether a supermajority is required to approve amendments.
Nothing in the Constitution prevents a convention, once convened, from setting its own agenda, influenced by powerful special interests like the Koch groups. A convention could even choose an entirely new ratification process. “The 1787 convention ignored the ratification process under which it was established and created a new one, reducing the number of states needed to approve the new Constitution and removing Congress from the approval process,” writes CBPP.
Legal uncertainly surrounds the entire effort, which is sure to be litigated if successful. For instance, are states bound by resolutions passed many years ago? Will states withdraw their approval? Some states, like Delaware and New Mexico, have already moved to do so.
THE KOCH CONNECTION TO THE PUSH FOR A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION
Libertarian billionaires Charles and David Koch have long opposed federal power and federal spending. Koch Industries is one of the nation’s biggestpolluters and has been sanctioned and fined over and over again by both federal and state authorities. In response, the Kochs have launched a host of “limited government” advocacy organizations and have created a massive $400 million campaign finance network, fueled by their fortunes and those of their wealthy, right-wing allies, that rivals the two major political parties.
The Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity says it favors a balanced budget convention. Such an austerity amendment would drastically cut the size of the federal government, threatening critical programs like Social Security and Medicare and eviscerating the government’s ability to respond to economic downturns, major disasters and the climate crisis.
AFP has opposed an open convention, calling it “problematic.” But whatever qualms the Kochs might have, they continue to be a bedrock funder of the entire convention “movement.”
Running the “Convention of States initiative” is an Austin, Texas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Citizens for Self-Governance (CSG). CSG reported revenue of $5.7 million in 2015, more than double its haul from two years earlier, when it launched its Convention of States Project, according to Dallas News. It now boasts 115,000 “volunteers,” although that figure may represent the number of addresses on its email list.
The group is not required to disclose its donors, but research into other organizations’ tax records by the Center for Media and Democracy, Conservative Transparency and this author show a web of Koch-linked groups having provided nearly $5.4 million to CSG from the group’s founding in 2011 through 2015:
Donors Trust, a preferred secret money conduit for individuals and foundations in the Koch network of funders, has given CSG at least $790,000 since 2011.
The Greater Houston Community Foundation, which is funded by Donors Capital Fund (linked to Donors Trust) and the Kochs’ Knowledge and Progress Fund, has donated over $2 million since 2011.
The Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Donors Capital Fund, gave $2.5 million from 2012-2013.
Citizens for Self-Governance also has two Koch-connected board members. Eric O’Keefe is a director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a group which has taken in considerable funding from Koch-linked groups like the Center to Protect Patient Rights, and was at the center of the long-running “John Doe” criminal investigation of Scott Walker’s campaign coordination with dark money groups.
O’Keefe was the national field coordinator for the Libertarian Party when David Koch ran for Vice President in 1979 on the Libertarian Party ticket. The party’s platform called for the end of campaign finance law, the minimum wage, “oppressive Social Security,” Medicaid, Medicare and federal deficit spending.
The Koch agenda has not changed much since.
Another board member is Tim Dunn, an oilman from Midland, Texas who is vice chairman of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a right-wing think tank that’s raked in over $1 million from Koch family foundations, $160,000 from Koch Industries in 2012 alone and at least $1.8 million from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.
Dunn runs another political group, Empower Texans, which supports Republican candidates and has taken in funds from Donors Trust and “Americans for Job Security,” a Koch-tied dark money group that was slapped with a severe fine by the FEC for its involvement in a dark money shell game intended to disguise the origin of its funds.
Both TPPF and Empower Texans back the constitutional convention idea.
What’s more, a 501(c)4 nonprofit connected to CSG, the Alliance for Self-Governance (which does business as Convention of States Action), received $270,000 in 2012 from Americans for Limited Government, which has received funding not only by Donors Capital Fund but by two Koch-funded political groups, the Center to Protect Patient Rights and Americans for Job Security.
Those two groups exchanged millions of dollars in 2010 and 2012, illegally hiding the source of funding for political expenditures, lying to the Internal Revenue Service and making unlawful contributions to pass-through groups, prompting investigations and historic fines by the both the State of California and the Federal Elections Commission. Eric O’Keefe’s Wisconsin Club for Growth also funneled $450,000 to Alliance for Self-Governance in 2012, at a time when WCFG was battling the Walker recall.
Any time any organization is named “self-governance” or “limited government” you can be sure that Wisconsin’s Eric O’Keefe is either a founder or on the board, and indeed O’Keefe is tied to all three organizations: CSG, the Alliance for Self-Governance and Americans for Limited Government.
If the Kochs and their friends don’t want an open constitutional convention, they’ve sure done a lot to aid the effort.
==
together at last:
I also wanted to point out that last week we broke the story that notorious media-for-hire hatchet man James O'Keefe (remember ACORN?) appeared to be working hand in hand with Wisconsin Club for Growth's Eric O'Keefe in attacking Wisconsin Republicans who were not working in lockstep with Governor Walker. Last year, James released a video of aninebriated Wisconsin Senate President Mike Ellis, which forced him out of office. CMD exclusively revealed that the Koch-tied dark money guru Eric O'Keefe gave James O'Keefe $50,000, presumably for the hit on Ellis who was a quiet critic of the extreme Walker agenda.
--
https://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/01/12714/eric-okeefe-james-okeefe-mike-ellis
2014, as March drew to an end but the cold Wisconsin winter refused to let go, State Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) stopped at his favorite after-work hangout to relax after a long session in the Capitol. After a few drinks, Ellis was approached by what he thought were two young constituents and the veteran GOP lawmaker started holding forth, as he was wont to do.
What he did not know, however, was that his new-found drinking buddies were not from his district or even from the State of Wisconsin. They were, however, on a mission to end his career. A few weeks later, the right-wing’s favorite attack dog for hire, James O’Keefe, released a video of the conversation showing an inebriated Ellis spinning a tale about setting up a “Super PAC” to run attacks on his Democratic opponent in that year’s election.
If Ellis’ barroom boasts were actualized in the cold light of day, Ellis may have run afoul of state law prohibiting coordination between candidate committees and outside groups.
"I guess I have to learn to put duct tape over my mouth because any time you're out in public you're fair game,” Ellis told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel when the story broke. As for his Super PAC idea, he explained, “I was informed that the described scenario would be illegal, and the idea went no further.”
But the damage had been done. A few days later, the Senate President who was first elected to the Senate in 1982, announced that he would not be running for re-election. Ellis was an unabashed conservative, but he had split with Governor Scott Walker and his increasingly right-wing party on issues like school vouchers and the corrupting influence of big money in politics.
James O’Keefe had gotten his man, but who bankrolled the hit?
Costly, Coordinated Wisconsin Job
For James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas franchise, registered as a non-profit in Mamaroneck, New York, the Ellis hit marked a conspicuous departure. O’Keefe gained fame for his hatchet-job on the effective voter registration group, ACORN, and for an attempt to tamper with the phones of then-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana), which got him busted by the FBI.
But Republicans have not exactly been the main targets of O’Keefe’s hidden-camera henchmen. In the Ellis video, a smug O’Keefe tells viewers that his investigations know no political boundaries. His mission, he says, is to expose corruption 
.”
No one believed this. O’Keefe had been accused of many things, but protecting campaign finance law was never one of them.
“James O’Keefe is a staunch conservative, and I don’t think he’d do a hit job on a Republican political figure unless one of O’Keefe’s far-right buddies gave him the green light to do so,” blogger Aaron Camp wrote.
Even some of O’Keefe’s supporters found his lofty rhetoric difficult to swallow. “He is a Scotty boy,” a YouTube user commented, implying that the video was a hit job to oust Ellis and elect someone on friendlier terms with Governor Walker.
Now CMD has discovered that O’Keefe indeed received a five-figure check from a “far-right buddy” and another “Scotty boy,” Wisconsin Club for Growth’s Eric O’Keefe. This O’Keefe is an old friend of the Brothers Koch, a founder of a plethora of far-right organizations (including the Center for Competitive Politics, which fights clean elections laws), and a national leader in the effort to advance undisclosed dark money in elections. O’Keefe has steadfastly stood behind the extreme Walker agenda.
After Walker introduced a bill to destroy public sector unions in 2011, sparking a historic uprising and the filing of 1 million signatures to recall Walker and a number of state senators, Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG) played a central role in the GOP response, prompting a “John Doe” criminal probe that has riveted the state for over a year.
Now, CMD has exclusively obtained tax filings showing that Eric O’Keefe (no relations to James) made a $50,000 donation to Project Veritas in 2013. Also among Project Veritas’ 2013 donors were two sources of cash, Donors Trust (for $242,000) and Donors Capital ($55,000), that cloak the identities of some in the Koch network of billionaires and millionaires.
The money trail comports with Ellis’ own theory. Ellis fingered WiCFG as the likely culprit in
shortly after the hit. But Eric O'Keefe refuses to explain.
When called by CMD and asked about the $50,000 donation, Eric O'Keefe said "I didn't give that in 2013," before quickly hopping off the phone.
Senate President Ellis, an Obstacle to Walker Agenda
Known as an independent thinker and a curmudgeon, Ellis had a history of taking positions contrary to the party line. Ellis was not involved in the caucus fundraising scandal that rocked the Capitol in 2002 with the arrests of Assembly and Senate leaders. In the wake of the scandal, he helped lead a bipartisan effort to restructure the state elections and ethics agencies so that they were no longer under the control of a grid-locked partisan board, but instead led by retired judges appointed by the governor and approved by the legislature.
The nonpartisan board “was his idea,” says Jay Heck, director of Wisconsin Common Cause. “Ellis consistently supported disclosure and public financing for campaigns, while Eric O’Keefe has opposed both.” Heck worked with Ellis and other legislators to set up the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board, now under attack by Wisconsin’s GOP for its role in initiating the John Doe investigation.
Ellis also had a history of failing to fall in line behind the Walker’s agenda.
Ellis was publicly critical of Walker’s steep cuts to education and attempts to massively expand controversial voucher schools around the state, leading to embarrassing headlines regarding a GOP split.
He also privately voiced concerns over the union-busting bill that became Act 10. Although he voted for it, Ellis would later claim that he was blind-sided by Walker and by ads paid for by the WiCFG pressuring him to fall in line after he had raised questions about the bill behind closed doors.
In a with Wisconsin Eye’sSteve Walters that aired a few days after he announced his departure, Ellis talked about his 44-year career in politics, the “high-tech” operation that brought him down and the new era of hard-core, party-line politics “where you check your brain at the front door.”
“Independent thinking and compromise are two ingredients that our founding fathers were thinking of back in 1776; they are gone today,“ said Ellis.
As for the sting operation, Ellis pointed the finger at WiCFG for having set him up because he was not “walking behind the cart” on Act 10. In February of 2011, shortly after the union busting measure was introduced, WiCFG popped up TV ads in support of the controversial bill. They also launched ads pressuring Ellis and another moderate Republican, Luther Olsen, to support the Walker agenda.
“Ellis was the last of the strong independent thinking legislators,” said Common Cause’s Heck. “Although he was very conservative and supported Walker more than 90% of the time, I guess he had his own ideas on a few issues and that did not comport with the new lockstep, everyone must be on the same page with no dissent regime that Walker and the new Republican legislative leadership installed in 2011.”
Wisconsin Club for Growth at Center of Dark Money Investigation
As director of WiCFG, Eric O’Keefe has been a very good friend to Scott Walker. In 2012, the Washington Postinterviewed O’Keefe as he traveled cross-country with Walker in search of cash. WiCFG Director R.J. Johnson served as Walker’s campaign manager in 2010 and during the 2012 recall, and was credited by Walker for winning those campaigns.
Wisconsin law prohibits coordination between candidate campaigns and independent “issue ad” groups. According to records inadvertently released by the court regarding the secret John Doe investigation, WiCFG is one of a number of dark money groups being investigated for potentially illegal campaign coordination with the Walker campaign. A series of emails and campaign donations appear to show Walker fundraising on behalf of WiCFG. “The governor is encouraging all to invest in Wisconsin Club for Growth,” a fund-raising consultant wrote in a 2011 email to R.J. Johnson. The consultant added that the Governor “wants all the issue advocacy efforts” run through WiCFG to “ensure correct messaging,” while promising complete donor anonymity.
As CMD was the first to report, WiCFG served as a hub to secretly funnel millions to a complex array of groups, which ran ads in support of state senators facing recall and Walker himself. The state criminal investigation has been led by a special prosecutor with Republican credentials and a bipartisan group of Wisconsin county District Attorneys, yet has been portrayed by O’Keefe and his supporters as a partisan witch-hunt and an attack on “free speech.” O’Keefe, a longtime advocate for eliminating campaign finance regulations, has fought back hard: his high-priced Washington D.C. lawyers at BakerHostetler have filed a series of state and federal lawsuits trying to halt the probe (including by falsely attacking CMD). O’Keefe also defied a secrecy order to speak with the Wall Street Journal editorial board about the case.
“Isn’t it ironic that the very thing they snagged Ellis on is the very thing Eric O’Keefe has been willing to go all the way to the Supreme Court to protect? Their right to engage in illegal campaign coordination under Wisconsin law,” notes Heck.
A New Low for Wisconsin’s Poisonous Politics
Eric O’Keefe has apparently known James for a while. In his book Breakthrough, James thanks Eric for his "role in the citizen journalism movement." It's possible Eric may have given James the $50,000 with other Wisconsin targets in mind.
In March 2014, James O’Keefe tried to embarrass Republican Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner with questions about his efforts to expand voting rights. And in the summer of 2014, CMD itself was the subject of an elaborate and costly attempted sting operation tied to James O’Keefe, with operatives sent from California to track CMD. An undercover O’Keefe associate followed CMD’s executive director Lisa Graves around at the July Netroots Nation conference trying to get her on tape, and a woman using a fake name purporting to represent a fake group called "African Americans for Change" approached CMD offering money to help with a documentary on dark money spending in elections, which CMD refused.
CMD’s reporting on the John Doe criminal investigation has certainly gotten under Eric O’Keefe’s skin. CMD was the first to report that WiCFG collected and distributed millions to other dark money groups, which cut ads in support of Walker and other candidates facing recall. CMD was also the first to uncover O’Keefe role in helping to launch the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity, whose Wisconsin Reporterwebsite has written more than 150 stories attacking the "John Doe" probe without regularly disclosing their relationship to O’Keefe. CMD was also the first to report that a Wisconsin Reporter executive is the president of Citizens for Strong America, another group implicated in the investigation, a shell group entirely funded by WiCFG. CMD has also filed a legal complaint against WiCFG with the IRS and federal prosecutors for abusing its status as a “social welfare” organization under federal law.
For now Eric O’Keefe is mum.
But one thing is for certain: the O’Keefes combined–one a New Yorker and the other a Michigander–have introduced a poisonous new element to Wisconsin politics.
[img 990]
==
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2015/01/12714/eric-okeefe-james-okeefe-mike-ellis
==
Madison – With Donald Trump on the news every day declaring that the "rules are rigged" and speculation rampant that the GOP may see a contested convention, the Wisconsin GOP can be forgiven for getting all starry-eyed about the possibility that native son Speaker Paul Ryan might throw his hat into the ring.
After all Ryan is working on his own "parallel platform," says the New York Times; he is fundraising with major GOP donors, he is releasing videos that look a heck of a lot like campaign ads and he just jetted to Israel to kiss the ring of Benjamin Netenyahu, a ritual only candidates undertake.
But Ryan dashed the hopes of many when he held a press conference at the RNC yesterday to declare:
"Let me be clear: I do not want, nor will I accept the Republican nomination."
This would have been more convincing had Speaker Ryan not told us that he would "never" become House Speaker a short time ago.
Ryan will Chair the GOP Convention in Cleveland in July. What else could he say? "Yes, the rules are rigged and they are in my hands, mwahahahaha?"
It is his job to talk about rules, right up until the moment they change, and if he decides to throw his hat into the ring to save the GOP from Donald Trump, he will have powerful players at his side including Wisconsinite and RNC Chair Reince Priebus;dark money man Eric O'Keefe, who was key to Donald Trump's loss in Wisconsin; head of delegation Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker; and even the Koch Brothers, who have long supported Ryan's career.
