Larson, Reed

has 2 chairs named for him?!Reed Larson Professor of Labor Law, Ave Maria School of Law, 2012-present; Nixon Peabody LLP= <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pQ4DwAAQBAJ" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://books.google.com/books?id=pQ4DwAAQBAJ</a>&dq=clarence+manion+radio+jbs&source=gbs_navlinks_s<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pQ4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=clarence+manion+radio+jbs&source=bl&ots=qEVnpcEVrf&sig=AzVRsdebtTi3aU5obZxXllsZhwQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjB07X2l7HeAhVjk-AKHQVLDREQ6AEwFnoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=clarence%20manion%20radio%20jbs&f=false" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://books.google.com/books?id=pQ4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA143&lpg=PA143&dq=clarence+manion+radio+jbs&source=bl&ots=qEVnpcEVrf&sig=AzVRsdebtTi3aU5obZxXllsZhwQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjB07X2l7HeAhVjk-AKHQVLDREQ6AEwFnoECAMQAQ#v=onepage&q=clarence%20manion%20radio%20jbs&f=false</a><h1 class="gb-volume-title" dir="ltr" style="margin: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Hayek: A Collaborative Biography: Part IX: The Divine Right of the 'Free' Market</h1>edited by Robert Leeson
reed larson natl rtw w/ manion and jbs=<a href="http://documentedinvestigations.org/2018/07/12/janus-decision-rooted-koch-wishlist/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">http://documentedinvestigations.org/2018/07/12/janus-decision-rooted-koch-wishlist/</a>With last month’s monumental Janus decision by the Supreme Court, the Koch family won a major victory in their multi-generational attack on unions.The ruling spreads to the entire public sector one of the laws the Koch fortune first helped push through in Kansas 60 years ago: “right-to-work.” And in doing so it enshrines the union-busting agenda their fossil fuel money has helped advance for decades.(This story was first <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21294/koch_anti_union_janus_supreme_court" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">published</a> by In These Times.)Through a single vote, the Court’s 5-4 Janus decision reverses decades of legal precedent that had obstructed part of the Koch’s pro-corporate agenda. That vote was secured with the Kochs’ help in bankrolling efforts that include: helping to maintain a GOP Senate majority; helping the Senate block President Obama from filling the February 2016 Supreme Court vacancy; and helping to win the confirmation of right-wing corporate activist Neil Gorsuch.Janus helps cement the nation’s highest court as the Koch Court, and Charles Koch wants to keep it that way.As Documented <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/02/25/koch-brothers-trump-administration/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">first detailed</a> in partnership with the Intercept, for months the Kochs had been investing heavily in anticipation of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the Court, which was announced on June 27, the same day as Janus. Earlier this year, the Koch group “Americans for Prosperity” (AFP) hired Sarah Field from the Koch-funded Federalist Society to spearhead its campaign to extend the Koch hold on the Court for perhaps a generation or more.Despite claims by AFP that helping to seat Gorsuch was their “first” foray into Supreme Court nominations, the Koch effort to influence who becomes a judge and how they interpret the law goes back much further.In fact, the Kochs have been investing in reshaping the law to suit their personal agenda for decades. For example, the Koch group Citizens for a Sound Economy, AFP’s predecessor, <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-09-15/news/9103100215_1_national-black-nurses-family-research-council-national-jewish-coalition" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">backed</a> Clarence Thomas’ controversial confirmation to the Court more than 25 years ago.The Kochs’ long-term agenda to remake the United States in their image is a multi-pronged effort that includes changing both the law and who makes or interprets the laws, including the anti-union Janus decision.<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding: 1.5em 0px 0px; font-weight: 300; text-transform: uppercase;">THE SEEDS OF JANUS</h3>The effort to roll back union rights actually began almost a century ago, as wealthy industrialists objected to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, known as the Wagner Act, which enshrined the right to collective bargaining in the United States.Many tycoons of the time, like Alfred Sloan, head of General Motors, opposed those rights along with other business reforms of FDR’s New Deal.Fred Koch, co-founder of the corporation that later became Koch Industries, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sons-Wichita-Brothers-Americas-Powerful/dp/B01LTHXJT6" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">harshly criticized American workers</a> under New Deal policies in 1938. He extolled the economic policies of Emperor Hirohito and fascists Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">Although nobody agrees with me, I am of the opinion that the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard… The laboring people in those countries are proportionately much better off than they are any place else in the world. When you contrast the state of mind of Germany today with what it was in 1925 you begin to think that perhaps this course of idleness, feeding at the public trough, dependence on government, etc., with which we are afflicted is not permanent and can be overcome.</blockquote>Only recently, through the investigative work of Jane Mayer, has the public learned that <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0307947904/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_1?encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=QFB6YX7BC9EZ3Y02VSEP" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">the Koch fortune was actually built in part on directly aiding Hitler</a> by building the oil-cracking factory that became “a key component in the Nazi war machine.” As Mayer noted in her 2016 book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, that factory <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/01/13014/koch-daddy-and-nazis-revealing-timeline" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">refined high-octane fuel needed for the Luftwaffe</a>, which targeted, terrorized, and killed many thousands of innocent civilians. Fred Koch’s praise of Germany came after <a href="https://elpais.com/elpais/2015/12/30/inenglish/1451462698_825891.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Hitler’s air bombers helped murder 136 men, women, and children in Guernica</a> in the Basque region, a tragedy made famous by the mural painted by <a href="https://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Pablo Picasso</a>.Meanwhile, industrialists like Sloan pursued efforts to undo New Deal reforms. In 1947, Congress amended the Wagner Act with the Taft-Hartley Act. It gave states the power to pass “right-to-work” laws that undermined collective bargaining by not requiring workers who benefit from bargained rights to pay dues to the unions that secured and enforced them.<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding: 1.5em 0px 0px; font-weight: 300; text-transform: uppercase;">HOW THE KOCHS FERTILIZED “RIGHT-TO-WORK”</h3>As Mayer noted:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">[Fred Koch] was an early and active member of the Wichita-based DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom, an anti-labor group [founded in 1945] that was a forerunner of the National Right to Work Defense Foundation. In a revealing private letter, one of its staff members explained the group’s ‘Astroturf’ strategy. In reality, he said, big-business industrialists would run the group, serving as its ‘anonymous quarterbacks,’ and ‘call the turns.’ But he said they needed to sell the ‘yarn’ that the group was ‘composed of housewives, farmers, small businessmen, professional people, wage earners-not big business industrialists.’ Otherwise, he admitted, the movement was ‘almost certainly doomed to failure.’</blockquote>By 1954, an engineer from Wichita, Kan., Reed Larson, took a leave from his job at the Coleman Company, to launch <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=mmZkf7dselMC&pg=PA18714&lpg=PA18714&dq=%22Reed+Larson%22+%22temporary+leave%22&source=bl&ots=lzSBcfR-pD&sig=8bOKm0KpqTMXOdD1BJnKMFtu2wk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjm6M7es-bAhVfHDQIHUnRB40Q6AEINjAC#v=onepage&q=%22Reed%20Larson%22%20%22temporary%20leave%22&f=false" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Kansans-for-the-Right-to-Work</a>. The following year, former Rep. Fred Hartley, Jr., (R-N.J.) co-founded the National Right to Work Committee (NRTWC). By 1958, the NRTWC was targeting six states to adopt right-to-work laws but it failed in every place, except Kansas.“Fred [Koch] co-led a referendum drive to alter the state constitution in order to make it harder for unions to take root in Kansas,” Duke University Professor <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Democracy_in_Chains.html?id=iW4ADAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=snippet&q=Right-to-Work&f=false" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Nancy MacLean noted</a>.On Nov. 9, 1958, the New York Times reported that right-to-work won in Kansas <a href="https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1958/11/09/92655331.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">because</a> anti-union views had taken hold, noting:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">More campaign efforts and more money were expended on the emotion-provoking issue than on the campaigns of all Republican and Democratic state and Congressional candidates combined. … For the last 10 days or so before Election Day an organization called Kansans-for-the-Right-to-Work flooded newspapers, television channels and other advertising media with appeals to ‘vote yes.’ These by far outnumbered the ‘vote no’ advertisements of unions opposing the amending.</blockquote>A month later, Fred Koch joined Robert Welch and ten other men in Indianapolis to found the extreme rightwing group dubbed the “John Birch Society” (JBS).As the Washington Post noted in its 1961 profile of JBS:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">At the top of the Society’s structure in Wichita are several very wealthy industrialists. Oil engineer Fred Koch is president of the Rock Island Oil and Refining Co. A millionaire several times over, he is on the Society’s national council. … Wichita is the John Birch Society’s center of strength in Kansas, and one of its greatest in the country. … The leadership of the Birch Society overlaps heavily with the leadership of the organizations that successfully campaigned in 1958 for a right to work amendment to the State’s Constitution.</blockquote>As detailed by Group Research Inc. in its 1962 <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/files/rtw_group_research.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">history of JBS</a>, Koch worked with both NRTWC and the Christian Crusade in arguing against union dues like those at issue in the Janus case.A History of HostilityIn 1959, Fred Koch joined the Executive Committee to plan the JBS strategy to push back against what it viewed as communism in nearly every American institution.In 1960, Koch published his <a href="http://justtheevidence.blogspot.com/2014/08/an-american-businessman-looks-at.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">polemic “A Business Man Looks at Communism”</a> and distributed it to JBS chapters across the country. That pamphlet makes a variety of hysterical claims against unions, including:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">Labor Unions have long been a Communist goal. How far they have been penetrated by Communists I have no idea, but it must be very far indeed, judging the hatred andvenom poured out in some labor papers….</blockquote>Koch also accused the U.S. Supreme Court under former Gov. Earl Warren (R-CA) of issuing pro-Communist decisions, the universities of having thousands of Communist professors, the United Nations of being subversive, and former GOP President Dwight Eisenhower of being soft on Communism.Similar sentiments were expressed in numerous other publications the JBS also pushed. The organization pitched a screed against the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00685LGUY/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?encoding=UTF8&btkr=1" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">union workers who organized against Kohler</a> fixtures in Wisconsin. It pushed attacks on the UAW’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Walter-Reuther-autocrat-bargaining-Hardcover/dp/B003WBJIOI" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Walter Reuther</a>, who was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.It published and peddled right-wing writer Rosalie Gordon’s <a href="http://www.thechristianidentityforum.net/downloads/Nine-Liberties.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">attack on the U.S. Supreme Court</a> for decisions enforcing collective bargaining rights as protecting the “labor-union monopoly,” along with what she called the “plague” of desegregation caused by Brown v. Board of Education.The JBS also pushed reprints of tomes by Ludwig von Mises attacking unions as <a href="http://lf-oll.s3.amazonaws.com/titles/2200/Mies_1459_LFeBk.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">illegitimate intervenors</a> in the “free market,” <a href="https://mises.org/sites/default/files/Human%20Action_3.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">artificial inflators of wages</a> for workers, and <a href="https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/The%20Anti-Capitalistic%20Mentality_3.pdf?file=1&type=document" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">thieves of the profits of tycoons</a>. It promoted F.A. Hayek’s vilification of government regulation of corporations as leading to fascism and Hilaire du Berrier’s <a href="https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/biography/item/20110-passing-of-a-patriot" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">conspiracy theories</a> that American labor unions were supposedly using union dues to finance communist terrorist violence abroad.Fred Koch’s son Charles <a href="http://dizerega.com/gus-dizerega/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">urged</a> visitors to the John Birch Society bookstore in Wichita to read copies of JBS pamphlets, including those by anti-labor writers from the Austrian School of Economics, <a href="http://dizerega.com/gus-dizerega/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">like Mises</a>.Indeed, as the present author <a href="http://progressive.org/dispatches/like-dad-charles-koch-bircher-new-documents/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">first documented</a> for the Center for Media and Democracy, Charles Koch became active in JBS after returning home to Wichita to help with the family business. Charles was a leader and fundraiser for JBS, including underwriting its publications and national radio network, while it attacked collective bargaining and leaders of the civil rights movement such as the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks.<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding: 1.5em 0px 0px; font-weight: 300; text-transform: uppercase;">CHARLES KOCH IN ACTION</h3>Though he left JBS in 1968, Charles Koch never abandoned its core anti-union agenda and the lessons of his father’s commitment to right-to-work. He did try to shed some of the rhetoric around communist conspiracies, though of late he was painted by Koch political strategist Richard Fink as a <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/koch-brothers-recording_n_5757592.html?1409750594" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">martyr against “collectivism</a>,” in audio obtained by the Undercurrent, which also included outlandish claims linking fascism and the minimum wage.It was Charles Koch’s investment in lifting up the work of Mises and Hayek, who made similar claims, that helped preserve and extend their legacy. As Stephen Moore noted in a 2006 <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114687252956545543" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">profile on Charles</a> for the Wall Street Journal:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">The authors who have had the most profound influence on his own political philosophy include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZBXFeAj5lM" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">F.A. Hayek</a>, Ludwig von Mises, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Simon, Paul Johnson and Charles Murray. Mr. Koch says that he experienced an intellectual epiphany in the early 1960s, when he attended a conference on free-market capitalism hosted by the late, great Leonard Reed.</blockquote>Charles brought Mises to Wichita to speak and <a href="https://mises.org/library/ihs-and-rebirth-austrian-economics-some-reflections-1974%E2%80%931976" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">deployed F.A. “Baldy” Harper’s Institute for Humane Studies</a> (IHS) to promote Mises and his protégé Hayek. As lauded by Reed’s Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), Hayek <a href="https://fee.org/articles/hayek-on-the-rule-of-law-and-unions/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">argued that unions violated the very idea of the “rule of law”</a> and that the Wagner Act was central to that violation, a sentiment he promoted in numerous writings.Charles Koch is deeply devoted to an alternative universe in which collective bargaining undermines the rule of law and is not a major cause of increased wages.Moore <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB114687252956545543" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">noted</a> in his interview:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">As we continue, Mr. Koch becomes increasingly animated. He discusses another seminal work in his collection, F.A. Harper’s 1957 Why Wages Rise. The book demonstrates ‘that wages rise not because of unions or government action, but because of marginal productivity gains — people get more money when they produce more value for other people.’ Then he confides, “I was so thrilled by this revelation that I had what Maslow called a ‘peak experience.’'”</blockquote>Koch has also supported the NRTWC, which “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pQ4DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=sought+to+put+a+new+face+on+the+anti-union+campaign+by+building+its+rhetoric+on+the+arguments+of+Hayek&source=bl&ots=qETvylyYue&sig=7UMKva7cgTiU9T9ZQ9ToQiagSgw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicgJmty_DbAhXiIjQIHetuAD4Q6AEILDAA#v=onepage&q=sought%20to%20put%20a%20new%20face%20on%20the%20anti-union%20campaign%20by%20building%20its%20rhetoric%20on%20the%20arguments%20of%20Hayek&f=false" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">sought to put a new face on the anti-union campaign by building its rhetoric on the arguments of Hayek, Mises, and others</a> with a ‘respectable’ pedigree.” The NRTWC argues that:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">Compulsory unionism itself violates the dignity of the individual worker, regardless of how the forced union tribute is spent. As the late Nobel Prize-winning economist <a href="https://cafehayek.com/2014/01/hayek-on-unions.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Friedrich A. von Hayek</a> wrote: “[T]he coercion which unions have been permitted to exercise … is primarily the coercion of fellow workers.</blockquote>Deep Devotion and InvestmentHayek and Mises are not the only two virulently anti-union economists Charles Koch backed. As Nancy MacLean documented in Democracy in Chains, one of the key architects of the Koch agenda domestically and internationally, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/9781101980972/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">James Buchanan</a>, also railed against the so-called “union monopolies” for distorting “free market” wages.And, as <a href="http://www.unkochmycampus.org/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">UnKoch My Campus</a> has detailed, Koch money has funded scores of academics to push their agenda at universities, buying control over content and personnel with restrictive dictates attached to their donations.Many of the rightwing groups Charles Koch is known to have made a major investment in since the 1970s have pushed right-to-work or attacked collective bargaining rights. These include <a href="http://reason.com/archives/1975/11/01/trends/print" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Reason</a> magazine, the <a href="https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2010/1/cj30n1-9.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Cato Institute</a>, <a href="https://americansforprosperity.org/setting-record-straight-right-work-janus-v-afscme/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Americans for Prosperity</a>, the <a href="https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Right_to_Work_Act_Exposed" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">American Legislative Exchange Council</a>, the <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/features/janus_supreme_court_unions_investigation.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">State Policy Network</a> and many more.During David Koch’s 1980 bid to become vice president, running on the ticket of Libertarian Ed Clark—which was pushed by Charles and fueled with Koch cash—the campaign platform included <a href="https://lpedia.org/1980_National_Platform" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">making right-to-work the law of the land</a>:<blockquote style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.7; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;">[W]e urge repeal of the National Labor Relations Act, and all state Right to Work Laws, which prohibit employers from making voluntary contracts with unions. We oppose all government back-to-work orders as imposing a form of forced labor.</blockquote>That is, there would be no need for state right-to-work laws if there were no NLRA that protects collective bargaining rights. As a result, right-to-work would be effectively nationalized at the determination of the employer.After badly losing that election, the Kochs have invested heavily in changing the culture—and courts of America—to make their anti-union vision a reality.Right-to-work is part of that vision.<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding: 1.5em 0px 0px; font-weight: 300; text-transform: uppercase;">MILLIONS SPENT</h3>A leak of the Kochs’ summer retreat in 2010 revealed that they <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/memo-health-insurance-banking-oil-industries-met-with-koch-chamber-glenn-beck-to-plot-2010-election-3c1a0908a245/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">featured NRTWC leaders at their gathering of billionaires</a> to plot plans for that year’s midterm elections.In 2012, before most of America even knew that the Kochs had branded their billionaire conclave as “Freedom Partners,” that group <a href="http://conservativetransparency.org/recipient/national-right-to-work-committee/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">injected $1 million directly into the NRTWC</a> among the more than $200 million of its known spending that cycle.In 2016, they <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/10/16/koch-brothers-gop-senate/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">focused</a> much of their known political spending on keeping a GOP majority in the Senate, and they <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/05/gop-senator-more-convinced-than-ever-that-garland-should-get-hearing/?utm_term=.4007c477ab73" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">influenced</a> the make-up of the U.S. Supreme Court by helping to block Judge Merrick Garland’s confirmation.For the 2018 election, they’ve pledged to spend more than $400 million through the Seminar Network, the latest rebranding of their network