FUNDER$

FUNDERS includes rich individuals (see also billionaires) and corps; fundraiser includes rich ppl, but also bundlers.

see lobbyist, foundations (think tanks often launder $)  PAC and SuperPac  see also fundraisers (mostly bundlers), foundations, billionaires

SEE TWO

NO MERRI

see oligarch

capt 12/16

bak 120

TOOLS:

http://conservativetransparency.org/about/

http://www.opensecrets.org/elections/

top donors:

https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/summ.php?cycle=2016&disp=D&type=V&superonly=N

great $:http://conservativetransparency.org/

searchable: http://politicalmoneyline.com/?src=rc-post

https://www.propublica.org/nerds/item/introducing-fec-itemizer-a-tool-to-research-federal-election-spending  8/15

http://www.politicalmoneyline.com/noaccess.aspx  12/14 free trial

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ref

https://www.desmog.com**/2015**/11/23/research-confirms-exxonmobil-koch-funded-climate-denial-echo-chamber-polluted-mainstream-media/

A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) shows that the climate denial echo chamber organizations funded by ExxonMobiland Koch family foundations produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

The abstract and full text of the study can be found here: Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change.

The analysis of 20 years’ worth of data by Yale University researcher Dr. Justin Farrell shows beyond a doubt that ExxonMobil and the Kochs are the key actors who funded the creation of climate disinformation think tanks and ensured the prolific spread of their doubt products throughout our mainstream media and public discourse.

“The contrarian efforts have been so effective for the fact that they have made it difficult for ordinary Americans to even know who to trust,” Dr. Farrell told the Washington Post which was first to cover the news of the study’s release. “This counter-movement produced messages aimed, at the very least, at creating ideological polarization through politicized tactics, and at the very most, at overtly refuting current scientific consensus with scientific findings of their own,” Dr. Farrell said.

From PNAS’s press briefing note about the article by Dr. Farrell:

Corporate funding likely influences the nature and content of polarizing texts pertaining to climate change, according to a study. Political polarization has become a hallmark of climate change policy discussion, with multiple groups in various sectors contributing to public discourse regarding climate and energy. To quantify the influence of corporate funding in climate change discourse, Justin Farrell analyzed more than 39 million words of text produced by 164 organizations active in the climate change counter-movement between 1993 and 2013. The author examined the ideological content of the produced texts, as well as the funding behind the organizations that produced the texts.

Organizations with corporate funding were more likely to have produced polarizing texts, the author found, with ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundation acting as influential funders (emphasis added). Further, according to the author, corporate funding may have influenced the ideological content of produced texts. The results suggest quantitative evidence of the influence of funding in the climate change debate that had previously been hypothesized, and suggests an analytical model for integrating texts with the social networks that created them, according to the author.

This study confirms once again the central thesis of industry-funded attacks on climate science, which inspired the DeSmog book Climate Cover-up and countless articles about the deception campaign over the past decade.

Now let’s see how the mainstream media cover this story — that is what I’m most curious to see. (The Washington Post article was pretty straightforward, although it gave ExxonMobil an unchallenged last word, and Joby Warrick seemed to pose a bogus question to Dr. Farrell equating the fossil-funded disinformation campaign with pro-climate-action campaigns, but Dr. Farrell correctly rebutted such a comparison.)

Will this study, published in a highly authoritative journal, finally compel the newsrooms and boardrooms of the traditional media to take responsibility to undo some of the damage done by their complicity in spreading fossil fuel industry-funded misinformation?

Will false balance — quoting a distinguished climate scientist and then speed-dialing Pat Michaels at the Cato Institute for an opposing quote — finally stop?

Will editors commit to serving as referees to ensure the same industry PR pollution isn’t published any longer?

It’s critically important today that the public hears the scientific facts about climate change without the confusion injected into the policy debate by well-funded think tanks and their highly paid PR operative counterparts.

Dr. Farrell’s research also provides further evidence of the public deception orchestrated by the fossil fuel industry, and should prove valuable to investigators examining ExxonMobil as well as other current and future efforts to hold polluters accountable for their PR pollution.