And these folks don't always play by the rules.
Dark Money Don Dreams of Smoke Filled Back Rooms
Nostalgic for the smoke-filled back rooms of yesteryear, Wisconsin's dark money don Eric O'Keefe was given almost a full page in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section over the weekend to call upon GOP convention delegates to seize the nominating process to stop Trump and ensure that the right kind of candidate is chosen. The paper's opinion page, of course, is run by Green Bay native Paul Gigot.
O'Keefe "sees a contested convention as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the delegates of a private political party to assert their power," writes the paper.
And when asked if allowing delegates to decide means a return "to the smoke-filled backroom bargaining of the past?" O'Keefe opined, "And what's wrong with that process? It worked well. Those rooms were full of engaged citizens."
O'Keefe is no stranger to back rooms. He has deep ties to the Koch brothers going back to David Koch's 1980 run for VP on the Libertarian ticket. O'Keefe and his Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG) dark money group were previously under investigation for secretly funneling the money of millionaires and billionaires into the Wisconsin recall campaigns. After almost 1,000,000 Wisconsin residents signed recall petitions, WCFG funneled $20 million into multiple committees with names like "Citizens for a Strong America" to give the impression that Walker had broad support from the community. Combined groups and committees fighting the recall outspent pro-recall forces $59 million to $22 million. O'Keefe's bank of lawyers succeeded in getting a compromised Wisconsin Supreme Court (elected to office with $10 million in expenditures by the parties under investigation) to shut down the investigation, but the case is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
O'Keefe did not say who his perfect candidate was for the GOP convention in Cleveland, but given his history, Paul Ryan and Scott Walker would be on a very short list.
The Kochs seem to be leaning in that direction as well. An unnamed source "close to" the Koch brothers told the Huffington Post that Charles Koch believes Ryan is a "shoo-in" for the nomination at a brokered GOP convention. Koch Industries has long been one of Representative Ryan's top contributors, and now is one of Speaker Ryan's biggest boosters. This quarter, the Koch's are helping to fuel his staggering $17 million war chest, reports Politico. Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, and his wife gave his "Team Ryan" fundraising vehicle $488,400 in March alone; Koch Industries gave $71,000.
Cheddar Mafia Wants to Stop Trump, Elect Ryan
In the run-up to Wisconsin's April 5 primary, the state's GOP machine worked in lockstep to throw their support behind Ted Cruz in a last ditch effort to block Trump.
First, Scott Walker suggested that with an open GOP convention, "it's very likely [the nominee] would be someone who's not currently running."
Then right-wing radio hosts lead by WTMJ's Charlie Sykes savaged Trump on the air. In Sykes' view, it is Ryan who represents Wisconsin's "sort of inclusive, aspirational style of conservatism" that could win support.
Then Walker made a last minute, tepid endorsement of Cruz on Sykes' show, saying Cruz was "the best positioned by far" to beat Trump.
Then national Club for Growth spent a whopping $1 million on TV ads instructing the GOP faithful to skip John Kasich and support Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Trump.
Watching all this U.S. Rep. Scott Krug, a bemused Kasich supporter, explained: "I think this is a three-corner bank shot." Krug told the right-wing outlet Breitbart, "I don't think there's that much of a lovefest for Ted Cruz, but they're just using him to keep Trump below 1,237 delegates so they can broker the convention for Paul Ryan."
In the end, Trump won the majority of Wisconsin counties, 44 out of 72, but lost the key counties where the right-wing radio hosts had the best opportunity to pound home the Club for Growth message.
Beware "Wisconsin Nice"
If the anti-Trump wing of the GOP coalesces around Ryan, it won't be because the Ayn Rand fan represents a moderate, "inclusive" conservatism when it comes to policy. Ryan just puts a smiling face on the same extremist policies the Kochs and their allies have been pushing all along.
For years, Ryan has been in charge of producing the GOP budget, and he has trotted out budgets so extreme and damaging, nuns had to take to the road to educate the public about how harmful they would be. They made a stop in Ryan's home town some years ago and were part of the reason Ryan lost his hometown of Janesville in the 2012 election, his county, and even his precinct.
Economist Dean Baker has read every one of the Ryan budgets and writes that Ryan is willing to cut government to an astonishing degree: "In addition to wanting to privatize both Social Security and Medicare, Ryan has indicated that he essentially wants to shut down the federal government in the sense of taking away all of the money for the non-military portion of the budget."
While Ryan tends to avoid controversial statements when it comes to issues like immigration and reproductive health, his stated positions are hardly less extreme than Cruz's or Trump's. Ryan's "immigration reform" policy would spend hundreds of millions more on border security and would increase deportation of child refugees.
Anti-abortion groups were elated when Ryan became House Speaker. Ryan is "proud" of his anti-abortion record and has strong support from anti-abortion groups, thanks to his consistent voting record and the occasional photo ops at rallies.
As Trump works to make sure his delegates make it into the convention, he should be aware that they will be up against a very sophisticated crew that does not always play by the rules.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13083/dark-money-is-contested-convention-paul-ryan
==
jacobin:
Broken Train
dissent requires enough money to sustain activists and carry a message to voters,” Eric O’Keefe (no relation to ACORN muckraker James) wrote in his 1999 book Who Rules America: The People vs. The Political Class.
O’Keefe served as the national field coordinator for the Libertarian presidential ticket in 1980, when David Koch ran as the vice presidential nominee, very explicitly in an effort to bring his considerable wealth to bear on the campaign. O’Keefe spent the intervening decades as a quiet architect overseeing the Kochs’ plan to remodel the GOP in their own image.
Though Eric O’Keefe is not a blood relation to James O’Keefe, he was one of the first people that James and Hannah’s lawyer — infamous Senate Watergate counsel, Mike “Mad Dog” Madigan — would reach out to.
Sources close to James O’Keefe confirmed that Eric played a lead role in the management of James’s emergency legal trust. (This information was garnered from emails provided by an anonymous source to both myself and my frequent coreporter on the O’Keefes for Wonkette and Gawker, New York state-licensed private investigator Liz Farkas.)
For Eric O’Keefe, then, private capital plays both a virtuous and necessary role in politics. It provides complex, nuanced, and counterintuitive policy proposals with the robust patronage that they so desperately need to get a fair hearing in the marketplace of ideas.
“In business,” he writes in Who Rules America, “entrepreneurs with innovative ideas frequently bring their product to market with the backing of just a few investors . . . Campaign-finance reform, as defined by the elite media and their partners in the seats of power, is a sham that uses high-sounding rhetoric in the service of incumbency protection.”
In other words, for the professional technicians toiling away at the heart of the libertarian right, placing limits on campaign spending is tantamount to gerrymandering. It only aims to protect the tired, establishment politicians from courageous outsiders’ weird and innovative ideas.
This comes from an alternate universe of radical theory, taking a parallax view on the persistent problem of money in politics. In this version, politicians — not wealthy donors — corrupt the system. It takes as axiomatic that all governments, even democratic ones, inevitably trend toward criminality and totalitarianism: a difficult presupposition to challenge in American political life considering the country was founded on it.
This is the kind of carefully crafted intellectual scaffolding upon which Andrew Breitbart and his compatriots have swung, and scaled, and beat their chests. Very real financial and intellectual resources have been devoted to producing an entire corpus of literature to defend and legitimize the gut beliefs of a wealthy group of conservatives, libertarians, and Randian Objectivists.
The dissemination of that literature to a mass audience operates on a highly coded, conscious level that has been partitioned from the preconscious bigotries that it simultaneously excites. This has been a seemingly arduous fact for liberals to properly grasp, but it is no less true for it. People who have been led to believe that they claim a direct lineage to “The Party of Lincoln,” that Soviet Russia manipulated the Civil Rights Movement to undermine America during the Cold War, that the welfare reforms of LBJ’s Great Society legislation were actually just a cynical ploy to purchase blocs of underprivileged voters, and so on, are people who simply cannot be shamed by charges of racism. They earnestly do not consider themselves racists; they perceive the charge as an ad-hominem attack.
Andrew Breitbart’s confrontational style leaned into these hostile reactions and recognizeding the value of negative press.[--> trump?]
When the establishment media attacks “a Hannah Giles, or a James O’Keefe,” he once boasted to Politico, “it only weaponizes them . . . And that’s the reason they have a smile on their face — they know that they now have a platform. They’re not shying away from their notoriety here.”
At the time, Breitbart had high hopes that he could somehow mass-produce the success he garnered by stumbling on O’Keefe and Giles. “My business model is I want to be a talent scout,” he told Politico during that same conversation. “I want to be an American Idol for weaponized freedom fighters.”
Unfortunately for Breitbart, it was not meant to be. Savvier ideological entrepreneurs cut him out.
James O’Keefe also wanted to stake out a position as “talent scout,” and, according to individuals formerly affiliated with his competing venture, Eric O’Keefe supplied the initial salaries for James’s “citizen journalism” group, Project Veritas. Then serving as the president and CEO of the Tea Party astroturfer the Sam Adams Alliance, Eric installed a former employee, Izzy Santa, as Project Veritas’s first executive director.
“You’d be great at this,” another Sam Adams board member, Denis Calabrese, reportedly told Santa. “We need someone to control James.”
This is how Project Veritas became the first stop for every aspiring hidden camera stunt-artist, fresh out of the College Republicans. His brand was selected; Breitbart’s was passed over.
When Brietbart passed away in March 2012, many wondered whether or not his organization could survive. His larger-than-life presence, his proficiency in cable-news optics, his Barnum-like ability to pull off promotional stunts (like hijacking Anthony Weiner’s press conference at the height of his sexting scandal): all of these qualities left many with the illusion that Andrew Breitbart was the animating force behind Breitbart News.
In reality, Andrew Breitbart was more like an ad-agency creative director — adept at getting his client’s message maximal attention, but ultimately replaceable. He primarily functioned as a passionate conduit between the media contacts he had built up during his early years in Los Angeles and the luxuriously financed political operatives who were hoping to place their narratives in the mainstream news cycle.
A quieter Breitbart News emerged from the demise of their loudmouth standard-bearer, one that its opponents found blessedly (but deceptively) easier to ignore.
Get Real Paid
==
http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/01/188520/dark-money%E2%80%99s-front-man
In November 2013, a little-known conservative activist named Eric O’Keefe brazenly disobeyed a court order and leaked information to The Wall Street Journal editorial page about a secret “John Doe”investigation involving campaign finance violations by political operatives surrounding Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. O’Keefe’s group, the conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth, was among the parties being investigated.
It was the beginning of an extraordinary scorched-earth campaign by O’Keefe to harass and undermine the John Doe investigators, who had targeted alleged illegal coordination between Walker and conservative groups including Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. But O’Keefe had a bigger goal in mind: overturning decades of established law in America saying that independent advocacy groups could not coordinate with political campaigns.
O’Keefe launched a series of suits against the prosecutors leading the investigation, continued to leak information about the probe, and publicly denounced it as a “partisan” attack on free speech. He went on conservative talk radio to accuse prosecutors of imposing “a traumatic, unconstitutional abuse on people” and compared those being investigated to “a rape victim”—adding, “I am saying this deliberately.”
Together with his lawyer, David Rivkin, O’Keefe pushed the idea that the John Doe investigators conducted early morning “paramilitary raids” violating the constitutional rights of those being investigated, and which resulted in stories in conservative publications like National Review. Stories of these abuses were discredited by an audiotape in which investigators treated their alleged victim politely.Yet a majority of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in July released an extraordinary ruling that shut down the John Doe probe, with three of the four-member majority citing unproven violations of constitutional rights.
The Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce had together provided more than $8 million supporting these four justices in their last elections, accounting for anywhere from 48 percent to 76 percent of the total spent on each justice’s behalf. The justices returned the favor, writing a decision that seemed to ignore Wisconsin law and decades of U.S. Supreme Court decisions holding that independent advocacy groups cannot coordinate with political campaigns, since that would make them no longer independent.
It was a huge victory for O’Keefe and for Walker, one that has legalized the unlimited use of dark money in campaigns in Wisconsin and could influence how such cases are handled in other jurisdictions. Long after the end of Walker’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, O’Keefe’s national aspirations still have legs.
“Wisconsin has sort of become ground zero for the testing of how far outside groups could coordinate with candidates,” says Tara Malloy, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit advocacy group that has closely followed the Wisconsin fight. But she notes that what is happening here is part of a much larger conservative agenda. Across the country, Malloy says, “The envelope is being pushed on coordination in all areas.”
All of which has made O’Keefe a public figure, despite a long history of quietly effective conservative advocacy. He has been dubbed the “third Koch brother” for his efforts to lead and recruit donors to numerous advocacy groups connected to billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch.
O’Keefe founded the Sam Adams Alliance, which has trained Tea Party activists. He helped establish a network of rightwing journalistic publications, hired lawyers who are gradually chipping away at legal restrictions on independent advocacy groups, and created groups to challenge Obamacare. Though poorer than the Kochs, he is arguably just as indispensable to the rightwing agenda.
O’Keefe, sixty-one, was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit known as a wealthy community for auto executives. His father was an investor and Eric did well in the stock market, telling friends he was independently wealthy by age twenty-five. When David Koch ran as a Libertarian for vice president in 1980, O’Keefe served as the party’s national field coordinator. As The Washington Post reported, he “became friendly with the Koch brothers, with whom he has joined in many battles.”
O’Keefe has been at the center of a series of national rightwing policy efforts, including the fight for term limits and a so-called taxpayer bill of rights. Paul Jacob, executive director of U.S. Term Limits, has written that O’Keefe “should be known, but isn’t, as the man who came up with the plan to blitz the country with statewide ballot initiatives aimed at limiting the terms of politicians.”
O’Keefe was a founding board member of U.S. Term Limits, and also served as president of Americans for Limited Terms, which during the 1994, 1996, and 1998 congressional election cycles ran ads bashing candidates who opposed term limits. The movement also pushed twenty-three states to put congressional term limit initiatives in front of voters. The Koch brothers were “the main financial backers” of the effort, The New York Times reported.
Some $300,000 went into a series of attack ads targeting House Speaker Tom Foley, Democrat of Washington, for attempting to overturn the term limits law voters in his state had approved in 1992. The TV ads, relates O’Keefe on his website, “showed a tear rolling down the cheek of the George Washington face” on Mount Rushmore. Foley became the first Speaker to lose re-election since the Civil War.
O’Keefe also served on the board of Americans for Limited Government, founded in 1996 and funded by the Koch brothers. The group has backed “taxpayer bill of rights” ballot initiatives in Colorado and other states, with a goal of slashing state government spending. The group systematically savaged President Obama, calling him “‘the biggest liar of all” and comparing his vision of a national volunteer service agency to the Hitler Youth.
A fierce opponent of the McCain-Feingold law’s campaign finance restrictions, O’Keefe helped create the Center for Competitive Politics in 2005. The group filed briefs in Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court case that allows unlimited campaign donations by corporations and unions to the kind of independent advocacy groups O’Keefe has used to target incumbents for defeat. This greatly expanded the political might of these groups, many of which do not disclose their donors. OpenSecrets.org found that 72 percent of all such spending in 2014 was by conservative groups.
O’Keefe also launched the Health Care Compact Alliance to combat Obamacare and undermine Medicare and Medicaid by letting states use the funding as they wished. The group’s approach reinforced the anti-Obamacare ads by Americans for Prosperity.
The Sam Adams Alliance, which O’Keefe created in 2006, helped train citizen activists and bloggers and provided key support to the Tea Party, as did the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity. In 2009, the group provided the seed money to create the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which has bankrolled a huge new network of conservative news publications. By 2012, Media Matters reported, there were “fifty-five news sites covering state government in thirty-nine states that have ties to the Franklin Center.”
The total amount of spending by the vast network of rightwing advocacy groups O’Keefe has helped create is unknown but formidable indeed. While much of the money came from the Kochs, O’Keefe has also “created a network of uber donors and of fundraisers,” says an O’Keefe sympathist who declined to speak on the record.
But when asked about concerns over wealthy donors spending fortunes to influence elections and government policy, O’Keefe told The Washington Post that voters don’t care. “That’s inside baseball,” he said.