of tycoons.To be clear, the Koch family fortune is not the only one that has been expended pushing right-to-work laws to try to weaken the power of ordinary people to negotiate through unions. A major funder of right-to-work effort has been the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, along with Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, which Mother Jones has dubbed “the ATM” of the right wing.Collective bargaining has provided women with greater economic opportunities and job security. Right-to-work laws also have a <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/26/17053328/janus-afscme-supreme-court-unions-minorities" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">disproportionate impact on people of color,</a> who are union members at a higher rate than whites. <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/black-women-will-be-most-affected-by-janus/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">Black women will likely be the group most adversely affected</a> by the Janus case. Notably, workers in <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-states-have-lower-wages/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">right-to-work states also have lower wages</a> than in states that have rejected this agenda.<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding: 1.5em 0px 0px; font-weight: 300; text-transform: uppercase;">UNDERMINING PROGRESSIVES TOO</h3>The spread of right to work through Janus also will affect our elections.As In These Times has documented with the Center for Media and Democracy, the national push for right-to-work is designed to <a href="http://inthesetimes.com/features/janus_supreme_court_unions_investigation.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">undermine</a> the power of unions and to “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/30/rightwing-alliance-unions-defund-defang" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; box-shadow: rgb(15, 15, 15) 0px -1px 0px inset; transition: color 80ms ease-in 0s, box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s, -webkit-box-shadow 130ms ease-in-out 0s;">defang and defund</a>” them as a way to weaken the chances for progressives to win in politics and policy.The Koch investment in making right-to-work a national reality represents one of the longest and deepest commitments to this agenda, aside from NRTWC itself.And this year marks the 60th anniversary of Fred Koch’s victory of making right-to-work legally binding in Kansas.Now, six decades later, Charles Koch has helped make his father’s wish binding on the rest of America through helping to make the Janus ruling a reality.<hr style="box-sizing: content-box; height: 1px; overflow: visible; border: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.5em;" />Lisa Graves5/9https://zcomm.org/zmagazine/reed-larson-and-the-national-right-to-work-committee-by-chip-berlet/he National Right to Work Committee (NRTWC) is a major player in the effort to block the pro-union "Card Check" legislation officially called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Behind the curtain at the formation of the NRTWC in 1955 was a group of ultraconservative southern businesspeople who opposed what they called "the bid for dictatorial power on the part of some entrenched union leaders." For 45 years anti-union impresario Reed Larson was executive director of the NRTWC.When rightists defame community organizers or accuse the Obama administration of imposing socialist collectivism; when you hear phrases such as "big government" or "union bosses"; when the administration of FDR is denounced as a failure—these are rhetorical frames devised to help greedy corporations and wealthy elites retain their unfair power and privilege. Reed Larson and the National Right to Work Committee pioneered these themes as part of a post-WWII realignment on the U.S. political right, which emerged in the late 1970s.When Larson stepped down in 2003 the Washington Times quoted him as saying: "This has been an opportunity for me to have the greatest impact in defeating the entity I feel is very detrimental to individual freedom…. The unions are for more government, more taxes, more regulation, and they operate under a set of rules and laws that are designed to give special privileges to organized labor."It was a rare moment of candor in a career spent claiming that he and the National Right to Work Committee were not against unions—just against abuses by unions. That certainly sounds reasonable. Dig a little deeper into that claim, however, and the anti-union quote by the then 80-year-old Larson seems the more accurate reflection of reality. Larson may have let his guard down in talking to the Washington Times, the ultraconservative newspaper owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon. He was, after all, talking to a reporter for a key component in the hard right political network that Larson entered in the 1950s as a young and energetic anti-union organizer active in the local Wichita, Kansas Junior Chamber of Commerce.Since its founding, the NRTWC has been an essential part of a coordinated campaign to undermine the rights of working people to organize on behalf of their economic interest, ensure worksite health and safety, and defend their basic dignity.Utraconservatives relaunched a campaign for political power after their Republican candidate Barry Goldwater was trounced in the 1964 presidential election. Goldwater and his followers were seen as far to the right of the main branch of the Republican Party. Today, this network, which the NRTWC helped create, has significant influence in the Republican Party.Even after the election of Obama, the New Right coalition remains a major force in shaping public policy debates in the United States. Through skillful reframing of issues, coalition building, and tireless mobilizing of voters, ultraconservatives have convinced many Americans to oppose the guarantee of basic human rights and dignity to working people both inside and outside of labor unions. And, at the same time, they have stepped on the rights and aspirations of women, people of color, gay people, immigrants, and the working poor.Although the Republican Party is in disarray, they have not been defeated with one election. To illustrate the ultraconservative frame, here are more quotes from Larson, delivered in 1999 in Michigan at the ultraconservative Hillsdale College in a speech titled "Government-Granted Coercive Power: How Big Labor Blocks the Freedom Agenda":"The union hierarchy, operating on billions of dollars plucked from workers’ paychecks, comprises a political machine unmatched by any other in America—a political machine whose philosophy consistently lines up with the socialist fringe in its assault on the rights of individual citizens to live their lives free of government intervention."Unless we deal with this fundamental injustice, all of the valiant efforts to prevent our country from being engulfed in a flood-tide of leftist social engineering are destined to failure. The special coercive privileges enjoyed by union officials under federal law have enabled them to amass a degree of political power behind their collectivist schemes that no other special interest comes close to matching. Their power to dictate public policy is out of all proportion to the number of persons whose views they truly represent."Whatever your concern, whether it be taxes, education, health care, the economy, or myriad other issues that need addressing, you can be assured that the propagation of the statist, anti-freedom position on each of those issues is being funded largely with union money, essentially seized at gun point from workers."Most working people who have read a union contract, sat through a local union meeting, or been elected a delegate to a national union convention will find these phrases to be overblown rhetoric and, frankly, somewhat bizarre. Historians, political scientists, and sociologists, however, will recognize the language of ultraconservative political ideologues who think America went down the tubes in the 1930s when Franklin Delano Roosevelt used "collectivist schemes" of "social engineering" to steer the nation toward "statist, anti-freedom" policies—we know them as Social Security, unemployment insurance, public assistance, low-cost housing, and public health care—were embraced as sensible and useful by most Democrats and Republicans for decades. To see how pervasive these themes are on the political right, try plopping both "collectivist schemes" and "social engineering" into an Internet search engine.Since the election of Richard Nixon as president in 1960, there has been a serious erosion of support for public policies and programs that seek to "establish justice," "insure domestic tranquility," "promote the general welfare," and "secure the blessings of liberty." The NRTWC played a major role in undermining these promises, but it has not acted alone.It’s not some secret conspiracy; it is a loosely knit network of intelligent and talented people and groups who marshal profound and passionate ideological arguments in defense of their views. When ultraconservative activists look in the mirror every morning, they think of themselves as patriotic people rescuing America from a "flood-tide of leftist social engineering."What is the source of these themes? In the late 1930s it was obvious to employer associations that unions were looking to organize the South. The "southern textile industry, for example, presented a tempting target to industrial unionists," explains labor historian Gilbert J. Gall. President Eisenhower, from 1952 to 1954, was sending mixed messages to labor and management on how to reform provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, reported Samuel H. Cohen in the Nation magazine in 1954. Some union leaders suggested mounting a campaign to push for reform or even repeal of the Act, but the effort failed.
Now there is another push for reform of labor laws. Ultraconservatives and other groups promoting unfettered corporate power have now lined up to block the pro-union "Card Check" legislation. A broad coalition is working to pass the legislation. Which side are you on? Let’s get busy.<div style="line-height: 20px; text-align: right; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Z</div><hr style="border: none; line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /><div style="line-height: 20px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Chip Berlet is a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, co-author of Right-Wing Populism in America, and a vice president of the Defending Dissent Foundation. His views here are his own.</div>=<div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">s the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 session comes to a close, one of the major cases left for a decision is Harris vs. Quinn, which could affect millions of public sector workers in the United States.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">The case originates in Illinois, where home health care workers have been successfully organized by public sector unions. Now, a small group of these workers, represented by lawyers from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, have sued and their lawyers contend that the agency fees, or the fair share dues that even non-union members of a bargaining unit are required to pay to unions that bargain for higher wages on their behalf, violate the First Amendment. Agency fees are barred in so-called “right to work” states, which have much less unionization and lower wages and benefits.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">Joel Rogers, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Wisconsin, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/179033/why-harris-v-quinn-has-labor-very-very-nervous" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">calls it</a>“the most important labor law case the court has considered in decades.” This is because when the Supreme Court decided to take on the case, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation dramatically expanded the scope of the case beyond the home health care workers to include all public sector workers, from teachers and firefighters to sanitation workers to librarians. If the court follows National Right to Work’s lead, every state in the country would essentially turn into an anti-union “right to work” state, which would be a significant blow to public sector unions’ collective bargaining efforts and also complicate thousands of existing contracts between organized workers and municipalities, cities, counties, and states across the country.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF) is the 501(c)(3) arm of the National Right to Work Committee” (NRTWC), a 501(c)(4) organization. Additionally, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research is an affiliated anti-union research shop. Founded nearly 60 years ago, the NRTWC has been a national leader in the effort to destroy public and private sector unions. The groups have increased their funding and staffing in recent years. In 2012, the three groups combined reported over $25 million in revenue, making them a powerful instrument of the corporate and ideological interests that want to keep wages low and silence the voice of organized labor in the political arena.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">NRTWC’s success and the demise of unions in the United States has directly contributed to the erosion of high-paying middle-class jobs and to growing inequality, as this chart from the <a href="http://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequality-rises/" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Economic Policy Institute</a> graphically illustrates.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">National Right to Work’s History With the Koch Brothers and the John Birch Society</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">The NRTWC has deep connections within the national right-wing network led by the Koch brothers. Reed Larson, who led the NRTW groups for over three decades, hails from Wichita, Kansas, the hometown of Charles and David Koch. Larson became an early leader of the radical right-wing John Birch Society in Kansas, which Fred Koch (the father of Charles and David) helped found. Several other founders and early leaders of the NRTWC were <a href="http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/28722/8t/bk0003z7b8t/files/bk0003z7b8t-FID1.pdf" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">members and leaders of the John Birch Society</a>, specifically the Wichita chapter of which Fred Koch was an active member.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">The groups remain tied to the Kochs. In 2012, the Kochs’ <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Freedom_Partners" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Freedom Partners</a> group funneled $1 million to the <a href="http://conservativetransparency.org/recipient/national-right-to-work-committee/" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">National Right to Work Committee</a>, while the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Charles_G.Koch_Charitable_Foundation" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation</a> gave a $15,000 grant to the <a href="http://conservativetransparency.org/recipient/national-right-to-work-legal-defense-foundation/" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">NRTWLDF</a>, which has also received significant funding from the Koch-connected <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/DonorsTrust" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">DonorsTrust</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Donors_Capital_Fund" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Donors Capital Fund</a>. Today, at least three former Koch associates work as attorneys for the NRTWLDF.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">In June 2010, Mark Mix, the current head of the NRTW groups, attended the Kochs’ exclusive <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Koch_Network" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Aspen strategy meeting</a> to give a presentation on how to mobilize conservatives for the 2010 election, along with representatives from Koch-backed groups such as the Center to Protect Patient Rights (now called <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_to_Protect_Patient_Rights" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">American Encore</a>) and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Americans_for_Prosperity" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Americans for Prosperity</a>.