Here is a video produced years ago, “Doubt” by The Climate Reality Project, which provides a nice overview of this issue[vid]  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjVjr-qOpNk

also highly suggested: track down access to Merchants of Doubt, the full-length documentary by Food Inc. director Robert Kenner that exposes the history of tobacco-to-climate denial and their common PR manipulators such as Marc Morano and Fred Singer.

It’s far beyond the time to end the climate cover-up. And responsible media can lead the way.

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an 7 25

In Georgia, a swing state that has two Democratic U.S. senators and a conservative GOP governor, Brant Frost IV is a well-known figure in Republican circles as well as the business world. Now, according to the Associated Press (AP), Frost is facing federal allegations that he "defrauded 300 investors of at least" $140 million via a "Ponzi scheme."

AP, on Friday afternoon, July 11, reported that in a civil complaint filed the previous day, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that First Liberty Building and Loan — which Frost controls — deceived investors about its high-interest loans to businesses.

"Instead, investigators said, it raised more money to repay earlier investors," AP reports. "Frost is alleged to have taken more than $19m of investor funds for himself, his family and affiliated companies even as the business was going broke, spending $160,000 on jewelry and $335,000 with a rare coin dealer. Frost is also said to have spent $320,000 to rent a vacation home over multiple years in Kennebunkport, Maine, the town where the family of late President George H.W. Bush spent summers.

READ MORE: Trump's goal isn’t to restore American greatness — it's much more sinister

The SEC, according to AP, "said Frost kept writing checks even after the commission began its investigation."

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

IFrame Content

"First Liberty said in June that it would stop making loans and paying interest and principal to investors in those loans," AP explains. "The company said it was not answering phone calls or e-mails. First Liberty has not responded to an e-mail seeking comment, and no one was present at its office on Thursday evening in Newnan, a suburb south-west of Atlanta."

AP adds, "A lawyer who acts as the company’s registered agent for corporate purposes said earlier that he had no information. "

According to AP, Frost's problems "could have ramifications in state Republican politics, cutting off funding to the far-right candidates that Frost and his family have favored."

READ MORE:Massive blow to Trump agenda as majority of Americans rebuff key policy

Read the full Associated Press article at this link.

==

holy oligarch batman! (plus Az fraudit)

omg

Unbelievably dangerous': Top Democrat slams Gov. Noem for using the National Guard as a 'private militia'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

July 01, 2021

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee is blasting South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem for fulfilling the request of a wealthy GOP donor who asked her to deploy....nat'l gd in texas abbott border

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ABBOTT PVT $ FOR wALL 621, ALSO TAX $?

we must keep the homeland pure, immaculate, virginal vs dark invasion/infection; we need strict fr and wALL TO REPELL THEM/OTHER/ENEMY

critics denounce Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick's 'invasion' rhetoric on immigration

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/dan-patrick/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/republican-election-fraud/

Hours after President Biden declared that "democracy has prevailed" during his inaugural address, longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove urged Republicans to pressure GOP election officials and legislators to create "a model election code" to reconsider the laws surrounding 2020's two voting options that lead to the presidential election's record turnout.

"Republicans should also encourage GOP secretaries of state and state lawmakers to develop a model election code," Rove wrote in a January 20 commentary for the Wall Street Journal entitled, "The Republican Future Starts Now."

"The job of proposing electoral reforms shouldn't be based on the unsupported claims of widespread fraud peddled by Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell," Rove continued. "Instead, the goal should be to suggest measures that restore public confidence in our democracy. How do states with extensive mail-in and early voting like Florida and Texas get it right?"

Rove's commentary comes as Republican-majority legislatures in battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona have proposed bills or convened hearings to review the laws that allowed people to vote with mailed-out ballots or early in-person in 2020.

"Whenever Karl Rove writes a piece in the Wall Street Journal, the history of it suggests that Democrats should pay careful attention," said David Daley, author of Unrigged: How Americans are Battling Back to Save Democracy. "Because the Wall Street Journal is where Republicans can signal to theirdonor class their key projects."