R. J. Johnson, a longtime Republican operative, was likely the person who connected O’Keefe to Scott Walker, first elected governor in 2010. Walker’s campaign paid Johnson’s consulting firm more than $130,000 between July 2009 and January 2012. Johnson also worked as a top adviser to Wisconsin Club for Growth.
Just three days after Walker introduced his bill gutting collective bargaining for public employees in February 2011, the Center for Media and Democracy reported, “Wisconsin Club for Growth began running slick ads accusing state workers of not having to sacrifice, and urging support for the legislation to make state workers ‘pay their fair share.’ ”
When the bill passed, and opponents tried to recall a group of state senators and Walker himself, Club for Growth spent an estimated $9 million on the recalls, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Johnson served as a key consultant to both Club for Growth and Walker’s campaign in his 2012 recall election.
That would seem to make it impossible for coordination not to have occurred between the two groups, and such coordination was then considered illegal in Wisconsin. Emails later showed that Walker secretly fundraised for the Club for Growth; his staff advised the governor to “stress that donations to [Club for Growth] are not disclosed.” Walker met with donors who soon contributed to Club for Growth.
There was every reason to believe the John Doe might succeed. It was actually the second probe involving Walker launched by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a reputed straight arrow who had previously angered Democrats by prosecuting several Democratic politicians. The first probe, which concerned Walker’s tenure as the Milwaukee County executive, led to the convictions of six people, including three members of his staff, for campaigning on government time.
While Chisholm was a Democrat, the special prosecutor he chose was Francis Schmitz, a longtime Republican who revealed that he voted for Walker in the recall election. Two Republican district attorneys and three chief judges of circuit courts with Republican credentials also took part in the multicounty, bipartisan investigation.
Yet Walker supporters condemned the probe as a “partisan witch hunt,” and this became a conservative mantra on talk radio and at WisconsinWatchdog.org, one of the rightwing news sites funded by the Franklin Center. To date, it has published more than 300 stories condemning the probe and repeating O’Keefe’s criticisms of it. Those criticisms have been echoed by The Wall Street Journal and National Review.
O’Keefe went on the offensive right away. He hired Rivkin, a top attorney in Washington, D.C., to sue Chisholm and all the prosecutors involved in the John Doe probe, accusing them of violating the civil rights of those under investigation and demanding personal damages from the prosecutors. A WisconsinWatchdog story cheered this, warning that Chisholm and company are “in for a very unpleasant time. He’s got a tiger by the tail, and he’s not up to it.”
O’Keefe and Rivkin launched a barrage of suits, tied the investigation in legal knots, and eventually brought it to a halt. Frank Gimbel, a top Milwaukee defense attorney for more than five decades who represented one of the Walker aides convicted in the first John Doe probe, marvels at what O’Keefe has done.
“I have not ever seen an individual being investigated who has gone on the offensive like this,” Gimbel says in an interview. “Most of the time it’s an uneven battle with the police and prosecutors. But he has gone on the offensive with very high quality lawyering.”
Malloy of the Campaign Legal Center agrees. “It’s definitely become a bit of an ugly personal fight,” she says of O’Keefe’s effort “to hold the prosecutors personally liable.” A federal appeals court rejected this line of contention, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for review.
To further frighten Chisholm, O’Keefe and other conservatives threatened to bankroll a recall effort against him. It never materialized, but the threat hung over his head for a year or so.
O’Keefe also put a scare into Walker. In June 2014, as news surfaced that the governor was seeking an out-of-court settlement to the Doe probe, The Wall Street Journal editorial page excoriated Walker, charging that while O’Keefe’s group “fights for its First Amendment rights to speak out on the issue, the Walker campaign apparently seeks to negotiate a settlement with the prosecutors that will keep the issue out of the spotlight.” It concluded: “Mr. Walker has to decide whose side he’s on—his own, or the larger principles he claims to represent.”
For O’Keefe and other conservative activists, Walker’s re-election was small potatoes compared to pushing the courts to kill restrictions on independent advocacy groups. Walker got the message, quickly backing off from talk of a settlement.
Walker’s collapse as a presidential candidate does not mean much to O’Keefe and company either. They have a loftier goal: doing away with campaign finance limits and other regulations that keep the wealthy from swaying elections.
Rivkin is probably the foremost proponent of the view that the First Amendment prohibits coordination between political campaigns and independent advocacy groups only when the groups expressly advocate for someone’s election, rather than simply running ads condemning or praising a candidate.
The U.S. Supreme Court, since the Buckley v. Valeo case of 1976, has repeatedly ruled that once groups have coordinated with campaigns the money they spend becomes subject to campaign finance disclosure laws. Yet the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision bought Rivkin’s argument and ignored both Buckley v. Valeo and a recent Seventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruling on the John Doe which found that “no opinion issued by the [U.S.] Supreme Court, or by any court of appeals, establishes. . . that the First Amendment forbids regulation of coordination between campaign committees and issue-advocacy groups—let alone that the First Amendment forbids even an inquiry into that topic.”
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patrick Crooks, who died suddenly in September, dissented in part from the court’s decision, calling it “erroneous” and “unprecedented.” As for O’Keefe’s complaint that the John Doe infringed on his First Amendment rights, Crooks wrote, “There is a simple solution to that problem: stop coordinating. In the absence of coordination, the contributor is free to discuss candidates and issues.” Crooks said the John Doe probe “should not be terminated.”
The ruling was a tremendous victory for O’Keefe, but there were more to come. In the fall of 2015, the Wisconsin legislature passed a law ending the use of John Doe probes into political corruption, a measure The New York Times dubbed “The Revenge of Scott Walker.” Another law dismantled the Government Accountability Board, a nationally praised nonpartisan watchdog of ethics and elections,which had been involved in the John Doe probe, replacing it with two toothless boards whose funding to pursue cases must be approved by the Republican-controlled legislature. A third law lets independent advocacy groups coordinate with candidates they favor, clearly violating past U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and even opens the door to express advocacy groups (which openly tell people how to vote) to coordinate with candidates, so long as the candidate doesn’t specifically ask that the groups spend campaign money in a certain way.
“This is a loophole large enough to drive a Koch Industries truck through,” declared Matt Rothschild, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. Another longtime observer of state politics, Jay Heck of the group Common Cause in Wisconsin, said the new laws, all of which Walker signed, were products of “the Eric O’Keefe session of the Wisconsin legislature.”
Malloy thinks the U.S. Supreme Court might consider a review of the case, seeing it as an opportunity to rethink its past positions and open the floodgates to new kinds of campaign activity. And, she says, “Walker’s departure from the presidential race can only improve slightly the case’s chance of being heard, because the issues are at least somewhat less politically ‘hot.’ ”
O’Keefe’s many legal and legislative victories will allow the nation’s wealthiest people and corporations to secretly bankroll the candidates and political outcomes they favor in Wisconsin. But his long-term goal is to achieve a similar victory in other jurisdictions and, ultimately, turn the entire country into a land where dark money rules all politics. ?
==
mayer dk $:
9 Money is speech : the long road to "Citizens United" ;
SpeechNow, but $ in campaign should still be public survived;
100 yrs of law going back to robber baron gone; eg mark Hanna st’d oil ? teddy Tillman Act 1907 ban corp $ to fed pols and PACS.
Justice Stevens dissent, radical departure from 1st amendment settled law 229
Problems in US but no one thought it was lack of corp $.
DeVos; 11b$ gross 2011. Indep biz owners, not employees as tax dodge 230 (also no SS or benefits). FTC problems led to Pres ford visit, 2 staffers jumped ship; Invisible hands book; “quasi-religious sociopolitical org” 231 free mkt; RNC chair and jay van andel head of CoC; busted cda tax; devos canned from rnc (said 1982 recession a cleansing process”
RWI, ISI, CNP (w Friess)
Bought Orlando magic
Amway expand into china.
Dick retired to do pol, nit lost voucher michigan 2m$. 35 mil to be state sen but lost;
McC sez if we can stop camp finance reform, we can control congress? 20 years 235
BOPP madison ctr: all $ goes to bopp firm;
Betsy: soft $ is just hard$ they have not Big bro found a way to control 235
Soros
Bopp 10 yr plan to get rid of campaign fin law 236; uses lang of left to ju jitsu.
Speechnow not a real org, invented to challenge law; origin with eric o’keefe 237
Liar Bradley Smith from ctr compet pol; Inst for Justice (koch) [fred yung outsourced jobs]; Spnow superpac went after Feingold, who told outside groups not to rally to him, he lost. 238
CU ~ BO: alito” not true”
[elections now perpetual?] all negative, drives down faith [and partic?] in gov’t 239.
---
WALKER
Wisconsin Club for Growth has launched a new legal volley in its well-funded effort to thwart the state’s John Doe campaign finance probe. On Friday, WCFG and its director Eric O’Keefe filed suit against the Government Accountability Board (GAB) in the Republican stronghold of Waukesha County, claiming the board exceeded its authority by assisting prosecutors in the probe.
One of many problems with that claim: the Republican Attorney General disagrees.
The crux of WCFG’s latest suit is that the GAB – the state agency tasked with interpreting and enforcing Wisconsin election law -- exceeded its authority by helping the bipartisan district attorneys leading the investigation into possible criminal charges of illegal coordination between WCFG, the Walker campaign and others during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Any taxpayer dollars spent on the probe were illegal expenditures, WCFG alleges.
According to WCFG and its Washington DC lawyer David Rivkin (a former attorney in George W Bush's Justice Department perhaps best known for defending torture and the Iraq war), the GAB only has statutory authority to investigate and prosecute civil violations. They assert that if the GAB identifies criminal violations, it must refer the charges to a county district attorney for criminal enforcement, and the GAB's participation must end.
“Wisconsin law requires that GAB investigations be used for civil enforcement or end with referral to prosecutors,” WCFG claimed in a press release announcing the suit. “Instead, GAB funded and staffed the investigation against conservative groups that was focused on alleged criminal violations from the start. GAB also continued to participate in the process after it referred the matter to prosecutors.”
Yet that claim – that the GAB must drop out of an investigation if it could involve criminal charges and prosecutors become involved -- is at odds with interpretations from Wisconsin’s Republican Attorney General, J.B. Van Hollen. Their claim is also at odds with the efficient use of taxpayer dollars to vindicate Wisconsin's clean election laws.
Van Hollen: GAB Has Authority to Investigate Both Civil and Criminal Violations ...
---
Wisconsin Club for Growth's allegations that prosecutors in the John Doe campaign finance probe have engaged in politically-motivated "selective prosecution" don't stand up to even limited scrutiny.
On February 10, Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG) and its director Eric O'Keefe filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the John Doe probe as a violation of the First and Fourteenth amendments, and alleging that John Doe prosecutors have "singled out Plaintiffs as targets for investigation, ... while others similarly situated were not targeted." [// irs TP?]
John Doe prosecutors are reportedly pursuing a theory of illegal electoral coordination during Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 recall elections between candidates such as the Walker campaign and "independent" groups like WCFG, which spent $9.1 million on election ads during the recalls and funneled millions more to other politically-involved groups.
WCFG devotes seven pages of its federal complaint to what it calls "materially identical" conduct by Democrats or liberal groups, which it claims shows that WCFG and other "targets of the investigation were selected based on political views and associations."
Yet a review of the alleged acts of impropriety demonstrates that WCFG is grasping at straws. Many of the alleged acts of impropriety did not violate Wisconsin law. Others were investigated and dismissed. Others lacked any documentation.
In one example, WCFG claims that "coordination" between a gubernatorial candidate, Kathleen Falk, and an independent group, Wisconsin for Falk, is "clearly demonstrated" by footage of Falk appearing in a Wisconsin for Falk ad -- despite the 2012 "Wisconsin for Falk" ad in question clearly recycling footage from Falk's 2006 Attorney General campaign. Another example of alleged coordination is based entirely on a conversation outside of a bar, secretly recorded by a Walker staffer who lied about his name and occupation, and which did not violate any laws, according to experts from both ends of the political spectrum. Another claim of liberal "coordination" was premised on a complaint that the Government Accountability Board rejected as "frivolous."...
http://www.prwatch.org/node/12384
==
Latest Effort by Eric O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth to End Criminal Investigation Makes False Claims to Federal Court
MADISON – The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) today denounced false claims filed in federal court by Eric O’Keefe and Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG) who are seeking to derail a bipartisan, multi-county criminal investigation into their electoral activities.
“Eric O’Keefe and WCFG have misled a federal court with false claims about CMD in their effort to thwart a criminal investigation into their activities during the 2011-2012 recall elections in Wisconsin,” said CMD’s Executive Director Lisa Graves, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. “The legal complaint of O’Keefe/WCFG demonstrates a reckless disregard for the truth and defames our investigative watchdog group,” she noted, adding: “Their claim of selective prosecution, which suggests that CMD should be subject to criminal prosecution, is injurious and based on manufactured falsehoods.“
Graves believes CMD has been targeted as part of an effort to discredit the organization and its thoroughly documented investigative reporting about O’Keefe/WCFG, Citizens for a Strong America, David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity and other groups. CMD/PRWatch will not be intimidated by these smears or stop reporting on these issues.
In the complaint, signed under penalty of perjury and filed on February 10:
O’Keefe/WCFG allege that on a November press call CMD’s executive director purportedly admitted that liberal groups engage in the same electoral activities that the bipartisan prosecutors are investigating. Their complaint asserts: “One reporter asked about the investigation and whether the same activity being investigated had occurred among liberal and Democratic groups. Graves’s response indicated that such activity did occur, but was distinguishable . . . .” Graves was never asked about any John Doe investigation on that call.
O’Keefe/WCFG then use a quote from Graves responding to a question from a reporter from the Topeka Capitol-Journal about how national and state non-profit think tanks are funded (the topic of the press conference) to assert that she made an admission regarding coordination around electoral campaigns. During that press call, Graves made no reference to any criminal investigation whatsoever, let alone any electoral coordination by non-profit groups.
O’Keefe/WCFG also falsely allege that CMD illegally spent tens of thousands of dollars lobbying in Wisconsin in 2013, implying that this is “materially identical” to the alleged criminal activity under investigation in the John Doe. Although CMD received a donation to support its research regarding lobbying by corporations and others, CMD does not lobby Wisconsin legislators about Wisconsin bills. CMD does on occasion respond to requests for information from lawmakers and participates in educational activities. CMD does not engage in electioneering, does not run TV ads, and does not engage in any of the activities reportedly under investigation.
O’Keefe/WCFG also assert to the court that CMD’s Graves “is well connected with Democratic Party members in Madison, Milwaukee, and statewide,” which is another false claim designed to paint her as a party apparatchik and implicitly discredit her organization. Graves is not active in the Democratic Party and has made small donations to two Democratic candidates in the past four years.
Lead attorney David Rivkin, who is best known for his previous defense of Bush Administration torture policies, has been hired to represent O’Keefe/WCFG and filed the complaint. The federal filing is predicated in part on the suggestion that county prosecutors violated O’Keefe/WCFG’s civil rights by selectively prosecuting them while failing to prosecute CMD. “I hope the court will consider imposing Rule 11 penalties against the attorneys for making false claims,” said Graves.
With the cascading news leaks about the John Doe, apparently from subpoenaed parties in the case and with important decisions of campaign finance law being discussed, CMD urges the John Doe judges to consider opening up proceedings as much as possible to the press and public so that citizens, election and non-profit law experts, and others can better understand the legal policies at stake. CMD also urges the John Doe judges to consider releasing as many documents as possible to the public, especially due to the fact that O’Keefe/WCFG have sought to distort public opinion through selective and self-serving leaks.
CMD has reported on the “dark money shell game” that O’Keefe/WCFG engaged in during the 2012 elections, and on the close ties between O’Keefe/WCFG and right-wing outlets writing about the John Doe, such as the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity and its “Wisconsin Reporter,” which was founded and has been funded by O’Keefe and his allies:
* Secret Court Ruling Could Undermine Wisconsin Campaign Finance Law [3]
* Why Are the Franklin Center's "Wisconsin Reporter" and "Watchdog.org" Attacking the John Doe? [4]
* WI Club for Growth, Target of Walker Recall Probe, at Center of Dark Money Web [5]
Defend the Press [6]
Press Release [7]
PR Watch is published by the Center for Media and Democracy. © Center for Media and Democracy 2013.