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">In addition to the Koch brothers, the NRTWLDF has received significant funding from many big name conservative donors, including the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Walton_Family_Foundation" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Walton Family Foundation</a>(of Walmart), the Coors family’s <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Castle_Rock_Foundation" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Castle Rock Foundation</a>, Wisconsin’s <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bradley_Foundation" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Bradley Foundation</a>, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_M.Olin_Foundation" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">John M. Olin Foundation</a>, and the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Searle_Freedom_Trust" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Searle Freedom Trust</a>.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">A $33 Million Anti-Worker Lobby Shop with Ties to ALEC, SPN, and More</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">In order to push their extreme agenda, the NRTWC has launched a massive lobbying effort at both the state and federal level. In the U.S. Congress alone, the NRTWC has <a href="http://soprweb.senate.gov/index.cfm?event=selectFields&reset=1" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">spent</a> over $33 million on lobbying between 1999 and 2013. NRTWC has lobbied Congress to pass a national “Right to Work Act,” which is sponsored by Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). Paul has lent his name to several NRTWC advocacy and fundraising letters and received over $27,000 in campaign contributions from the NRTWC’s federal political action committee. The NRTWC also strongly opposed the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made it easier for workers to organize, while supported legislation that would weaken the regulatory authority of the National Labor Relations Board over employers.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">The NRTWC also does extensive lobbying on the state level. In 2012, lobbyists registered with the NRTWC were on the ground in <a href="http://www.in.gov/ilrc/files/2012_employer.pdf" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Indiana</a> and <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,4670,7-127-1633_11945---,00.html" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Michigan</a> when both states passed anti-union “right to work” bills and are big supporters of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his efforts to crush public sector unions. The NRTWC was an exhibitor at the 2011 annual conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate bill mill <a href="http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">exposed by CMD in 2011</a>. ALEC’s “<a href="http://alecexposed.org/w/images/c/c8/1R10-Right_to_Work_Act_Exposed.pdf" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Right to Work Act</a>,” which has been in the ALEC library since at least 1980, is one of its most commonly used “model” bills. When Republicans took trifecta control of 26 state houses in November of 2010, it was a top agenda item at the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-bottari/wisconsin-recall-election-right-to-work-b_1553348.html" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">December 2010 ALEC meeting</a>. According to a <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/files/ALEC%20Policy%20Initiatives%20(Ballweg)%2011:11:10.pdf" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">2010 email</a> from ALEC to Wisconsin legislators that CMD obtained, ALEC referred to its “Right to Work Act” as a “solution... for your state’s most pressing issues.” Currently 24 states are so-called “right to work” states. In 2013, 15 states introduced legislation based on ALEC’s “Right to Work Act.”</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">The NRTWLDF is also an <a href="http://www.spn.org/directory/organizations.asp" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN)</a>, an $84 million dollar network of 64 state-based “think tanks.” The State Policy Network’s affiliate in Michigan, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mackinac_Center" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Mackinac Center</a>, was one of the major supporters behind “right to work” when the legislature passed the bill in 2012. Through its board, staff, and other activities, the NRTW groups also have close connections to Americans for Prosperity, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Cato_Institute" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Cato Institute</a>, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Conservative_Union" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">American Conservative Union</a>, and the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Republican_National_Committee" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Republican National Committee</a>.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">Crossing the Line: Whistleblower Alleges New Election Law Violations</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">From the beginning, the NRTWC had a focus on influencing U.S. elections. The NRTWC has spent millions in dark money electoral ads, including <a href="http://seattletimes.com/html/politics/2019577918_apusmissourisenateakin.html" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">$7 million during the 2012 election</a>. Although a leading group on the right, the NRTWC has also attacked Republicans such as John Boehner and Bob Dole for not adhering to their extreme policy agenda.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">The NRTWC’s long history of pushing the line in campaign finance and electoral activity as a nonprofit led to an FEC case against it at the <a href="http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation_CCA_FEC_N.shtml" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">U.S. Supreme Court in 1982</a>, in which the court ruled against the NRTWC for illegally raising money for electoral activities. The NRTWC continued to engage in controversial campaign-related activities, and evidence suggests that the <a href="http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation_CCA_FEC_N.shtml" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">National Right to Work Committee spent $100,000 on private detectives</a> in 1984 to infiltrate the AFL-CIO, NEA, and Walter Mondale’s presidential campaign. By the time that case was brought to court, the statute of limitations had expired.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">Today, the NRTWC continues to generate controversy for engaging in campaign related activities. In January 2014, <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/01/strong-evidence-emerges-on-right-to-work/" target="blank" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">the Center for Responsive Politics</a> detailed whistleblower allegations that the NRTWC was running “a massive off-the-books mass mailing operation” attempting to influence the 2010 election in Iowa and possibly other states. The NRTWC did not disclose that it was participating in political activity that year to the IRS. The whistleblower also alleged that the NRTWC was coordinating its activities with candidates’ campaigns during the election. Former IRS official Marcus Owens commented to the news outlet that “people have gone to jail for precisely the facts that you are describing.” At the center of the controversy was then-NRTWC Vice President Doug Stafford, who is the former chief of staff for U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY).</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"> NRTWC Lawyers Push Their Agenda through the Courts</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">The legal arm of NRTWC was launched in 1968 to take the anti-worker agenda to the courts. With the Harris v. Quinn case, the NRTWLDF is seeking to re-litigate theAbood vs. Detroit Board of Education Supreme Court case it lost in 1977, which upheld the constitutionality of fair share dues. Over the years, the NRTWLDF has done little to improve wages, benefits, health or safety protections for American workers, but has tried scores of cases against unions and organized labor revealing its political agenda. With a large team of lawyers and millions in funding from national right-wing sources, the NRTWLDF is currently trying cases in Arkansas, Missouri, California, Michigan, Colorado, and Ohio.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">NRTWLDF’s also recently filed suit to block workers in the Volkswagen Chattanooga plant from voting for union representation and to prevent Volkswagen from <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/13/us-autos-vw-lawsuit-idUSBREA2C1VJ20140313" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">voluntarily consenting</a> to any future organizing drives.</div><div class="content-list-component mt-paragraph text" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px auto; padding: 0px; max-width: 630px; min-width: initial; width: 630px; line-height: 1.5em; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif">Professor Rogers and other labor experts contend that the NRTWC’s success in the U.S. Supreme Court “would be a disaster for labor, particularly for the public sector unions that traditionally rely more heavily on agency shop agreements.” As Rogers points out, it is technically possible to form a union in a “right to work” state, but when union members are free to stop paying their dues, the union becomes a weak and ineffective organization. The results for American workers are clear.<a href="http://www.epi.org/publication/right-to-work-michigan-economy/" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" entry_text="entry_text" lnid="lnid" citation="citation" mpid="mpid" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97);">Research show</a>s that “right to work” states have lower wages, less health care and more poverty.</div><div class="tag-cloud" data-beacon="{" p="p" mnid="mnid" more="more" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 30px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 16px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: NotoNashkArabic, " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" roboto="Roboto" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif"><h2 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 8px 10px 8px 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5rem; visibility: visible; display: inline-block; font-size: 0.875rem; color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">More:</h2> <a class="tag" data-beacon="{" p="p" mpid="mpid" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/koch-brothers/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97); position: relative; padding: 7px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; text-decoration: none; font-size: 0.75rem; border-radius: 5px; display: inline-block; background: rgb(242, 242, 242);">Koch Brothers</a> <a class="tag" data-beacon="{" p="p" mpid="mpid" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/right-to-work/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97); position: relative; padding: 7px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; text-decoration: none; font-size: 0.75rem; border-radius: 5px; display: inline-block; background: rgb(242, 242, 242);">Right To Work</a> <a class="tag" data-beacon="{" p="p" mpid="mpid" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/american-legislative-exchange-council/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97); position: relative; padding: 7px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; text-decoration: none; font-size: 0.75rem; border-radius: 5px; display: inline-block; background: rgb(242, 242, 242);">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> <a class="tag" data-beacon="{" p="p" mpid="mpid" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/michigan-right-to-work/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97); position: relative; padding: 7px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; text-decoration: none; font-size: 0.75rem; border-radius: 5px; display: inline-block; background: rgb(242, 242, 242);">Michigan Right To Work</a> <a class="tag" data-beacon="{" p="p" mpid="mpid" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/john-birch-society/" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: rgb(46, 112, 97); position: relative; padding: 7px; margin: 5px 5px 5px 0px; text-decoration: none; font-size: 0.75rem; border-radius: 5px; display: inline-block; background: rgb(242, 242, 242);">John Birch Society</a></div>Why is the man who stole Ohio campaigning with a white supremacist?by Bob Fitrakis
by Harvey WassermanOCTOBER 9, 2006
J. Kenneth Blackwell, the man who stole Ohio’s 2004 presidential election, was out campaigning October 4, 2006 with a man widely viewed as one of America’s leading white supremacists. Blackwell is an African-American. He is also the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio. As Secretary of State, he was the GOP point man for stealing the 2004 presidential vote that gave George W. Bush a second term. As co-chair of the state’s Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, Blackwell engineered a complex strategy of confusion, disenfranchisement and theft that mirrored what was done by Katherine Harris in Florida 2000. Harris was rewarded with a safe Congressional seat, and is now the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate. Polls show Blackwell trailing between 12-20 points in his gubernatorial race, but few Ohio insiders doubt his ability to steal the necessary votes, if he can get away with it. Currently, Blackwell operatives are stressing that he’s “only 12 points down” and that they believe the race will tighten significantly by Election Day. Blackwell toured the state with Larry Pratt, author of ARMED PEOPLE VICTORIOUS, which advocates the creation of militant right-wing militias. Pratt has spoken and shared platforms in the past with Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi Aryan Nation members. He was forced to take a leave of absence from Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign over charges of white supremacist and anti-semitic views. Pratt’s 150,000-member Gun Owners of America is proudly to the right of the National Rifle Association. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Pratt says he couldn’t be a racist because he is campaigning with Blackwell, an African-American. Blackwell is “our kind of guy,” says Pratt, in reference to Blackwell’s support of gun owners’ rights. Blackwell campaign spokesperson attorney Eric Seabrook, conceded on Sunday, October 8 to the Khari Enaharo show listeners on 98.9FM radio that Pratt was a white supremacist but, he stressed “it was all about the gun rights issue.” But this is not the first time Blackwell has lined up with extreme right-wing backers boasting racist and anti-semitic roots. Earlier this year Blackwell posted on his website a picture of himself addressing the Council for National Policy. The CNP has deep “neo-fascist” and Ku Klux Klan ties according to Chip Berlet of the Boston-based Political Research Associates. In addition to right wing extremists such as Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Robertson, the CNP embraces a broad spectrum of powerful, reactionary bigots. Among them are members of the Ahmanson family, major funders of extremist publications and electronic voting machines. The Ahmanson’s financial and political ties are thoroughly intertwined with both ES&S and Diebold, mainstays of the electronic hardware used to steal the Ohio vote. Among their associates are Bob and Todd Urosevich, whose executive and programming work has helped shape the two voting machine companies. 