In March 2010, Rove penned a Wall Street Journal commentary openly discussing the GOP's REDMAP project,which targeted 107 state legislative seats that "would give them control of drawing district lines for nearly 190 congressional seats." REDMAP succeeded, creating GOP majority legislatures and congressional delegations in the otherwise purple states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Alabama.

The website of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which drafts model bills for social conservatives and economic libertarians, did not yet promote election reforms on its website. However, it linked to theConservative Action project,which posted a defense of the GOP lawmakers who opposed certifying the Electoral College slates from Arizona and Pennsylvania. The expanded use of voting via mailed-out ballots and early voting must be examined, it said.

"The 2020 election was conducted in an unprecedented manner: largely by mail, and in a way that overwhelmed the capacities of many states. It is not at all unreasonable to review the manner in which votes were counted," said the Conservative Action Project memo, which was signed by more than 100 activists and organizations. "Indeed, if the goal is to restore faith in future elections, then a comprehensive review and analysis to determine what went wrong, what went right, and what is in need of reform should be a critical next step."

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/01/27/right-wing-megadonors-financing-media-operations-promote-their-ideologies

no lnxmany charts

Right-Wing Megadonors Are Financing Media Operations to Promote Their Ideologies

Alex Kotch

By Alex Kotch | January 27th, 2020 at 8:33 AM (CST)

Democracy, Featured Investigations, Koch, NewsLeave a Comment

For decades, Charles Koch has been committed to radically changing American society into a libertarian paradise, free from taxes and regulations, in which the wealthiest oligarchs, like himself, can destroy the environment, exploit their workers, and reap astonishing profits.

His “Structure of Social Change,” first introduced by his top strategist, Richard Fink in the late 1970s, was a plan to weaponize philanthropy by using three areas of influence that would, together, gradually push far-right economic ideas into the American mainstream. The strategy begins with the funding of free-market university programs, something the Charles Koch Foundation has done at hundreds of higher education institutions including George Mason University, Florida State, and Western Michigan University, to produce the “intellectual raw materials” for libertarian policies. Then, Koch and his wealthy allies fund think tanks and policy shops that would convert the academic literature into usable policy proposals, which, in the third stage, Koch-funded advocacy groups promote to government officials and the greater populace.

Koch’s strategy has been a wild success, but it may not have been as effective without another avenue of influence: favorable media.

A CMD investigation has found that the family foundations of Charles Koch and a number of similarly-minded right-wing megadonors, along with two donor-advised fund sponsors that they use to shepherd their charitable contributions and receive special tax breaks, have donated at over $109 million to media operations since 2015, nearly all of them conservative.

DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund (DCF), the connected donor-advised fund sponsors, have sent more than $45.7 million of their clients’ money to finance media nonprofits, including the Media Research Center, Real Clear Foundation, and the National Review Institute, since 2015.

Longtime right-wing funders such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, and the Charles Koch Institute have showered many of the same media groups with millions of dollars over the same period. The recipients range from the nonprofit behind The New Criterion, a magazine that runs lengthy think pieces from conservative intellectuals, to the libertarian Reason Foundation, to James O’Keefe’s far-right smear operation, Project Veritas.

The host of conservative media outlets have faithfully met the needs of their often billionaire funders. The Daily Caller, heavily funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, prints opinion pieces from senior fellows at the climate change-denying Heartland Institute claiming the idea that human-caused climate change is destroying the earth is a “delusion.” The Media Research Center’s CNS News site prints essays by right-wing personality Ben Shapiro attacking critics of free-market capitalism. Reason.com promotes the wonders of capitalism and makes podcasts extolling the legacy of the late David Koch, a longtime Reason Foundation trustee. Project Veritas attempts to smear the presidential campaign of economic populist Bernie Sanders and earns praise from President Donald Trump. The Motion Picture Institute produces films that attack regulation and a children’s video series in which an economics professor who is affiliated with several Koch-funded programs teaches kids about the value of free-market economics. And PragerU publishes five-minute videos attacking socialism, climate science, socialized medicine, and the left in general.