Center for Media and Democracy • 520 University Avenue, Suite 260 • Madison, Wisconsin 53703 • Phone: 608-260-9713 • Fax: 608-260-9714
Source URL: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/02/12383/wisconsin-club-growth-makes-false-claims-federal-court
Links:
[1] http://www.prwatch.org/users/35278/prw-staff
[2] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/02/12383/wisconsin-club-growth-makes-false-claims-federal-court
[3] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/01/12371/undermine-wisconsin-elections
[4] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/12/12344/why-franklin-center-wisconsin-reporter-attacking-john-doe
[5] http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/11/12309/new-john-doe-investigation-probes-dark-money-wisconsin-recall-elections-club
[6] http://www.prwatch.org/topics/defend-press
[7] http://www.prwatch.org/news-types/press-release
---
Center for Media and Democracy / By Brendan Fischer [1]
Right-Wing Front Group Poses as Journalists to Attack Investigation Into Political Money Laundering
December 19, 2013 |
The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity (through its Wisconsin Reporter and Watchdog.org [2] websites) has aggressively attacked the government’s "John Doe" probe into possible campaign finance violations during Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 recall elections. Its media outlets have also published new information about the apparent targets of the investigation, but they have omitted an important detail: Franklin Center has close ties to individuals and groups that may be caught up in the John Doe probe.
The only name associated with the investigation led by the Milwaukee County's District Attorney's office, Eric O'Keefe, helped launch the Franklin Center's operations in 2009, and his Sam Adams Alliance group provided the majority [3] of its startup budget. O'Keefe has spoken publicly [4] about being subpoenaed in his capacity as director of Wisconsin Club for Growth. Franklin Center's Director of Special Projects [5] John Connors, and the Executive Assistant to the President [5] Claire Milbrandt, also have close ties to a group reportedly involved in the probe. Its former Director of Operations and General Counsel, James Skyles, worked with another group active in the Wisconsin recalls.
Franklin Center's Wisconsin Reporter has written 16 stories so far that are highly critical of the anti-corruption probe and prosecutors (calling its series "Wisconsin's Secret War" [6]), but these latest revelations raise questions about whether the outfit has a conflict of interest in its coverage.
"It does sound like a conflict-of-interest situation that minimally ought to be disclosed, whenever stories are written," said Robert Drechsel, Director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism and Mass Communications. "Particularly if the reporting in question is being done by an entity that holds itself out as nonpartisan and as doing the same kind of journalistic work being done by any traditional journalism institution."
Franklin Center Attacks John Doe, Citing Unnamed Sources
After Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Dan Bice first reported on [7] the new "John Doe" investigation -- a secret inquiry unique to Wisconsin that is "just like a grand jury except no jury [8]," led by special prosecutor Francis Schmitz, a former federal counterterrorism prosecutor with Republican credentials [9] -- interest was high, but thanks to the John Doe's strict secrecy rules, details were hard to come by.
The Franklin Center/Wisconsin Reporter quickly filled the void.
Wisconsin Reporter launched its "Wisconsin's Secret War" series in October, citing unnamed sources to reveal [10] that Wisconsin Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, and Republican Governors Association had received subpoenas [11], and describing details about "after-hours visits to homes and offices" and prosecutors' "demands for phone, email and other records." Thanks to those unnamed sources, Wisconsin Reporter had a new platform, and used it to recast the John Doe investigation as "an abuse of prosecutorial powers" with "the apparent goal of bringing down Gov. Scott Walker." The Walker campaign and 28 other groups also reportedly received subpoenas.
"This is a taxpayer-funded, opposition-research campaign," an anonymous source told the Wisconsin Reporter.
Wisconsin Club for Growth soon became the most prominent name associated with the John Doe after its director, Eric O'Keefe, told the Wall Street Journal editorial board [4] that he had been subpoenaed, with the investigation allegedly looking into what the Wall Street Journal called "illegal campaign coordination" between campaigns and independent groups. The group is also led by RJ Johnson, a top Walker advisor.
CMD uncovered [12] how in 2011, O'Keefe's Wisconsin Club for Growth took in $12 million [13], some of it from dark money conduits like the Koch-connected Center to Protect Patient Rights [14] (CPPR) and the Wellspring Committee[[koch]] [15], and in turn shuffled millions [12] to other organizations that spent money on ads during Wisconsin's Supreme Court race and recall elections. (CPPR, which is connected to the billionaire Koch brothers, was recently fined $1 million [16] by California's elections board for its role in what the Washington Post called "a series of money swaps and transfers through a network of politically active nonprofit groups [16]" to avoid donor disclosure. California prosecutors called it "campaign money laundering").[prop 37?]
All of the groups involved in Wisconsin Club for Growth's monetary transfers are "dark money [17]" groups, a phrase which refers to election spending by nonprofits that exploit loopholes in campaign finance disclosure laws, and keep their donors secret by running "issue ads" designed to influence elections.
Franklin Center's John Connors Directly Connected to Dark Money Web
A central character in the Wisconsin Club for Growth dark money web is John Connors, the Franklin Center's "Director of Special Projects," who has close ties to many of the groups receiving funding from O'Keefe's Wisconsin Club for Growth. Some of those groups have reportedly been subpoenaed.
In the wake of the Center for Media and Democracy's reporting [12] on money changing hands between O'Keefe's Wisconsin Club for Growth and groups tied to Connors, Franklin Center's Wisconsin Reporter [18] quickly went on the offensive in a series [19] of articles [20], making up its own definition of "dark money" [21] for an unfounded attack on CMD's credibility, and falsely claiming that CMD's reporting constituted the launch of a "national campaign" to "unseat the governor."
None of the articles note Connors' ties to the Franklin Center/Wisconsin Reporter, even when attacking [19] CMD's stories that address him by name.
Here are some examples of those ties:
Connors is president of Citizens for a Strong America, whose entire $4.62 million budget [22] in 2011 came from Wisconsin Club for Growth [22], and which spent $836,000 [23] on ads (some of which included misleading [24] claims) in support of Justice David Prosser during his 2011 Supreme Court race, and additional undisclosed amounts [25] on Senate recall races that year. The Treasurer of Citizens for a Strong America is Valerie Johnson, wife of R.J. Johnson, who is a top advisor to both Wisconsin Club for Growth and Governor Walker.
90 percent [12] of the grants received by [26] Wisconsin Family Action in 2011 came from Connors' Citizens for a Strong America [22], which was entirely funded by Wisconsin Club for Growth. Wisconsin Family Action spent an estimated $850,000 [27] on the Senate recall campaigns in 2011. Connors acted as a consultant [28] to Wisconsin Family Action during the election year and helped plan a scheme that resulted in a different John Doe investigation [29] into possible election bribery, which resulted in no charges. The Wall Street Journal [4] reports that Wisconsin Family Action has received a subpoena in the latest John Doe probe.
Connors registered [30] the web domain for United Sportsmen of Wisconsin, a group that worked with [31] Wisconsin Family Action and Americans for Prosperity on an operation during the 2011 recall races in which absentee ballot applications were sent with the incorrect date for elections. Connors' Citizens for a Strong America transferred $236,000 [22] to United Sportsmen in 2011. The United Sportsmen group was embroiled in scandal [32] earlier this year after outgoing Assembly Majority leader Scott Suder cut a $500,000 [31] taxpayer-funded "sweetheart deal" for the group, which Governor Walker rescinded [33] after public outcry.
A review of Franklin Center's tax filings shows that it has paid $235,157 to Connors' Milwaukee-based consulting firm, J Connors & Co, over the past two years ($114,930 in 2012[34] and $119,227 in 2011 [35]). A close Connors associate, Claire Milbrant, who has worked at J Connors & Co since its founding in 2009, was also hired by the Franklin Center last month as its Executive Assistant to the President.
In addition to being the Franklin Center's "Director of Special Projects" -- part of its "leadership team," according to the organization's website [5] – Connors registered [36] Wisconsin Reporter's "Watchdog.org [2]" web domain.
Franklin Center/Wisconsin Reporter has attacked CMD's reporting [19] about Connors' groups but has failed to mention that one of its directors is directly tied to those organizations.
CMD's calls to John Connors for comment have not been returned.
Club for Growth's Eric O'Keefe Helped Launch and Fund Franklin Center
Mike McCabe, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, cautioned that the public still doesn't actually know what the John Doe investigation is about: we only know what Franklin Center has reported, and what Eric O'Keefe, the Wisconsin Club for Growth chair, told the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
"Its no accident that he went to Murdoch's newspaper, and no accident that it ran as an editorial [in the Wall Street Journal] rather than a news story," said McCabe, whose nonpartisan, nonprofit group tracks election spending in Wisconsin.
On Wisconsin Club for Growth's last published IRS Form 990, O'Keefe was listed as one of just three board members who spend hundreds of hours a year leading and guiding that group, whose budget increased twelve-fold in 2011 while Scott Walker was facing a potential recall election and also grew in the 2012 election year.
O'Keefe ties to the Franklin Center run deep. He was the CEO and chairman of the Sam Adams Alliance, which in 2009 launched and funded the Franklin Center. According to an O'Keefe bio from last year: [37] "Under his leadership, the Sam Adams Alliance (SAM) has established some of the most active and respected organizations in the freedom movement, including American Majority and the Franklin Center." Whether he continues to fund or direct funds to Franklin Center is unknown.
O'Keefe's Sam Adams Alliance, whose president was the former executive director of the Illinois State Republican party, acted as [38] the Franklin Center's "sponsoring organization" until the group obtained its 501(c)(3) status, according to its communications director [38]. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [3], much of the $2.9 million Franklin Center raised in its first year came from the Sam Adams Alliance. (The other group that O'Keefe boasts of creating in his bio, American Majority, was established to recruit and train Tea Party political candidates, and held a rally [39] in support of Governor Walker during the height of the 2011 protests featuring Andrew Breitbart and others.)
Franklin's President, Jason Stverak, previously worked as Regional Field Director for O'Keefe's Sam Adams Alliance, after leading the South Dakota Republican Party for six years. Their allies speak of O'Keefe and Stverak in the same breath. For example, in the acknowledgement section [40] of James O'Keefe's book, the undercover videographer whose heavily-edited videos helped bring down ACORN (and who is not related to Eric O'Keefe) thanks "Eric O'Keefe and Jason Stverak for their role in the citizen journalism movement."
In only one [41] of the sixteen articles Franklin Center/Wisconsin Reporter has written on the John Doe have they touched on O'Keefe's ties to Franklin Center.
"The public has to be very wary of taking for granted what is being reported by the Wall Street Journal and Wisconsin Reporter," McCabe said. "O'Keefe and others have decided that is who they want reporting on John Doe, they've decided what to leak, and how they want it framed, and what they want the public to believe what the investigation is about," he said, while prosecutors and judges are gagged by the John Doe's secrecy order.
Ties to the "Coalition for American Values"
Franklin Center also has connections to another mysterious organization active during the Wisconsin recalls called "Coalition for American Values." That group dropped $400,080[27] on a flood of ads in the final weeks before Governor Walker's recall election, and attracted significant attention by making a unique appeal: instead of promoting Walker or attacking his opponent, the ads attacked the premise of the recall itself. The ads depicted individuals who claimed they would vote for Walker not necessarily because they support his policies, but because they opposed the use of recall under these circumstances.
These ads, coupled with similar messaging from Governor Walker, proved effective. Exit polls on June 5, 2012 showed that sixty percent of voters thought recalls were only appropriate for cases of official misconduct -- a complete reversal from polls conducted in November 2011, just as the recall was launched.
The address Coalition for American Values lists on its filings with Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board [42], and on its associated PAC's filings with the Federal Election Commission [43], is 119 S Emerson St #231 in Mt. Prospect, Illinois. This is also the address given for Coalition for American Values' lawyer, James Skyles, who was General Counsel and the Director of Operations for the Franklin Center [44] until March 2011.
The "treasurer" listed on Coalition for American Values' FEC filings and the contact on its filings with Wisconsin's election board is Brent Downs. In 2008, when Connors chaired the Marquette College Republicans, Downs was his treasurer [45]. Both were both students at Marquette University at the same time, and Downs, like Connors, also chaired the Students for Prosperity [46] chapter of David Koch's Americans for Prosperity at Marquette University.
In its FEC filings, the Coalition for American Values reports [43] tens of thousands [47] of dollars [48] of payments [49] to [50] Connors' Campaign Now! consulting and direct mail firm (which he has run out of the same office as J Connors & Co, along with Claire Milbrant).
The Coalition for American Values explicitly called for the reelection of Governor Walker, so the group reported its spending, but it did not report the true origin of its funds. Wisconsin law requires that nonprofits or corporations disclose the source of all contributions "made for" the purpose of funding their ads -- but Coalition for American Values sidestepped those rules by claiming that the $400,080 was not specifically provided to the group for the ads, despite there being few other reasons that a donor would have given the group hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Franklin Center Takes Bull by Horns
The Franklin Center/Wisconsin Reporter has led the charge against the John Doe investigation, the prosecutors involved, and even reporters covering the topic.
Professor Theodore L. Glasser [51], a Professor of Communications at Stanford University, told CMD that at a minimum, a news outfit should disclose their connections to the subjects they are reporting on. "For the reader, without that transparency, it is hard to make a judgment about the independence of that reporting," he said.
"Not to say that the conflict [of interest] would go away with transparency, but it would at least allow readers to judge for themselves."
See more stories tagged with:
Wisconsin recall elections [52],
wisconsin dark money groups [53],
wisconsin john doe investigation [54],
franklin center [55],
Center for Media and Democracy [56]
Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/right-wing-front-group-poses-journalists-stop-campaign-finance-investigation
==
sw
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Eric_O%27Keefe
Eric O'Keefe is a right-wing political operative with deep ties to the Koch brothers. O'Keefe is currently the director of theWisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG). He was heavily involved in the Libertarian Party in the 1980s, worked to enact congressional term limits in the 1990s, and transitioned into a leader of the Tea Party movement in the late 2000s. His group, the Sam Adams Alliance, led to the founding of numerous tea party organizations, and also helped launch the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. He is married to Leslie Graves of the Lucy Burns Institute, publisher of Ballotpedia and Judgepedia.
O'Keefe is at the center of the 2014 "John Doe" criminal investigation of the campaign of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Wisconsin Club for Growth, and numerous other "dark money" groups.
Koch Wiki
The Koch brothers -- David and Charles -- are the right-wing billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries. As two of the richest people in the world, they are key funders of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on the Kochs include: Koch Brothers,Koch Industries, Americans for Prosperity, American Encore, and Freedom Partners.
Contents [hide]
1 2013 Wisconsin Criminal Investigation into Illegal Campaign Coordination
1.1 O'Keefe Compares Criminal Investigation to Rape
1.2 WCFG Lawsuits Against John Doe Fail in Court
2 Ties to Right-Wing Groups
2.1 Ties to the Koch Brothers
2.2 Wisconsin Club for Growth
2.3 Sam Adams Alliance
2.4 The Franklin Center
2.5 Project Veritas
3 Background
3.1 Libertarian Party
4 Affiliations
5 Articles and resources
5.1 Related PRWatch articles
5.2 Related SourceWatch articles
5.3 References
2013 Wisconsin Criminal Investigation into Illegal Campaign Coordination
Cap-Times-Dark money.jpg
In October 2013, O'Keefe broke a secrecy order and told the Wall Street Journal editorial board that he had been served with a subpoena in a "John Doe" investigation into possible campaign finance violations during Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 recall elections, apparently in his capacity as chair ofWisconsin Club for Growth. The investigation is being conducted under Wisconsin's "John Doe" laws, which is similar to a grand jury investigation, and is being overseen by former federal prosecutor Francis Schmitz, who was once considered for a position as U.S. attorney by George W. Bush and who voted for Republican Governor Scott Walker.[1] The Journal's editorial board characterized the investigation as a "political speech raid." [2] [3]
O'Keefe Compares Criminal Investigation to Rape
In October 2014 while on a conservative talk radio show, O'Keefe compared the subpoena targets of the John Doe investigation to rape victims. As reported by the Wisconsin State Journal:
“I have read some about rape and I have talked about rape and I am saying this deliberately,” O’Keefe said. “The reactions that I got from the people I interviewed were similar to a rape victim.”