Others associated with the CNP include:Richard Shoff, a former Ku Klux Klan leader in Indiana.John McGoff, an ardent supporter of the former apartheid South African regime.R.J. Rushdoony, the theological leader of America's "Christian Reconstruction" movement, which advocates that Christian fundamentalists take "dominion" over America by abolishing democracy and instituting Old Testament Law. Rushdoony's Reconstructionalists believe that "homosexuals . . . adulterers , blasphemers, astrologers and others will be executed," along with disobedient children.Reed Larson, head of anti-union National Right to Work Committee.Don Wildmon, TV censorship activist and accused anti-Semite.Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, Major General John K. Singlaub and other principals from the Iran-Contra Scandal.After a public uproar, Blackwell pulled his CNP photo off his website. But he has thus far made no similar backtrack on Larry Pratt. “We’re happy to have his support,” says a campaign spokesman, reported the Dispatch. Blackwell supporters continue to predict he will make a “last-minute surge” to win the governor’s race. Making no visible moves toward the mainstream, Blackwell may well be banking on two bottom lines in Bush-era electoral politics: loaded guns and rigged voting machines. Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors, with Steve Rosenfeld, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO?, just published by the New Press. Fitrakis is an independent candidate for governor of Ohio, endorsed by the Green Party.
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Right_to_Work_Committee" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 19.2px;">National Right to Work Committee</a> (NRTWC), <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/node/12498" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.prwatch.org/node/12498</a> <div class="section field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 19.2px;"><div class="field-items" style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="field-item odd" style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As the U.S. Supreme Court's 2014 session comes to a close, one of the major cases left for a decision is Harris vs. Quinn,which could effect millions of public sector workers in the United States.<p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The case originates in Illinois, where home health care workers have been successfully organized by public sector unions. Now, a small group of these workers, represented by lawyers from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, have sued and their lawyers contend that the agency fees, or the fair share dues that even non-union members of a bargaining unit are required to pay to unions that bargain for higher wages on their behalf, violate the First Amendment. Agency fees are barred in so-called "right to work" states, which have much less unionization and lower wages and benefits.<p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Joel Rogers, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Wisconsin, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/179033/why-harris-v-quinn-has-labor-very-very-nervous" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">calls it</a> "the most important labor law case the court has considered in decades." This is because when the Supreme Court decided to take on the case, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation dramatically expanded the scope of the case beyond the home health care workers to include all public sector workers, from teachers and firefighters to sanitation workers to librarians. If the court follows National Right to Work's lead, every state in the country would essentially turn into an anti-union "right to work" state, which would be a significant blow to public sector unions' collective bargaining efforts and also complicate thousands of existing contracts between organized workers and municipalities, cities, counties, and states across the country.<p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Right_to_Work_Legal_Defense_Foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation</a> (NRTWLDF) is the 501(c)(3) arm of the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Right_to_Work_Committee" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">National Right to Work Committee</a> (NRTWC), a 501(c)(4) organization. Additionally, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research is an affiliated anti-union research shop. Founded nearly 60 years ago, the NRTWC has been a national leader in the effort to destroy public and private sector unions. The groups have increased their funding and staffing in recent years. In 2012, the three groups combined reported over $25 million in revenue, making them a powerful instrument of the corporate and ideological interests that want to keep wages low and silence the voice of organized labor in the political arena.<p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">NRTWC's success and the demise of unions in the United States has directly contributed to the erosion of high-paying middle class jobs and to growing inequality, as this chart from the <a href="http://www.epi.org/news/union-membership-declines-inequality-rises/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Economic Policy Institute</a> graphically illustrates.<p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <h2 style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 1em 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.25; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">National Right to Work's Deep Connections to the Koch Brothers and the John Birch Society</h2><p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The NRTWC has deep connections within the national right-wing network led by the Koch brothers. Reed Larson, who led the NRTW groups for over three decades, hails from Wichita, Kansas, the hometown of Charles and David Koch. Larson became an early leader of the radical right-wing John Birch Society in Kansas, which Fred Koch (the father of Charles and David) helped found. Several other founders and early leaders of the NRTWC were <a href="http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/28722/8t/bk0003z7b8t/files/bk0003z7b8t-FID1.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">members and leaders of the John Birch Society</a>, specifically the Wichita chapter of which Fred Koch was an active member.<p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The groups remain tied to the Kochs. In 2012, the Kochs' <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Freedom_Partners" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Freedom Partners</a> group funneled $1 million to the<a href="http://conservativetransparency.org/recipient/national-right-to-work-committee/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">National Right to Work Committee</a>, while the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Charles_G.Koch_Charitable_Foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation</a> gave a $15,000 grant to the<a href="http://conservativetransparency.org/recipient/national-right-to-work-legal-defense-foundation/" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">NRTWLDF</a>, which has also received significant funding from the Koch-connected <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/DonorsTrust" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">DonorsTrust</a> and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Donors_Capital_Fund" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Donors Capital Fund</a>. Today, at least three former Koch associates work as attorneys for the NRTWLDF.In June 2010, Mark Mix, the current head of the NRTW groups, attended the Kochs' exclusive <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Koch_Network" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Aspen strategy meeting</a> to give a presentation on how to mobilize conservatives for the 2010 election, along with representatives from Koch-backed groups such as the Center to Protect Patient Rights (now called <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Center_to_Protect_Patient_Rights" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">American Encore</a>) and <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Americans_for_Prosperity" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Americans for Prosperity</a>.<p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition to the Koch brothers, the NRTWLDF has received significant funding from many big name conservative donors, including the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Walton_Family_Foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Walton Family Foundation</a> (of Walmart), the Coors family's <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Castle_Rock_Foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Castle Rock Foundation</a>, Wisconsin's <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bradley_Foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Bradley Foundation</a>, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_M.Olin_Foundation" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">John M. Olin Foundation</a>, and the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Searle_Freedom_Trust" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Searle Freedom Trust</a>.<p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <p style="margin: 1em 0px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <h2 style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 1em 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.25; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A $33 Million Anti-Worker Lobby Shop with Ties to ALEC, SPN, and More</h2><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div></div></div></div>