The 21 conservative donor nonprofits researched by CMD for this report are:

Adelson Family Foundation

Adolph Coors Foundation

Bradley Impact Fund

Charles Koch Foundation

Charles Koch Institute

Donors Capital Fund

DonorsTrust

Earhart Foundation

Ed Uihlein Family Foundation

Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation

Heavenly Father’s Foundation (Wilks family)

Jacqueline Hume Foundation

John William Pope Foundation

JM Foundation

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Mercer Family Foundation

Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation

Sarah Scaife Foundation

Searle Freedom Trust

Thirteen Foundation (Wilks family)

Thomas W. Smith Foundation

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.

Media Research Center—$11.2 million

Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center was also a major recipient of right-wing foundations’ cash from 2015-18, scoring nearly $11.2 million from nine nonprofits tracked by CMD. The family foundation of Breitbart financier Robert Mercer gave $7 million to the Center from 2015-17, and DonorsTrust ($1.3 million) and the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($1.3 million) have given large amounts since 2015. The nine donors provided 27 percent of the Media Research Center’s contribution revenue from 2015-17.

The Media Research Center, which operates conservative sites such as CNSNews.com and Newsbusters and bills itself as a media watchdog, is a huge favorite of right-wing politicians and media personalities. In its 2018 annual report, the Center boasts of accolades from the likes of Vice President Mike Pence, Trump fanatic and Fox News host Sean Hannity, and Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The Center’s work is “a fundamental element of my show prep daily; they always have been and they always will be,” said talk show host Rush Limbaugh.

Reason Foundation—$9.6 million

Libertarian think tank the Reason Foundation received close to $9.6 million from eight nonprofits researched by CMD, including $3.8 million from the Searle Freedom Trust and nearly $1.7 million from the two Charles Koch nonprofits, from 2015-18. The late David Koch was a Reason trustee.

The Reason Foundation publishes Reason Magazine and Reason.com, which includes podcasts and a video series by libertarian media personality John Stossel.

Project Veritas—$7.8 million

Right-wing propaganda organization Project Veritas, the group that took down ACORN and smeared Planned Parenthood, receives nearly one-third of its contribution revenue from DonorsTrust. From 2015-18, DonorsTrust funneled over $7.8 million to Project Veritas, accounting for 31.3 percent of its contribution revenue. The Bradley Impact Fund added $31,000 during that time period.

James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas attempt “stings” on Democratic politicians, liberal nonprofits, and media companies, most of which fail to prove anything close to the malfeasance O’Keefe hopes to expose. Perhaps most notably, the group tried to lure Washington Post reporters into writing about a woman who pretended to have had an underage affair with Alabama Senate candidate and right-wing extremist Roy Moore, but the reporters were able to sniff her out.

American Media Institute—$6.1 million

The American Media Institute bills itself as an independent investigative news service, but from 2015-16, Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, the John William Pope Foundation, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation gave it nearly $6.1 million, which was more than two-thirds of its total revenue. The following year, the Institute’s revenue dropped significantly, from $5.5 million in 2016 to $577,000 in 2017.

According to Media Matters, the Institute has “duped” mainstream news outlets into publishing its stories, which included one critical of the Clinton Foundation that originally didn’t meet the standards of its publisher, Fusion.

Real Clear Foundation—$5.9 million

The Real Clear Foundation, which funds investigative reporting for the site RealClearPolitics.com, is almost entirely funded by seven conservative nonprofits researched by CMD. DonorsTrust is the biggest donor, having given $3.8 million from 2015-18, and other contributors include Donors Capital Fund ($1 million), the two Charles Koch foundations ($458,000), the Ed Uihlein Foundation ($250,000), and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation ($100,000). The Koch total includes a $375,000 consulting contract paid by the Charles Koch Institute in 2018.

Daily Caller News Foundation—$5.2 million

The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) funds much of the content of the Daily Caller website, a site that has several ties to white nationalists and was co-founded by now-Fox News host Tucker Carlson with $3 million from right-wing donor Foster Freiss. As of 2018, Carlson was secretary of the DCNF board of directors.

Charles Koch Foundation officials may express concern over the site’s extremism, but the foundation is DCNF’s biggest donor–by a mile. The Koch Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute combined to give over $3.3 million to the Daily Caller News Foundation from 2015-18, representing 37 percent of the group’s contribution revenue during that time period. Including grants from DonorsTrust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation and others, conservative nonprofits researched by CMD provided the DCNF with 58 percent of its donation revenue.