He said prosecutors “imposed a traumatic, unconstitutional abuse on people and told them you can’t talk to your colleagues, you can’t talk to your friends.”[4]
During the show, O'Keefe also called the Government Accountability Board "corrupt" and called the investigation "spying."[4]
WCFG Lawsuits Against John Doe Fail in Court
O'Keefe and WCFG filed several lawsuits seeking to end the John Doe probe. On February 10, 2014, they filed a suit with the U.S. District Court in Milwaukee claiming that "the probe violates their rights to free speech, free assembly and equal protection under the law" and seeking "to block prosecutors from continuing the John Doe probe, relieve O'Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth from having to cooperate with it, and order prosecutors to pay them compensatory damages for violating their constitutional rights."[5] On May 30, 2014, O'Keefe and WCFG filed a suit in the Waukesha County Circuit Court seeking to remove the Government Accountability Board, Wisconsin's elections and ethics agency, from the John Doe case.[6]On September 24, 2014, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the lawsuit to be thrown out, declaring that federal Judge Rudolph Randa never should have taken the case in the first place.[7]
Ties to Right-Wing Groups
Ties to the Koch Brothers
According to the Washington Post:
"Early in his libertarian days, O’Keefe became friendly with the Koch brothers, with whom he has joined in many battles, mainly through independent groups that the courts have empowered to raise unlimited money, often without having to identify their donors."[8]
More recently, O'Keefe was listed as a presenter at the June 2010 Koch network meeting in Aspen, Colorado. He sits on the board of the Koch's Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) and was formerly on the board of directors of the Cato Institute, a Koch-founded libertarian think tank..[9] SAM's internship recruitment page was connected to Koch Industries through the Charles G. Koch Summer Fellow Program. The program was administered through the IHS and the State Policy Network and featured on the IHS website.[10]
O'Keefe previously worked for Citizens for Congressional Reform, a project of David Koch's Citizens for a Sound Economy (the predecessor to Americans for Prosperity). He has also been featured at events funded by David Koch's Americans for Prosperity group.[11]
According to reporting by the Center for Media and Democracy, the Wisconsin Club for Growth, for which O'Keefe is a board member, "took in funds from some of the top Republican donors and Koch-connected dark money conduits in the country," including the Center to Protect Patient Rights and the Wellspring Committee, as part of a "dark money web" funding at least $9.1 million in spending in 2011 and 2012 recall elections in Wisconsin.[12]
O'Keefe also appears to have ties going back decades to other individuals who have been close to the Kochs, such as Edward H. Crane. O'Keefe's website states, for example, that in 1981, "Senator McCarthy invited Ed Crane and Eric to dine with him in the Senate dining room, where the trio discussed the situation with political speech and regulation, among other things."[13]
Wisconsin Club for Growth
O'Keefe is on the Board of Directors and is chair of the Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG). O'Keefe was also on the board of the national Club for Growth organization in 2007.[9]
WCFG has funneled millions of dollars to other right-wing advocacy groups, many of which have spent large sums on political ads. In 2011 and 2012, WCFG "spent more than $9.1 million during the [Wisconsin] recalls, one of the biggest sources of “issue ad” funding during that period" even though the group spent only $100,000 directly, according to Express Milwaukee.[14][15]
In 2011 and 2012, donations from WCFG have provided almost the entire budget of Citizens for a Strong America, which in turn funded conservative organizations including the anti-gay Wisconsin Family Action, anti-abortion Wisconsin Right to Life, and the Healthcare Compact Alliance--whose parent organization, Competitive Governance Action,[16] included Eric O'Keefe on its board of directors.[17]
In 2011, WCFG also provided about half the budget for the pro-business Jobs First Coalition, which in turn transferred $245,000 to a group called the American Federation for Children (AFC). AFC reported spending $1.1 million supporting Gov. Scott Walker during his recall, in addition to $1.3 million supporting Wisconsin Republican state senators being recalled in 2011.[12] In 2012, WCFG donated $250,000 directly to AFC.[18]
Wisconsin Club for Growth was one of 29 right-wing groups (including nonprofits, political vendors and party committees) that has reportedly been subpoenaed as a part of a "John Doe" investigation into possible campaign finance violations during Wisconsin's 2011 and 2012 elections, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Sam Adams Alliance
O'Keefe founded the Sam Adams Alliance (SAM) and served as chairman and CEO. According to O'Keefe's website, SAM was intended to be a right wing source of support for freedom of speech and discussion of political issues, training citizens to be activists and bloggers. The organization was active from 2007 to 2011.[19] The development of SAM led to the foundations of the tea party movement, allowing activists like Eric Odom the opportunity to develop websites and social media as a organizational platform. Odom was SAM's new media director before he branched out on his own.[10]
According to the State Policy Network's (SPN) website, SAM received funding from SPN and was listed in their network of state think tanks. [20]
The Franklin Center
In 2009, under O'Keefe's leadership the Sam Adams Alliance helped launch the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, and provided the new organization with "seed money," according to the National Journal.[21] [22] [23] [24]
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that in “its first year, the Franklin Center had a $2.9 million budget, much of it from the libertarian Sam Adams Alliance.” [25]
Project Veritas
In 2015, the Center for Media and Democracy (which publishes SourceWatch) discovered tax filings showing that Eric O'Keefe made a $50,000 donation to Project Veritas in 2013. Project Veritas is a group affiliated with James O'Keefe, known for a series of deceptive videos attacking targets like Planned Parenthood and ACORN, a community organizing group. In early 2014, Project Veritas published a video it had recorded of an enebriated Mike Ellis (R-Neenah), then President of the Wisconsin State Senate, discussing the possibility of "setting up an illegal political action committee to attack his Democratic opponent."[26] Ellis later speculated that WCFG was behind the sting.[27]
When called by CMD and asked about the $50,000 donation, Eric O'Keefe said "I didn't give that in 2013," then ended the call.[28] A copy of the relevant section of the tax filing is available here.
Background
According to his personal website, O'Keefe is originally from Grosse Pointe, Michigan. He briefly worked at Detroit Broach and Machine and was a member of the United Steelworkers of America Local 7489.[13]
He lives in Spring Green, Wisconsin with his wife, Leslie Graves, who is president of the Lucy Burns Institute.
Libertarian Party
O'Keefe became involved with the Libertarian Party in the mid-1970s and was elected to the Libertarian National Committee in 1979. In 1980, he served as National Field Coordinator for the Libertarian presidential campaign,[13] in which David Koch was the vice presidential candidate, and was elected National Director of the Libertarian Party.[29] According to O'Keefe's website, he left the Libertarian Party in 1983.
In the 1980s, O'Keefe was involved with the National Taxpayers Union. In 1988, he joined the Cato Institute board of directors.[13] In 1991, O'Keefe formed U.S. Term Limits to push for legislation limiting congressional term limits across the US. As described by O'Keefe's website, the group was involved in "major innovation" related to political advertising.
"U.S. Term Limits also implemented a major innovation in political communication by creating Americans for Limited Terms to run aggressive pre-election issue advertising. The complex new laws of 1974 and the rewrite by the Supreme Court deterred participation in politics, as it was intended to do.
"However nothing in the law, the Buckley decision, or subsequent decisions precluded advertising to promote issue positions, even if that advertising might well influence voters, and therefore elections. So Eric recommended that friends of U.S. Term Limits set up a new entity, to limit exposure in the event of the F.E.C. complaints and possible other litigation we expected to meet for promoting our political views."[13]
Since the 1990s, O'Keefe has been involved in a number of right-wing political organizations engaged on topics such as fighting campaign finance reform, opposing the Affordable Care Act, and supporting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Affiliations
As of June 2014:
Wisconsin Club for Growth, director
Sam Adams Alliance, founder and past chairman. Later operating as Competitive Governance Institute and Competitive Governance Action
Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, founder
National Taxpayers Union, founder
Cato Institute, former board member
U.S. Term Limits, founder
Americans for Limited Terms, president (1996-2000)
Institute for Humane Studies, former board member[9]
American Majority, a Tea Party group that trains right-wing candidates to run for office; co-founder[15]
Center for Competitive Politics, a legal organization that opposes campaign finance regulations; founding board member[30]
Campaign for Primary Accountability, a super PAC that funds opposition to incumbent members of Congress; co-founder.[15] O'Keefe reportedly donated $100,000 to the group.[31]
Citizens for Self-Governance, co-founder and board member
Health Care Compact Alliance, chair.[32]
Citizens in Charge, board member[9]
Legislation Education Action Drive, president
Citizens for Congressional Reform
Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin
American Majority
Education Action Group
Tea Party Patriots
Bartley Institute, former board member
Center for Independent Thought
Parents in Charge Foundation
Legislative Education Action Drive
Concerned Citizens of Iowa County
Competitive Governance Institute and Competitive Governance Action
Center for Competitive Thought
Health Care Compact Alliance
John Hancock Committee for the States, later Citizens for Self-Governance
CSG Action
Has ties to the Lucy Burns Institute, official sponsor of Ballotpedia and Judgepedia. His wife is the Institute's president[33]and the organization has received funds from SAM[34]
Has ties to Rachel's Vineyard," an "abortion recovery" group, through his wife, who has been involved in managing the group's publicity [34]
Author of "Who Rules America: The People Versus the Political Class," which argues for term limits.[35]
Articles and resources
Related PRWatch articles
Brendan Fischer, Was John Doe Raid Led by Republicans?, PrWatch, June 12, 2014.
Wisconsin Club for Growth Makes False Claims to Federal Court, PrWatch press release, February 11, 2014.
Related SourceWatch articles
Sam Adams Alliance
Lucy Burns Institute
Leslie Graves
References
Jump up? Mary Spicuzza, John Doe targets sue Wisconsin election officials in Waukesha County," Wisconsin State Journal, May 30, 2014. Accessed June 16, 2014.
Jump up? Wall Street Journal editorial board, Wisconsin Political Speech Raid, Nov. 18, 2013, Wall Street Journal.
Jump up? Mary Bottari, Heart of Darkness: Criminal Investigation of WI Recall $, prwatch.org, Nov. 25, 2013
? Jump up to:4.0 4.1 Matthew DeFour, "Eric O'Keefe compares John Doe subpoena targets to rape victims," Wisconsin State Journal, October 3, 2014. Accessed October 30, 2014.
Jump up? Patrick Marley and Jason Stein, "Wisconsin Club for Growth sues to shut down John Doe investigation," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 10, 2014. Accessed June 16, 2014.
Jump up? Jason Stein and Bill Glauber, "Club for Growth sues to force GAB out of Doe probe," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 30, 2014. Accessed June 16, 2014.
Jump up? Jason Stein, Daniel Bice, and Patrick Marley, "Federal court overturns Doe ruling, sends it back to state judges," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, September 24, 2014. Accessed September 30, 2014.
Jump up? Marc Fischer, "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s recall: Big money fuels small-government fight," Washington Post, March 25, 2012. Accessed June 12, 2014.
? Jump up to:9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Eric O'Keefe, Past Experience, personal website, accessed June 12, 2014.
? Jump up to:10.0 10.1 Alex Brant-Zawadzki and Dawn Teo, Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement: Sam Adams Alliance, Huffington Post, Dec. 11, 2009
Jump up? Alex Brant-Zawadzki and Dawn Teo, Anatomy of the Tea Party Movement: Sam Adams Alliance, Huffington Post, Dec. 11, 2009.
? Jump up to:12.0 12.1 Brendan Fischer, "WI Club for Growth, Target of Walker Recall Probe, at Center of Dark Money Web," Center for Media and Democracy, November 18, 2013. Accessed June 12, 2014.
? Jump up to:13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 Eric O'Keefe, About Eric, personal website. Accessed June 12, 2014.
Jump up? Lisa Kaiser, "Who Was Wisconsin Club for Growth's $1 Million Donor?," Express Milwaukee, April 2, 2014. Accessed June 16, 2014.
? Jump up to:15.0 15.1 15.2 Marc Fisher, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s recall: Big money fuels small-government fight, Washington Post, Mar 25, 2012
Jump up? Health Care Compact, About, organizational website, accessed June 16, 2014.
Jump up? Guidestar, Competitive Governance Action, People and Governance, accessed June 16, 2014.
Jump up? Wisconsin Club for Growth, 2012 Form 990, organizational IRS filing, November 14, 2013. Accessed June 16, 2014.
Jump up? Eric O'Keefe, About Eric, personal website, accessed Nov. 25, 2013
Jump up? State Policy Network, Same Adams Alliance, Official website, accessed December 11, 2013.
Jump up? Press release, Sam Adams Alliance Launches New Website
Jump up? Eric O’Keefe, Chairman and CEO, Sam Adams Alliance, How Understanding Politics Helps in Policy, Liberty Guide, October 18, 2012.
Jump up? Julie Kosterlitz, Conservative Watchdogs Awake, National Journal, Dec. 12, 2009.
Jump up? Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, Non-Profit News, accessed December 11, 2013.
Jump up? Daniel Bice, Conservative outlets write all the news that fits their tilt JSonline.com, August 7, 2011.
Jump up? Patrick Marley and Daniel Bice, "GOP's Mike Ellis caught on recording talking of illegal fundraising," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 9, 2014. Accessed January 28, 2015.
Jump up? Wisconsin Eye, "Newsmakers: Exit Interview with Sen. Mike Ellis," YouTube, April 12, 2014. Accessed January 28, 2015.
Jump up? Mary Bottari, "Money Trail Revealed: Did Eric O’Keefe Pay James O’Keefe for Hatchet Job on GOP Senate President?," Center for Media and Democracy, PR Watch, January 27, 2015. Accessed January 28, 2015.
Jump up? Wisconsin Political Speech Raid, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 18, 2013
Jump up? Center for Competitive Politics, Board of Directors, organizational website, accessed June 12, 2014.
Jump up? Paul Kane, One super PAC takes aim at incumbents of any party, Washington Post, Mar. 7, 2012
Jump up? Health Care Compact Alliance website, "About Us" page, accessed Apr. 12, 2011.
Jump up? Lucy Burns Institute, Our Staff, organizational website, accessed June 12, 2014.
? Jump up to:34.0 34.1 Lucy Burns Institute, Our Story, organizational website, accessed June 12, 2014.
Jump up? Eric O'Keefe, Publications, personal website, accessed June 12, 2014
---
older srcwtch:
Eric O'Keefe is the founder, chairman and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance (SAM) and former chairman of Americans for Limited Government.
Contents
[hide]
1 Ties to Right-Wing Groups
2 Other Affiliations
3 Articles and resources
3.1 References
3.2 Related SourceWatch articles
3.3 External articles
Ties to Right-Wing Groups
O'Keefe is the CEO of SAM. O'Keefe has been featured at events funded by David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) group which is heavily involved in supporting right-wing politicians with independent expenditures and other assistance that stretches the limits of legality. O'Keefe is a right-wing political operative that has deep ties to the Koch brothers. He helped launch the American Majority Tea Party group which trains right-wing candidates to run for office. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Club for Growth Wisconsin, which ran divisive ads in support of Governor Scott Walker's radical overhaul of collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin workers. He has also served on the board of Koch's Institute for Humane Studies, the Center for Competitive Politics, and chairs the Health Care Compact Alliance.
"O'Keefe is a right-wing political operative that has deep ties to the Koch brothers."[1] He sits on the board of the Koch's Institute for Humane Studies, and has been featured at several events funded by David Koch's Americans for Prosperity (AFP) group. He also sits on the Board of Directors for Club for Growth Wisconsin, the group behind "divisive ads in support of Governor Scott Walker's radical overhaul of collective bargaining rights for Wisconsin workers" and for the Center for Competitive Politics[coors].[1][2]
O'Keefe also chairs the Health Care Compact Alliance.[3]
Other Affiliations
Board of Directors, Citizens in Charge, an Initiative and Referendum advocacy group.