Charles Koch alleges he is not a fan of Trump, but Daily Caller and other Koch grant recipients has often been generous to the president. In fact, Daily Caller accepted an estimated $150,000 from the 2016 Trump campaign to rent its email list. Recently, reporting revealed that Trump family friend Tom Hicks, Jr. said last year that the Daily Caller editor could be counted on to advance Trump’s personal political goals regarding Ukraine.

Middle East Media and Research Institute—$5.1 million

An anti-Muslim nonprofit led by Daniel Pipes, the Middle East Media and Research Institute is another favorite of right-wing megadonors. The Institute, an organization at the “inner core” of the nation’s Islamophobia network that “attempts to portray Muslims and Arabs as being inherently irrational and violent,” according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, took in $5.1 million–or 23 percent of its contribution revenue–from four conservative foundations from 2015-18: Sheldon and Miriam Adelson’s family foundation ($4 million), DonorsTrust ($564,800), the Sarah Scaife Foundation ($450,000), and the Bradley Foundation ($70,000).

Other recipients of funding by the 21 groups that CMD researched include far-right propaganda video operation Prager University Foundation ($4.2 million), the National Review Institute ($2.8 million), the American Enterprise Institute’s magazine, National Affairs (over $1 million), the American Spectator Foundation ($663,000), and neoconservative magazine Commentary, Inc. ($125,000).

The Center for American Greatness, an extremist, pro-Trump group that has published alt-right-style posts online, has on staff a former Trump official and an editor who won fellowships from the Earhart and Bradley foundations. The group earned its 501(c)(3) nonprofit tax status from the IRS in July 2017. The following year, DonorsTrust gave the Center for American Greatness $538,000, with the Bradley Foundation and Thomas W. Smith Foundation adding $150,000 and $50,000, respectively.

The Bradley Foundation website details an additional $3 million that it gave to media groups such as the Center for American Greatness and Encounter for Culture and Education, the conservative publisher of Encounter Books, in the first nine months of 2019.

About Alex Kotch

Alex is an investigative reporter based in Brooklyn, New York, and a contributor for the Center for Media and Democracy. A campaign finance expert, Alex helped launch money-in-politics website Sludge, and his work has been published by more than two dozen media outlets including International Business Times, The American Prospect, The Nation and Vice.com.

All articles by Alex Kotch

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/rich-republicans-sell-a-woe-is-me-story-seeking-to-hide-big-dollar-campaign-contributions/

no lnx

Rich Republicans sell a woe-is-me story seeking to hide big-dollar campaign contributions

Written by Laura Clawson / Daily Kos August 9, 2019

Days after one of its star reporters jumped on the Republican faux-outrage bandwagon over a Democratic congressman’s use of publicly available campaign finance information, The New York Times offers up a furrowed brow of a story about whether it might be a good idea to hide the names of political donors—after all, people who’ve donated the legal maximum to Donald Trump don’t like the response.

“Calling out the people who fund campaigns is not a new tactic in politics,” Katie Rogers and Annie Karni write, “but the question of how much should be publicly disclosed about those donors has been an issue that Republicans, led by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, have repeatedly raised in recent years.” In other words, Republicans want all dark money, all the time. No accountability, no sunlight.

Because otherwise, people who can afford to write $2,800 checks—and more—to Donald Trump might get calls saying things like, “Hey, we were going to use you for business, but we found out you’re a racist,” and we can’t have that!

In an article about public disclosure and Republican opposition to such disclosure, nowhere does the Times say in so many words that information on people who give more than $200 to a campaign is publicly available on a government website. Probably the closest is this: “While the Supreme Court ruled in the 2010 Citizens United case to uphold public disclosure—with Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s conservative stalwart, arguing later that without such revelations ‘democracy is doomed’—Republicans and wealthy allies like the Koch brothers have argued that it results in donor harassment and has a chilling effect on free speech.” So the Supreme Court, including its leading right-wing voice, was for disclosure … BUT!