President, Legislation Education Action Drive, a pro-voucher PAC[citation needed]
Longtime Libertarian Party activist, along with his wife, Leslie Graves (formerly known as Leslie Keys), and reportedly aligned with Ed Crane through her ties to Update newsletter[1][4]
Lucy Burns Institute, official sponsor of Ballotpedia and Judgepedia. His wife is president and the organization receives funds from SAM[1]
Also connected to "Rachel's Vineyard," an "abortion recovery" group, through his wife, who has been involved in managing the group's publicity [1]
Author of book that argues for term limits (entitled Who Rules America: The People versus the Political Class)
Articles and resources
References
? 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 [Sara Jerving, http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/11/11791/lucy-burns-institute-publishers-ballotpedia-judgepedia-and-wikifoia-and-her-right "Lucy Burns Institute (Publishers of Ballotpedia and Judgepedia) and Her Right-Wing Bedfellows"]
? "About", organizational website, accessed November 2012
? Health Care Compact Alliance website, "About Us" page, accessed Apr. 12, 2011.
? The Libertarian Forum. Volume XVI, Number 6, July 1982. "Double Victory for Agression", from "Ludwig von Mise Institute", organizational website, accessed November 2012
Related SourceWatch articles
Sam Adams Alliance
Lucy Burns Institute
Leslie Graves
External articles
This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.
Categories:
All articles with unsourced statements
Articles with unsourced statements
Stubs
---
bs
Eric was born in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in the 1950s. He was politically interested from an early age, and in the late 1960s, he began to follow political developments through magazines and the Wall Street Journal. In 1976, he attended a speech in Detroit by economist Milton Friedman. It happened to be the day that Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics.
From late 1973 to early 1976, Eric worked running drill presses at Detroit Broach and Machine where he was a member of the United Steelworkers of America, Local 7489.
Eric’s direct political activities began in 1976 with a contribution to the Libertarian Party presidential campaign of Roger MacBride. Eric read about the sweeping regulations of campaign activities based on the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act amendments, which were sold as a response to Watergate. Their actual intent, and the result, was to handicap challengers and therefore entrench incumbents. Many aspects of the law were ruled unconstitutional in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision, but unfortunately the Supreme Court decided to rewrite the law rather than reject it. The plaintiffs in that case were Conservative Senator James Buckley of New York State, former Senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and the Libertarian Party, with Edward H. Crane III as chairman. Crane was active in the presentation of the case, and keen to the new law’s ability to cripple dissenting political views.
In 1979, Eric was elected to the Libertarian National Committee, where Ed Crane served. Crane recruited David Koch as the vice-presidential candidate to minimize the damage from the contribution limits imposed in the F.E.C.A. amendments. In 1980, Eric worked full-time in the Libertarian presidential campaign, first as a volunteer finishing the petition drives in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia, then as National Field Coordinator from the Washington, D.C. headquarters. In late 1980, Eric was elected National Director of the Libertarian Party.
In 1981, the Libertarian Party endured an audit from the Federal Election Commission, which involved two full-time auditors spending several days looking over the Libertarian Party’s records. They did not find any problems. In this time period Senator McCarthy invited Ed Crane and Eric to dine with him in the Senate dining room, where the trio discussed the situation with political speech and regulation, among other things.
Eric left Libertarian Party politics for good in 1983 after a year studying the history of politics and parties from the 1770s to the 1920s. Regulations in the Progressive Era crippled third parties and gutted the power of political party organizations. As G. William Domhoff told his left-wing audience in a 1974 Ramparts article, the Democratic Party label was up for grabs. He recommended that communists and socialists run as Democrats. State governments, not party organizations, controlled the labels. The same logic applied to libertarians, or people of any beliefs. So subsequently Eric’s strategic advice to donors and others has always recommended focusing on issues, issue organizations, or support or opposition for particular candidates. The party organizations could no longer hold their own candidates accountable, so the role must be undertaken by others.
While Eric spent most of the 1980s alternately studying political history or trading options, various political projects attracted his engagement, including promoting a balanced budget amendment with the National Taxpayers Union. In 1988, O’Keefe joined the board of directors of the Cato Institute. He joined strategy discussions and sent memos to influential people arguing both against third party efforts, and in favor of participating through issue groups rather than through Republican or Democratic party organizations.
Political party operations are generally controlled by incumbents, but who holds incumbents accountable? Without independent platforms, no one has the infrastructure to challenge or criticize incumbents. And most districts for Congress as well as state legislatures are effectively one-party districts. That means that voters have no choice in most elections – unless there are independent groups willing to back challengers in primary elections.
Meanwhile, Cato President Ed Crane suggested that Eric get involved in promoting congressional term limits. His suggestion led Howie Rich and Eric to form U.S. Term Limits, with Crane on the board, at the end of 1991. U.S. Terms Limits then executed a plan based on an ambitious strategy memo Eric authored, calling for a blitz of initiatives in a number of states so we could allow voters to circumvent the opposition of incumbent politicians. U.S. Terms Limits helped organizations in 23 states put congressional term limit initiatives in front of voters, and they embraced the approach, passing them by sweeping margins. The New Hampshire legislature joined them.
But the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 decision in May 1995 ruled that voters could not impose limits on the terms of their own congressional delegations; congressional limits in 23 states were thereby nullified. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a searing but scholarly dissent which captured the spirit of America’s founders.
Term limits did remain in effect on fifteen state legislatures and additional governors and other officeholders. U.S. Term Limits also implemented a major innovation in political communication by creating Americans for Limited Terms to run aggressive pre-election issue advertising. The complex new laws of 1974 and the rewrite by the Supreme Court deterred participation in politics, as it was intended to do.
However nothing in the law, the Buckley decision, or subsequent decisions precluded advertising to promote issue positions, even if that advertising might well influence voters, and therefore elections. So Eric recommended that friends of U.S. Term Limits set up a new entity, to limit exposure in the event of the F.E.C. complaints and possible other litigation we expected to meet for promoting our political views. Eric helped raise and spend about $1.4 million on ads critical of various Democratic incumbents. Most notably, $300,000 was spent criticizing House Speaker Tom Foley of Spokane, Washington for suing to overturn the term limits law voters in his state had approved in 1992.
Americans for Limited Terms’ television ads showed a tear rolling down the cheek of the George Washington face on an image of Mount Rushmore. Foley lost by less than two percentage points, becoming the first Speaker to lose reelection since the Civil War. Eric subscribed to the Spokane Spokesman Review that year, and had many articles taped up to the wall of his office. While some left-wing advocates for speech regulation claimed ALT’s ads were illegal, Eric was surprised when not one single complaint was filed with the F.E.C. Tom Foley was a constitutional attorney and recognized that those involved with ALT were acting within their rights.
ALT proved that there was much more room for political debate than others had thought, and 1996 saw a wave of issue ads from groups of all kinds, invigorating political discourse in America. It also greatly upset incumbent politicians, who began working toward the crackdown which became the McCain-Feingold bill.
But meanwhile, after the term limits defeat before the Supreme Court, Eric tried other efforts to promote term limits in 1996 and 1998. One of those efforts was a modest campaign in Wisconsin which drew an attack from a politician, and a judge who actually ordered stations not to air perfectly legal issue ads. At the time, Eric was president of Americans for Limited Terms, and he was subpoenaed to appear before an attorney in Attorney General Jim Doyle’s office. The state was pursuing a similar complaint against Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which led to a state Supreme Court defeat for the state.
So the case against ALT was ended, though we ALT not recover $35,000 in legal expenses — which exceeded the cost of our modest campaign. And of course ALT did not recover the opportunity to engage in pre-election speech which had been denied by a judge overeager to please a politician, and under-familiar with the laws of the land.
That situation is discussed in the article Morning at the Ministry of Speech, by Jonathan Rauch, which is available on-line. In 1999, Eric’s book Who Rules America was published, with praise from Eric’s ally Milton Friedman, the great economist and freedom advocate. It has a chapter addressing the use of campaign finance regulations to stifle political dissent and entrench incumbent politicians.
After leftists operating from a base in large foundations succeeded in their multi-year, $300 million dollar campaign to impose McCain-Feingold speech regulations on America, Eric joined an effort to create a new entity to focus on the protection of political speech, which became the Center for Competitive Politics, with former FEC chairman Brad Smith as chairman. Eric was a founding board member and remains on the board of directors. The Center has been involved in key cases involving political speech, in addition to providing testimony and commentary in states and Congress. The Center filed influential briefs in the Citizens United case as well as the SpeechNow case, both of which were key in reopening the political process after several years under the McCain-Feingold constraints. After those two decisions, our system is more open for vigorous political debate than at any time since the imposition of the 1974 FECA amendments.
However there are many state regulators who oppose the freedom to debate, and who do not intend to respect or follow the law, and some of them work for the Government Accountability Board in Wisconsin. After the Citizens United and SpeechNow decisions, the Government Accountability Board wrote new regulations in clear defiance of the court decisions. The Wisconsin Club for Growth joined the liberal group One Wisconsin in suing against the regulations; the Government Accountability Board recognized its weak position, and negotiated more limited regulations with the parties, so we settled before trial.
Those regulations are still overly broad and likely unconstitutional, however Eric’s operations are compliant with even the questionable provisions of the regulations. In 2005, Americans for Limited Government started an effort to bring spending limit initiatives and eminent domain initiatives in front of millions of voters. This effort was organized by those who had run n the term limits operations in the 1990s.
The tax limitation and eminent domain initiatives did not meet with the same level of success, as union organizers had spread their method of “blocking,” where thuggish behavior on the street is used to impair the efforts of petitioners. They also organized attacks in the media and in courtrooms. They sued against nearly every effort, and kept initiates off the ballot in several states, while sinking support in others. Not content with preventing votes, the Attorney General of Oklahoma even indicted three of the organizers of the effort.
By then Eric had launched the Sam Adams Alliance, which employed one of the targets, Paul Jacob. Paul had a potential ten-year prison sentence hanging over his head, but was patiently defiant during the 17 months of purgatory, before the state dropped the case and mailed a check for $143,000 to our attorneys in Kansas City.
[BS
Susan Johnson is the president of National Voter Outreach.
Johnson is one of the Oklahoma 3. Johnson, Paul Jacob and Rick Carpenter were criminally charged by Drew Edmondson, the Democratic attorney general ofOklahoma in 2007 for allegedly violating the state's residency requirement. The charges were denied and, as the result of a federal lawsuit, Yes on Term Limits v. Savage, the Tenth Circuit ruled unanimously on December 18, 2008 that the law under which Edmondson was criminally prosecuting the trio was unconstitutional. Edmondson asked the court to re-consider; on January 21, the court said it would not do so. Edmondson then on January 22 dropped his prosecution, saying that the 1969 law under which he was prosecuting them was "no longer enforceable."[1]
In the eighteen months that elapsed between the time that Edmondson filed and then dropped the charges, his attempt to jail the Oklahoma 3 for ten years led theWall Street Journal to compare the government in Oklahoma to that of Pakistan, and led Steve Forbes of Forbes to compare the government of Oklahoma to the government of North Korea.[2][3]
Background of Oklahoma 3
On October 2, 2007, Johnson, Paul Jacob and Rick Carpenter were indicted in Oklahoma based on allegations about their role in the 2005 petition drive for an Oklahoma TABOR initiative that, had the drive succeeded, would have placed a Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative on the November 2006 general election ballot in that state.
Jacob, Johnson, and Carpenter were indicted on felony charges of "conspiracy to defraud the state." Carpenter was charged with a second felony, that of violating the state's petition act. According to an AP report, "The indictment accuses the three of 'willfully, corruptly, deceitfully, fraudulently and feloniously' conspiring with each other to defraud the state through the collection of signatures on the TABOR petition."[4]
In a prepared statement released upon indictment, Paul Jacob wrote that the prosecution was "not about the law, but rather 100 percent politically motivated. This is politics – very ugly politics." As well as challenging the motives of the prosecution, Jacob noted the many troubles of the constitutionality of the laws upon which the prosecution is based, adding that "constitutional or not, we obeyed the statute."[5]
The multicounty grand jury indictment[6] was unsealed on Tuesday, October 2, 2007. The defendants were taken out of court shackled to each other with handcuffs and leg-irons, and released later in the day. Paul Jacob was widely quoted as saying that the charges "will not stand."[7]
Grand jury indictment dismissed
In mid-November 2007, the multi-county grand jury indictment was dismissed, apparently because of flaws in its composition. It is expected that the charges will be refiled directly by Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson.[8]
Support of Susan Johnson
R-Sen. Randy Brogdon released a public statement on October 5, 2007 supporting Johnson and Paul Jacob, saying "It appears Drew Edmondson is more concerned with protecting his own political power than he is with preserving, protecting, and defending the right of Oklahomans to free speech,” Brogdon said. “This is nothing less than an attack on our Republican form of government.”[9][10][11][12][13]
External links
National Voter Outreach website
Free the OK 3
Susan Johnson bio
Selection of NVO articles about the 2005 Taxpayer Bill of Rights petition in Oklahoma.
Has Oklahoma's Attorney General gone overboard?
Validating Signatures Article by Rick Arnold and Susan Johnson in 1997 "Campaigns and Elections" magazine
References:
Jump up? Associated Press, "State won't appeal initiative petition ruling," January 22, 2009
Jump up? Wall St. Journal, "Oklahoma's Most Wanted; The latest thing in political felonies: a petition drive"
Jump up? Forbes magazine, "Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?"
Jump up? "Petition Backers Indicted On Felony Charges" Associated Press, 10/2/2007
Jump up? "Statement of Paul Jacob", PaulJacob.com, 10/2/2007
Jump up? Case#CF-2007-4713, Indictment PDF
Jump up? "TABOR petition backers indicted", Tulsa World, October 2, 2007
Jump up? Oklahoma indictment dismissed but re-indictment likely
Jump up? Sen. Brogdon says Oklahomans Should be Dismayed by Politically Motivated Indictment of Citizen Activists, Oklahoma State Senate, Oct 5th, 2007
Jump up? Payback for Activism
Jump up? Unconstitutional Oklahoma law
Jump up? Who is next on the state's hit list?
Jump up? Outrageous political ploy to quell citizen rights
Category: Petition drive management company personnel------
---
wiki
In October 2007, Edmondson indicted term limits and initiative rights activist Paul Jacob and two others on the grounds that they had illegally used out-of-state petitioners to collect signatures on a ballot initiative.[5]
On December 18, 2008 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the underlying Oklahoma law that barred out of state petition circulators, noting that it was in violation of the First Amendment. Edmondson appealed the decision on behalf of Secretary of State Susan Savage. On January 21, 2009 the Tenth Circuit court denied the state's appeal, effectively ending the case.[6] The Attorney General's office dismissed the charges against Jacob and the other defendants, with Edmondson saying "The statute under which these defendants were charged has been declared unconstitutional, and the appellate process is complete...The statute is no longer enforceable."[7] on January 22, 2009. The indictment of Jacob drew criticism for being politically motivated. 2008 independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader referred to the laws such as the one Jacob was charged with breaking as “Jim Crow laws,” adding, “We’ve seen this before against African Americans.[8] 404 hmmn] The Wall Street Journal editorialized against the prosecution twice, calling it "bizarre",[9][10] and Steve Forbes asked the question "Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?".[11]
---
The Sam Adams Alliance was active from 2007 through 2011, encouraging citizen engagement in politics, with specialties in studying and training citizen activists and bloggers. In 2010, the Health Care Compact Alliance was launched with Eric’s support to promote a key governance reform that is nearly opposite of the PPACA, popularly known as Obamacare.
Obamacare centralizes decision making with bureaucrats working for the federal government; the Health Care Compact disperses decision making and dollars to the member states. While eight states have passed the Compact, it requires congressional approval so remains only a possible solution to the governance crisis in healthcare.
In 2011, Eric joined as co-chair of the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a nonpartisan SuperPAC created to highlight the essential role of primary elections in our political process. The PAC participated heavily in nine congressional primaries, in all cases supporting the challenger to a veteran incumbent. The challengers prevailed in four of those races. More importantly, CPA elevated the insight that primary elections are the only way to hold an incumbent accountable in most districts.
The use of “primary” as an active verb became much more common because of CPA’s efforts, and the word is that concern about primary elections is now a fact of life on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile in 2004 Eric encouraged people involved with the Club for Growth to support similar efforts at the state level, as part of an accountability infrastructure. Later Eric served on the national Club board for two years. The national Club charted state chapters in seven or eight states before losing enthusiasm for the project. The chapter in Pennsylvania achieved early success, but later idled. Kansas has a Club which had a notably influential year in 2012.
The Wisconsin Club focused on select state legislative elections over the years, and also highlighted issues in periods with Supreme Court elections. Then the Club found itself in the middle of the intense political conflict in Wisconsin, and stepped up to play a leading role in communicating with Wisconsin voters in 2011. That action began when 70,000 protesters were marching around the Capitol; it continued through a close Supreme Court election battle, and culminated by putting information in front of voters to counter a massive effort run by national union bosses to undermine Republican senators facing recall elections. Defending the legislators who backed Gov. Walker’s reforms became Eric’s main objective early in 2011, and he turned away from much of his national political work.
The Wisconsin Club for Growth was the major platform for Eric’s efforts to raise money and fund communications with voters in the most focused and effective fashion. These activities were conducted by meticulous operatives with many years of experience, with the review of the Club’s approach by skilled counsel familiar with the state of the law, and with Eric’s oversight and overall responsibility for the operation. The Wisconsin Club for Growth did not advertise in connection with the recall effort against Gov. Walker in 2012.
After the Wisconsin successes, Eric turned to national political organizing through Citizens for Self-Governance, which has been encouraging the development of Wisconsin-style infrastructure in other states, and is also encouraging legislators across the country to call for a Convention of the States to address the major problems Congress will not address. In 2013, Citizens for Self-Governance assisted a number of groups in filing a class action lawsuit against the IRS for illegal and harassing behavior in the handling and processing of applications for non-profit status.
bs
Eric was the founding board member of the term limits advocacy group, U.S. Term Limits. He drafted the plan for a term limits sweep across the country in 1992 and 1994. By 1995, voters in twenty-three states had limited the terms of their U.S. congressional delegations through the ballot initiative process.
In the case of U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, five Supreme Court Justices stopped this movement. The Justices asserted that states did not have the right to determine the conditions under which their representatives in Congress should serve. Term limits governing state legislatures remain in force. As a result, fifteen states currently have term limits on their legislative representatives.
Americans for Limited Terms Lawsuit
O’Keefe served as president of Americans for Limited Terms (ALT) from 1996 to 2000. In congressional election cycles in 1996 and 1998, Americans for Limited Terms ran issue ads in a number of congressional districts, advising voters about the positions on term limits held by their congressional candidates.
Over the course of this campaign O’Keefe and the group came under fire and were eventually taken to court. O’Keefe and ALT prevailed in the case. Regarding why he and ALT had been sued and the reason issue ads were so effective, O’Keefe said, “There’s an effort by incumbents to clamp down on issue ads because it’s the only area of campaign spending that’s tilted against incumbents. In my view it’s among the most important campaign spending because it’s an outlet for dissenting voices. It’s extremely vital in democracy.”
Other Involvement
Board of Directors of Wisconsin Club for Growth, a state-wide network of thousands of pro-growth Wisconsinites, from all walks of life, who believe that prosperity and opportunity come through economic freedom.
Board of Directors of Citizens for Self-Governance, an organization dedicated to advancing self-governance.
Board of Directors of Citizens in Charge, an organization working to protect and expand ballot initiative rights.
Board of Directors of the Center for Competitive Politics, a group that works to promote and defend First Amendment rights to free political speech, assembly, and petition.
Former member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Humane Studies.Associated with George Mason University, IHS supports the achievement of a freer society by discovering and facilitating the development of talented students, scholars, and other intellectuals.
Co-founder of the Campaign for Primary Accountability, a nonpartisan Super PAC dedicated to breaking the cycle of incumbency by targeting Democrats and Republicans in congressional primary races.
Past chairman of the Sam Adams Alliance, a former organization that cultivated citizen activism.
Former member of the board of directors of the national Club for Growth
Former member of the board of directors of the Cato Institute
In early 2008, O’Keefe argued that a commission recently created in Wisconsin to monitor judicial elections was itself partisan, and therefore unreliable as a judicial watchdog group: “New committee will shield judges from their records”
==
ERIC O'KEEFE SAM ADAMS
also http://www.campaignfreedom.org/about/board-of-directors/ that tried to debunk monsanto Fox jane akre story
Edward H. Crane
President, Cato Institute
Allison R. Hayward
Vice President of Policy, Center for Competitive Politics
Eric O’Keefe
Chairman and CEO, Sam Adams Alliance
Terry Michael
Director, Washington Center for Politics and Journalism
Bradley A. Smith
Chairman and Co-Founder, Center for Competitive Politics Blackmore-Naught Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
John Snider
Shareholder, Financial Controllers, Inc.
---
koch nexus: http://thedemocraticdaily.com/2011/02/24/kozy-in-the-koch-kaffeeklatsch/
---
The Club for Growth Wisconsin (CFGW) is a state arm of the far right-wing national issue ad group, the Club for Growth, which is funded by the wealthiest Americans [1] and supports Republican candidates for office. The Green Bay Press-Gazette, in a March 9, 2011 article, noted that CFGW has ties to New York real estate developer Howard S. "Howie" Rich, who has put millions into Republican and libertarian causes.[2]
Contents
[hide]
1 Gov. Scott Walker's Budget Bill
1.1 Endorsements
1.2 Associations
1.3 Other Resources
2 Staff, board, personnel and advisers
3 Wisconsin Supreme Court electioneering
4 Budget Issue ads
5 Previous negative ads & electioneering
6 Issues
6.1 Pro-corporate, anti-worker
7 Climate change denial
8 Backing "tort reform"
9 Sourcewatch resources
10 External resources
11 Contact
12 References
Gov. Scott Walker's Budget Bill
On Feb. 14, three days after Gov. Scott Walker introduced his budget bill, the Wisconsin Club for Growth (WCFG) aired [3] a commercial that accused state workers of not having to sacrifice like private sector workers. In an effort to divide the house of labor, the commercial urged private sector workers to support Walker’s budget repair bill and make state workers “pay their fair share.” When the commercial failed to dissuade protesters from going to the capitol, WCFG along with Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by the Koch brothers, organized a pro-Walker rally on Feb. 19. [4]
WCFG criticized protesters for taking off of work because private sector workers “would like [public workers] to contribute more towards their healthcare and pensions,” [5] even though state workers said they were willing to do so if they could keep their collect bargaining rights. According to the Nation’s John Nichols, WCFG is “an organization funded by extremely wealthy conservatives to carry out their budget-stripping goals [and] has been a key player in Republican Governor Scott Walker's move to take out the state's organized workers.” [6] In addition to this, WCFG, in a press release, targeted eight Republican State Senators that did not initially commit to Walker’s budget repair bill.[7] Club For Growth, according to Think Progress, funded several “hard-hitting attack ads” against candidates who supported raising taxes on the rich or “have done anything to hold powerful corporations accountable.” [8]
Endorsements
WCFG also released four other videos promoting Walker’s budget reforms and endorsing Supreme Court Justice David Prosser and Senator Alberta Darling. During the April 5 Wisconsin elections, WCFG provided over $400,000 for Prosser’s campaign.[9] Prosser’s conservative law history ensured that Walker’s budget bill would clear the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In March, when recall efforts achieved over 30,000 signatures for recall, WCFG released another commercial praising Darling for “keeping Wisconsin open for business without raising taxes.” [10]
Associations
Almost all of the board members of Club for Growth have extensive ties to Wall Street and Energy companies. Media Matters lists several donations and connections CFG board members have with the Koch Brothers’ charities, Exxon Mobile and other right leaning organizations. [11] According to ThinkProgress, CFG collected funds from “employees of J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, while being buoyed by large donations like a $1.4 million contribution from investor Stephen Jacksons of Stephens Groups Inc.” Furthermore R.J. Johnson, one of WCFG’s main organizers, was a strategist for Walker’s campaign. [8]
RINO: Club for Growth does not just back just any GOP candidate, Rep. Steve Latourette (R-OH) referred to the group as the “Spanish Inquisition” after their campaigns ousted moderates from the GOP. [8] In May 2010, the group “organize the GOP uprising in Utah … that toppled three-term Sen. Robert F. Bennett (R), and …Florida Gov. Charlie Crist out of the GOP as well.” [8] With strong ties to Wall Street and the Tea Party, Club for Growth has already endorsed over 20 candidates and provided funds and organizers for their campaigns. Their goal, according to the Washington Post, is “to capitalize on the Republican-dominated "tea party" movement that has coalesced in opposition to President Obama's health-care overhaul, the Wall Street bailouts and other fiscal concerns.” [12] “They just like to take money from anonymous donors, fire shots at folks without any accountability,” said Mike Huckabee to Fox News. [13]
Some Republicans have accused Club for Growth of backing right leaning candidates that lose to democrats; however, the indorsed candidates have already begun the work they were hired to do. Candidates such as State Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC),Mike Lee (R-UT), Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Sharron Angle (R-NV), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Mike Pompeo (R-KS) are supporting big businesses such as BP and “rushing to defend the rights of corporation over the American victims of the [BP oil disaster].” [8]
Other Resources
Club For Growth Commercials: http://www.youtube.com/user/clubforgrowthwi?feature=mhum#p/u/0/im9DfnOW8XM
Staff, board, personnel and advisers
R.J. Johnson, a former political strategist for Wisconsin's embattled Governor Scott Walker, is a key adviser to the Club for Growth Wisconsin.[14] In the 2008 tax year, R.J. Johnson's eponymous consulting business made $33,791 on activities performed for the Club for Growth Wisconsin.[15] In 2010, Walker paid RJ Johnson & Associates, Inc. $30,000 for "Consulting Fees- General."[16][17]
Eric O'Keefe is also a board member of the CFGW. O'Keefe is part of the Koch Brothers' political network, having attended the Kochs' 2010 Aspen strategy soiree.[18] He is also the chair and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance, and a board member of the Institute for Humane Studies, which has taken millions from the Kochs and for which billionaire Charles Koch serves as chairman. [19]
The Club for Growth Wisconsin webpage has a "Congressional Corner with Congressman Paul Ryan" featuring links to various statements made by him 2007-2010.
Wisconsin Supreme Court electioneering
Club for Growth Wisconsin spent more than $1 million on outside electioneering activities in the 2007 and 2008 state Supreme Court races and the 2008 and 2010 fall elections.
The Club for Growth Wisconsin was the first outside special interest group to promote a candidate in the 2011 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, spending at least $321,000 on the race, and out-spending all candidates combined, and accounting for 70% of all spending in the race. The group has hired the Republican polling firm, Public Opinion Strategies, to health defeat efforts to obtain universal health insurance in Wisconsin.[20][21][22]
Budget Issue ads
During the February, 2011 battle in Wisconsin over Republican Governor Scott Walker's "budget repair bill, the Club for Growth Wisconsin sponsored a black-and-white television ad that featured working-class faces and superimposed newspaper headlines about the economic downturn which asserted that public employees have made no sacrifices while ordinary people have suffered substantially. The ad cited concessions by workers at Harley-Davidson, Mercury Marine and Sub-Zero while somber music played in the background. The narrator intoned: "But state workers haven't had to sacrifice. They pay next to nothing for their pensions, and a fraction of their health care. It's not fair. Call your state legislator and tell them to vote for Gov. Walker's budget repair bill. It's time state employees paid their fair share, just like the rest of us."[23]
PolitiFact Wisconsin reported that "officials with the Club for Growth -- Deb Jordahl and R.J. Johnson -- told us the ad meant to highlight just two issues regarding state employee compensation: pension and health care payments.... The portion of health premiums paid by employees more than doubled under then-Gov. Jim Doyle, from 2.5 percent to 5.6 percent in 2011.... But the most notable change for state workers has come on pay.
"The Club for Growth ad dramatically highlights 'frozen wages' and 'pay cuts' accepted by unions at the private companies -- and then says 'state workers haven’t had to sacrifice.' In fact, state workers have taken a hit on wages -- in the form of furlough days.... Doyle also rescinded 2 percent raises for non-union employees in the 2007-2009 state budget.... Doyle also suspended merit awards in November 2008.... So state workers have in fact given up some pay, which is the definition of sacrifice."[24]
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that as of March 13, 2011, CFGW had spent $805,610 on broadcast TV ads over Wisconsin's budget fight.[25]
Previous negative ads & electioneering
"Club for Growth Wisconsin spent an estimated $950,000 on negative broadcast advertising and other electioneering activities in the 2007 and 2008 Wisconsin Supreme Court races and the 2008 fall elections," according to Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. "The group sponsored a radio ad about three weeks before the November 2010 elections against Democrat Elmer Monk of Kimberly, who is running for the 1st Senate District open seat against Republican Frank Lasee. The ad criticized Monk for voting to raise property taxes as Kimberly school board member."[26]
Issues
Pro-corporate, anti-worker
The Club for Growth Wisconsin "seek[s] to extinguish the voice of public labor unions... because those unions... provide the most important bulwark of campaign-season defense via volunteers and dollars against the corporate interests' unimpeded domination over elections."[27] The Club for Growth Wisconsin's other efforts are aimed at helping corporations "avoid... their fair share of taxes, blocking minimum wage efforts and preventing any 'mandate' in environmental or workplace regulation they find inconvenient."[28]
The Club's overall strategies are aimed at splitting the middle and working classes by "pitting unionized workers against non-unionized workers, public-sector workers against nonpublic, older workers within sight of Medicare and Social Security against younger workers who don't believe these programs will be there for them, and the poor against the working middle class," according to former labor secretary Robert Reich. Reich said, "By splitting working America along these lines, Republicans want Americans to believe that we can no longer afford to do what we need to do as a nation. They hope to deflect attention from the increasing share of total income and wealth going to the richest 1 percent while the jobs and wages of everyone else languish." [29]
Climate change denial
The Club for Growth Wisconsin calls global warming/climate change a "fraud." [30]
Backing "tort reform"
The Club for Growth Wisconsin supports and works to advance tort reform,[31] a "movement" propagated by companies and entire industries -- such as the tobacco and asbestos industries -- that are vulnerable to legal actions seeking damages for the impacts of their products. Proponents use the term "tort reform" to refer to legislative measures designed to limit the ability of individuals to sue companies and to restrict the amount of potential damages available to individuals who take legal actions against companies.
Sourcewatch resources
Club for Growth
R.J. Johnson
Eric O'Keefe
External resources
Organizational web site: http://wicfg.com/index.cfm
Mary Bottari National Right-Wing Spin Machine Gears Up In Wisconsin, PRWatch.org, March 3, 2011
Contact
Wisconsin Club for Growth Inc.
1223 West Main Street, #304
Sun Prairie, Wisconsin 53590
Phone: (877) 707-0571
References
? Abe Sauer A Blueprint for a Takeover: Wisconsin Republicans Lied While the Kochs Schemed, The Awl, March 8, 2011
? Steve Contorno Budget battle hits airwaves, groups spend $620,000 on ads, Green Bay Press Gazette, March 9, 2011
? Wisconsin Club for Growth Benefits YouTube, Feb. 14, 2011.
? Ed Shultz [1] YouTube, Feb. 17, 2011
? Club For Growth Update Facebook, Feb. 16, 2011.
? Ed Shultz [2] YouTube, Feb. 17, 2011
? Club For Growth Update Facebook, Feb. 14, 2011.
? 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 .” Lee Fang Club for Growth Radical Success Think Progress Editorials, Jun. 26, 2010
? Ian Millhiser Leader of Koch Front Group is Behind Ads Supporting Wisconsin Justice David Prosser Think Progress, Apr 4, 2011
? Tom Tolan Democrats confirm it: Pasch will run against Darling in recall Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 5, 2011
? Media Matters [3] Conservative Transparency
? Dan Eggen Club for Growth’s Electoral Tactics Causing Headaches for GOP Washington Post, May 19, 2010.