This is The New York Times dedicating 1,400 words to the wish of rich Republicans to change the law to provide less transparency and accountability, only it’s not reporting on that campaign, on the fact that this is what rich Republicans want to do and why that might be and how they’re going about it. Instead, it’s dutifully reporting their cover story as if it has merit and substance. It’s stenography on the “woe is me” of rich people who got some angry—but apparently not threatening, since heaven knows, if anyone had been threatening, we would have heard about it—phone calls because they gave thousands of dollars to a racist.

When we talk about the rules being written for rich people, this is a perfect example of how it happens.

see energy corps 2 for grafs and lnx

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/03/22/paris-oil-exxon-chevron-bp-total-shell-billion-climate-lobbying-advertising-influencemap

all rhet

A new report by a British think tank estimates that since the 2015 Paris Agreement, the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies spent more than $1 billion lobbying to prevent climate change regulations while also running public relations campaigns aimed at maintaining public support for climate action.

Combined, the companies spend roughly $200 million a year pushing to delay or alter climate and energy rules, particularly in the U.S. — while spending $195 million a year “on branding campaigns that suggest they support an ambitious climate agenda,” according to InfluenceMap, a UK-based non-profit that researches how corporations influence climate policy.

InfluenceMap cites as an example ExxonMobil’s heavily-touted algae-biofuels research, which the oil giant says “offers some of the greatest promise for next-generation biofuels” with significant climate benefits and has made it the focus of its “The Tiny Organism” ad campaign.

InfluenceMap notes that “detailed disclosures from the company show its goal of 10,000 barrels of bio-fuel a day would equate to only 0.2 percent of its current refinery capacity.

"

[algae tiny vid]

Oil majors are projecting themselves as key players in the energy transition while lobbying to delay, weaken, or oppose meaningful climate policy,” Edward Collins, author of the new report, said in a statement. “They advocate gradual implementation of market-based and technological climate solutions, but the latest [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report makes clear that urgent policy action and limitations on fossil fuel use are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.”

Today’s report updates the group’s 2016 report that estimated these companies spent $115 million a year lobbying against climate regulations — even policies companies said they supported.

“Say one thing,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as he described InfluenceMap’s 2016 research on the floor of the U.S.Senate, “do another.”

The new estimates suggest that spending to influence climate policy by the five oil giants has increased sharply over the last two years.

It also comes as global banks are investing more in fossil fuel projects since the Paris Agreement. In addition, the five oil companies are spending heavily on finding and producing more fossil fuels — and putting only a tiny fraction of their budgets into efforts to transition away from climate-altering fuels.

“This spending accompanies the expansion of the companies’ operations with combined annual sales of over $1 [trillion] and profits of $55 [billion in] 2018, the vast majority of which is oil and gas related,” InfluenceMap wrote. “Combined capital investment will increase to $115 [billion] in 2019 but only about 3 percent of this will go to low carbon investments, according to company disclosures.”

Lobbying One Message While Advertising Another

The report focuses on the world’s five largest listed oil and gas companies, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron, leaving out state-controlled oil giants like Saudi Aramco and China’s Sinopec.

InfluenceMap examined the extent to which each company’s branding efforts and advertising campaigns focused on climate change.

Shell's branded content about its emissions scenario in The New York Times

Shell's branded content about its “Sky” emissions scenario in The New York Times.

“The research suggests that Total maintains the highest proportion of its branding activities on climate (29 percent),” the new report finds. “Following this, ExxonMobil, which has faced significant negative media attention in 2018, allocates 19 percent. Shell and BP followed with 16 percent and 14 percent respectively. Chevron appears far less concerned, using approximately 2 percent of its branding budget on climate issues in 2018.”

The think tank's research also looked at what the companies were saying to government regulators, either directly or through industry groups funded by the oil majors.

“Since Paris, Chevron, BP and ExxonMobil have led in opposition to a range of climate-motivated policy stands,” InfluenceMap wrote. “For example, in 2018 both BP and Chevron have directly lobbied U.S. policymakers for a rollback on U.S. methane requirements.” (Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and the major constituent in natural gas.)