? Fox News Transcript: Mike Huckabee on ‘Fox News Sunday’ ‘Fox News Sunday’ Interview, Nov. 19, 2007
? Don Walker Wisconsin Club for Growth plans to stay active, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 22, 2011
? Club for Growth Wisconsin, United States Internal Revenue Service Club for Growth Wisconsin's 2008 Tax form 990 (pdf), accessed/uploaded to SourceWatch on March 17, 2011
? Government Accountability Board Friends of Scott Walker Fall Pre-Primary 2010 Report, Campaign Finance Report, accessed/uploaded to Sourcewatch May 9, 2011
? Government Accountability Board Friends of Scott Walker July Continuing 2010 Report, Campaign Finance Report, accessed/uploaded to Sourcewatch May 9, 2011
? Little Sis Koch Network Participants, Aspen 2010 photos, accessed March 17, 2011
? Abe Sauer A Blueprint for a Takeover: Wisconsin Republicans Lied While the Kochs Schemed, The Awl, March 8, 2011
? Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Hijacking Justice 2011 Club for Growth Wisconsin, February 17, 2011
? Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law Special Interest Group Outspends Candidates on TV in Wisconsin Judicial Election, Press release, February 15, 2011
? Gene Ulm Confidential memorandum to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Club for Growth - Wisconsin, Public Opinion Strategies (polling firm), August 21, 2007
? Paul Fanlund Madison360: Why the revolt downtown is even bigger than it appears, The (Madison, WI) Capitol Times, February 21, 2011
? Group says Wisconsin state workers 'haven’t had to sacrifice', Journal Sentinel PolitiFact Wisconsin, February 18, 2011
? Craig Gilbert Budget fight TV ads top $3 million, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, March 15, 2011
? Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Hijacking Campaign 2010 Club for Growth Wisconsin, organization website, accessed May 9, 2011
? Paul Fanlund Madison360: Why the revolt downtown is even bigger than it appears, The Capital Times Political Blog, February 21, 2011
? Ibid.
? Robert Reich The Republican Strategy, Robert Reich Blog, February 17, 2011
? Club for Growth Wisconsin Breaking News/Global Warming: a Fraud Running on Fumes, article, October 28, 2009
? Club for Growth Wisconsin Tort Reform, organizational web site/position statement, undated, accessed March 17, 2011
Categories: Stubs | Front groups portal | Front groups
---
crooks and liars
Eric O'Keefe
Eric O'Keefe is Chairman and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance and sits on the board of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, Institute for Humane Studies, Center for Competitive Politics, and the Health Care Compact. All of these are Koch-related and/or funded entities. O'Keefe also is connected to Joe Ricketts and Houston building billionaire Leo Linbeck III.
This is how pissant liars like O'Keefe get any traction at all. They get some funding from billionaires whose single focus is on taking over the whole damn country, work with a compliant corporate media to amplify without any actual verification what O'Keefe does, and so he gets to keep doing it over and over and over.
---
http://www.muckety.com/Eric-OKeefe/209936.muckety
http://www.muckety.com/Eric-OKeefe/209936.muckety?big=true
sean parnell, devos...
---
...Note particularly — in between the description of the fundamental betrayal of democratic process State Rep. Gordon Hintz outlines in entirely justifiable outrage — his references to Club For Growth, which he has “never heard of before.”
Which is as they want it to be. Let me give you some objective evidence:
Here’s the SourceWatch page on O’Keefe (out of date):
Eric O’Keefe
Eric O’Keefe is the chairman of the Americans for Limited Government.
Board of Directors, Citizens in Charge, an Initiative and Referendum advocacy group.
President, Legislation Education Action Drive, voucher PAC.
Relationship to Kurt O’Keefe, petitioner of Michigan TABOR is unknown.
His address is same as that of “Rachel’s Vineyard,” an “abortion recovery” group.*
Author of book on term limits
Longtime Libertarian Party activist, reportedly aligned with Ed Crane. [1]
Howard Rich “and a rogue’s gallery of wealthy pals got buddy Eric O’Keefe ensconced as national director of the Libertarian Party until O’Keefe’s really ugly ouster at the national convention in 1981 or so, and they were set to get another of their cohorts elected party president until that plot unraveled on the convention floor in 1983. (If you’re willing to kill an hour, you’ll find the online archives of the Mises Institute fascinating at http://www.mises.org. Under “Journals,” click “Libertarian Forum” and you’ll find pdfs of Libertarian Party newsletters dating from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, when the party partly collapsed, partly converged with the Republican Party. They read like today’s blogs, full of color and gossip and intrigue, and they chart the rising influence of Rich and his gaggle of trust-fund baby-boomers, sailing under the tutelage of Ed Crane.)”
[* Considering that I was the only blogger who covered the "Rachel's Vineyard" story, I'm flattered they used my stuff, but t'would be nice to be sourced. Oh wait, I'm a BLOGGER, and, thus, unworthy of commentary or inclusion. S'okay: I'm used to being treated as a second class citizen, even though it's my 38th year as a writer and 35th as a professional. I guess writing for the Washington Post or the Kansas City Star or the Orange County Register, Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Herald-Examiner (back when Joe Farah was news editor) doesn't count. Fine. Onward.]
Eric O’Keefe’s ‘official’ photo
You could go to Ballotpedia to check him out, except, if you didn’t KNOW that Leslie Graves was Eric’s wife, you’d never know that he is being given deferential treatment … since Leslie Graves has run Ballotpedia from the beginning underthree different Fictitious Business Names: Citizens in Charge (Eric sits on the board, as noted in the last post), Sam Adams Alliance (“Eric O’Keefe is chairman and CEO of the Sam Adams Alliance“) and now the “Lucy Burns Institute”:
Leslie Graves, the president of the Lucy Burns Institute, worked as a part-time consultant to the Sam Adams Alliance from June 2008-May 2009 and assisted in a variety of ways with developing Ballotpedia, Judgepedia and Sunshine Review.
And, Oh Yeah, I Almost Forgot (from the Sam Adams Alliance “about us”) [emphasis added]:
Eric also works closely with grassroots advocates such as Americans for Prosperity and with the State Policy Network to promote transparency and accountability in state and local governments. He serves on the board of directors of the Institute for Humane Studies*, the Center for Competitive Politics, and Wisconsin Club for Growth.
[* Chairman, Charles Koch]
The Center for Competitive Politics? Here’s their Board of Directors:
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Board of Directors
Edward H. Crane
President, Cato Institute
Allison R. Hayward
Vice President of Policy, Center for Competitive Politics
Stephen M. Hoersting
Vice President and co-founder, Center for Competitive Politics
Eric O’Keefe
Chairman and CEO, Sam Adams Alliance
Sean Parnell
President, Center for Competitive Politics
Bradley A. Smith
Chairman and Co-Founder, Center for Competitive Politics Blackmore-Naught Professor of Law, Capital University Law School
John Snider
Shareholder, Financial Controllers, Inc.
And that Institute for Humane Studies? Greenpeace tells us [emphasis added]:
Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) – Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group
On this page
Read more about the Institute for Humane Studies
Find more recipients of Koch foundation money
$1,967,000 received from Koch foundations 2005-2008[Total Koch foundation grants 1997-2008: $3,923,457]
The Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason Universityoffers scholarships and career training to libertarianstudents. Charles Koch is the Chairman of the IHS board of directors.
In a recent article, Mother Jones called the Institute for Human Studies a “haven for climate change deniers.” Several climate deniers have prominent positions at IHS, including: Robert Bradley, member of the Academic Review Committee and author of Climate Alarmism Reconsidered (2003); and Fred Singer, Research Professor at IHS.
A number of climate deniers are guest lecturers for IHS, such as Bruce Yandle, Senior Associate with Political Economy Research Center; and Kenneth Green, Resident Scholar with American Enterprise Institute.
Cozy.
They don’t call it the “Kochtopus” for nothing, kiddies. It’s MEANT to confuse you. But, like Theseus in the labyrinth, you can find the Minotaur and find your way out if you have a thread to lead you. In Wisconsin, the thread is named “Eric O’Keefe.”
It’s all so cozy. Eric is the “strategist” of the old “Crane Machine” that walked out of the Libertarian Party en masse in 1983. He was also a founding board member of US Term Limits, and is acknowledged as the architect of their “term limits” ballot drives of the 1990s. Here, in his own words, from Eric O’Keefe dot com:
Eric O’Keefe is chairman and CEO of Sam Adams Alliance (SAM), a Chicago-based organization that promotes citizen activism and government accountability. Eric was a founding board member of U.S. Term Limits, host of the podcast series, Engaging Democracy; and author of the book Who Rules America about the Founders’ view of representative government and the case for term limits. When not promoting political reform, Eric is a private investor residing in rural Wisconsin with his wife Leslie Graves.
In the early 1990s Eric began U.S. Term Limits. Over the course of several years the group helped usher 23 states through the initiative process to limit the terms of their congressional delegation. These states were eventually thwarted by 5 Justices on the Supreme Court who ruled that Congress was exempt from term limits under the Constitution. O’Keefe often notes that politicians became less accountable and less responsible when state governments took over printing and distribution of ballots from private political parties. This resulted in lower turnover rates.
In 2008, Eric, working to advance limitations on the size and power of government, began advocating that Americans should adopt approaches to achieving accountability and limits on government by being involved in the primary process.
The “tea parties” started at Eric’s doorstep as has been reported on Huffington Post by Alex Brandt-Zawadsky and Dawn Te0 (among others); and the Sam Adams Alliance produced a widely-distributed “report” on the “tea party” that was widely quoted by the clueless media:
More recently, the Sam Adams Alliance reports that significant numbers of newcomers to the tea party movement are dropping their affiliation with the GOP: Forty-seven percent changed their political affiliation to “Independent/unaffiliated,” 20 percent changed to “other,” 20 percent to “Tea Party,” and 13 percent to “Libertarian.” [Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 15, 2010]
I have covered this at length as well.
Let’s focus on Wisconsin, then, shall we? I mean, Eric O’Keefe is on the board of and a Director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth (and was an attendee at the infamous Koch brothers soirée in Aspen, Colorado, as reported in the New York Times). And he’s a featured speaker at Tea Party Events.
Chairman, Club for Growth, State Action: Howard Rich (and see HERE, and HERE.)
Director, Club for Growth, Wisconsin: Eric O’Keefe (one of only threeboard members in 2008, corrected 2-26)
He still serves on the CFG Board of Directors, as noted on Wisconsin CFG’s web site in September 2010:
Yesterday the Wisconsin Club for Growth won a huge victory for free and open political speech. A panel of retired judges agreed not to enforce their new rule prohibiting groups like ours from conducting issue advocacy which mentions the name of a candidate on the September or November ballot within 30 or 60 days of the election.
On August 2, 2010, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and the liberal One Wisconsin filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court Western District of Wisconsin, seeking a declaratory judgment and preliminary injunctive relief from Wisconsin Government Accountability Board (GAB) rule 1.28.
The stipulation means that the Government Accountability Board does not have the ability to regulate issue advocacy communications under Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws.
Club for Growth Board member Eric O’Keefe said, “Individuals and organizations need to be free to comment on public policy and the records of public officials, regardless of the time of year. That is not just our long-held position; it is the U.S. Supreme Court’s long-held position, applying the First Amendment.”
[image]
Chairman of Club for Growth State Action
This isn’t O’Keefe’s first dustup with the state for playing fast and loose with election law. From the incredibly ‘friendly’ piece in Reason Magazine (Koch money founded and supported Reason Foundation, which publishes Reason.David Koch sits on the Foundation’s board of Trustees):
A Morning at the Ministry of Speech
Jonathan Rauch | May 29, 1999
Early in the morning of Dec. 11, a few days before his 44th birthday, a political activist named Eric O’Keefe put on business trousers and a sports jacket, but decided not to wear a necktie. This was his small gesture of protest against the proceedings he was about to attend. He and his attorney breakfasted together, went over his testimony, and then drove to a state building in downtown Madison, Wis. In an undecorated and viewless conference room, O’Keefe swore an oath to tell the truth, and then submitted himself to 80 minutes of questioning by an assistant state attorney general who was seeking to determine whether O’Keefe was a lawbreaker. …
I’m only including the “pro” O’Keefe articles and citations written BY O’Keefe and his minions to let you know that I’m not making this stuff up. If you want to hear the alternate point of view, you’ll have to look it up on your own. The point being, if what they’re saying is this damning, consider what the actual state of things, unfiltered by the Kochtopus propaganda machine, actually looks like.
They DEPEND on running under the radar, and Eric O’Keefe is a case in point. How many political reporters in Wisconsin know who he is?
Last year, using the Citizens United decision, only the Wisconsin Club for Growth flouted the spirit of a public financing law in Wisconsin (from the Pierce County [Wisc.] Herald, Feb 16, 2011):
All the primary candidates but Stephens received $100,000 tax dollars for their campaigns, under a new law designed to keep special interests out of judicial races. Stephens only raised about $40,000 on her own. Prosser and Kloppenburg will each get $300,000 in tax money for the general election. But outside groups can still advertise on their own. The conservative Wisconsin Club for Growth had the only statewide TV ad in the primary, supporting Prosser.
I’m keeping this short, so that media might actually have the wherewithal to read it, and do their jobs by reporting on it. I’ve provided the links and the linkages, but in the Battle of Wisconsin, “We the People” need to know this stuff.
The governor of Wisconsin, Ste received TK in Club for Growth money. (TK = I leave it to Wisconsin journalists and bloggers to supply that number.)
Paul Ryan (congressman from Wisconsin, in charge of the House budget, as noted a few days ago) received TK bucks from Club for Growth. In the last election cycle, according to the Rachel Maddow Show graphic, Club for Growth was the Number 10 top money spender in the 2010 election. (TK = Ditto.)
They are getting what they paid for, evidently.
And here’s a list of all kinds of candidates Club for Growth supported all over the place, including Wisconsin.
And Eric’s gang is particularly interested in taking over the Wisconsin Supreme Court. But they game the law:
That public support could increase if third-party groups run certain kinds of political advertising. Advertising earlier by the Club for Growth, however, was not found by state election officials to trigger distribution of extra public funds to Justice Prosser’s opponent, a Journal Sentinel article reported. The ad did not trigger additional funding because it stopped short of using such words as “vote for,” “support,” or “elect,” a state official told the newspaper.
“There’s a danger that outside interest groups could weigh in heavily in this race and leave the candidates not in a position to really respond to it,” Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign told Gavel Grab. “I think the likelihood is that groups will weigh in. Which groups and to what extent, that is difficult to predict.”
Take a look at these blog posts while you’re at it:
Because “Cudgel For Growth” Wouldn’t Sound as Warm and Fuzzy 14 Dec 2010
Private Legislatures 27 Sept. 2007
Disneyland Democracy, 28. Sept. 2007
Breaking News Or Wind Or Something 29 Sept. 2007
No Souls Day 1 November 2009
Cheese Whizz, or The Empire Strikes Back 19 Feb. 2011
Water, Tea or Koch? 20 Feb 2011
and, for fun Love and Kisses from the Land of the Freed Balloons 3 November, 2007
(urging members to stuff the ballot box for the Weblog Awards)
etc.
I’ve got lots more, but that’ll give you a week’s worth of research t0 chew over.
And, while you’re at it, take a look at the NNDB database page on Club for Growth and see Eric’s name with Howard Rich, Betsy DeVos, Paul Singer (who financed a 2008 California ballot measure a couple years ago from his Manhattan home), Lawrence Kudlow, Richard Gilder, Pete duPont, Richard Scaife (founder and funder of “The Arkansas Project” to dog President Clinton), Pat Toomey, Brent Bozell, David Boies, Arthur Laffer (whose cockamamie theories were used to justify “trickle down” economics) and other gold-plated members of what even Mike Huckabee calls the “Club for Greed.”
Here’s their current leadership lineup, according to their website.
Hey, wasn’t AFP the sponsor of the “counter-demonstration” in Madison Sunday?
I’ve been playing Paul Revere to a nation on Lunesta® for six years now, and it’s getting old. We really either need to wake up NOW, or kiss our non-plutocratic form of governance goodbye once and for all. But please don’t say that you weren’t clearly and explicitly warned.
The ball’s in your hands, readers.
Courage.
Click right on to the sequel, Things Go Badder With Koch™with photos and videos of persons named herein.
NOTE: 2-26-11. O’Keefe’s position with CFG, Wisconsin corrected and links to documentation added.
››› AUGUST 3, 2011: A special late-breaking addition for Wisconsin: ‘The Astroturf on Lambeau Field‘.›››
http://hisvorpal.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/who-is-behind-wisconsin-club-for-growth/
published author, novelist, literary critic and screenwriter for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life.
---