The report credits Shell and Total for becoming “more positive on a number of climate policy issues” since 2015, but adds that they “continue to support policies that will extend the role for fossil fuels in the energy mix and remain part of highly climate-oppositional trade associations.”

Mixed Messages and Industry Trade Groups

At times, the public stances of a corporation’s leadership stand starkly at odds with the messages from industry groups funded by that same corporation.

For example, on electric vehicles, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden had a very direct and simple message in July 2018. “We need battery electric vehicles,” he said. And a year earlier, at the oil industry conference, CERAWeek, in 2017, he expressed support for “regulations that speed up investment in low carbon technologies and ? at the same time ? move consumer demand.”

Oil and gas lobbying on climate policies through trade associations. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

In May 2018, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. trade group for oil and gas, pushed the U.S. Congress to move in the opposite direction by rolling back incentives for electric vehicles.

“American Petroleum Institute (API) opposes mandates and subsidies,” API testified before the U.S. House of Representatives, according to InfluenceMap’s new report. The fossil fuel trade group voiced its opposition for subsidies for electric vehicles, adding that “the level of market penetration achieved by electric vehicles should not rely on government interference.”

The report also notes the difficulty in tracking corporate lobbying in the U.S. given the rise of so-called “dark money” groups and the lack of transparency surrounding political contributions in the U.S. “Political contributions that were made without full disclosure of their ultimate source totaled $539 [million] in the 2018 election cycle according to OpenSecrets.org,” the report says.

Social Influencers

InfluenceMap also dives deep into how companies used social media to influence Americans during the mid-term elections last year.

“During this time ExxonMobil was by far the most prolific spender, racking up over $400K in four weeks on over 360 individual political ads,” InfluenceMap wrote. “The ads urge rejecting specific ballot initiatives whilst promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production. Facebook’s data indicates that ExxonMobil’s ads made over 10 million ‘impressions’ in this time with users in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.”

Oil industry spending on Facebook and Instagram ads leading up to the 2018 U.S. midterm elections. Credit: InfluenceMap, 2019

All of this spending has implications for shareholders, InfluenceMap observed — and some shareholder groups appear to be listening.

“InfluenceMap’s research confirms a widely held suspicion that Big Oil’s glossy sustainability reports and shiny climate statements are all rhetoric and no action,” Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive of ShareAction, a UK charity focused on responsible investment, said in a statement accompanying the report. “These companies have mastered the art of corporate doublespeak — by boasting about their climate credentials while quietly using their lobbying firepower to sabotage the implementation of sensible climate policy and pouring millions into groups that engage in dirty lobbying on their behalf.”

DeSmog has reached out to ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron for comment.

“We firmly reject the premise of this report. We are very clear about our support for the Paris agreement, and the steps that we are taking to help meet society’s needs for more and cleaner energy,” Shell said in a statement provided to The Guardian. “We make no apology for talking to policymakers and regulators around the world to make our voice heard on crucial topics such as climate change and how to address it.”

“We have not been afforded the opportunity to review the data but we disagree with the assertion that Chevron has engaged in ‘climate-related branding and lobbying’ that is ‘overwhelmingly in conflict’ with the Paris Agreement,” Chevron said in a statement provided to DeSmog, adding that the company was taking “prudent, cost-effective actions” and seeking “balanced and transparent” policies to reduce greenhouse gas pollution. “We believe climate change is real and human activity contributes to it. We accept the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Updated: This article has been updated on March 22, 2019 to reflect a statement from Chevron.

==

2016:

*Partisan tilt:

• Solidly Democrat/Liberal
• Leans Democrat/Liberal
• Solidly Republican/Conservative
• Leans Republican/Conservative
• On the fence

*C = Generally supports conservative candidates; L = Generally supports liberal candidates

Based on data released daily by the FEC on Friday,December 09, 2016 and by the IRS on May 02, 2016.

==

AN msnbc

STEPHANIE RUHLE (HOST): In today's money, power, politics: private prisons. They are cashing in on President Trump's get-tough policies at the border. Since 1997, the Federal Bureau of Prison has paid private companies to build and operate prisons to ease capacity at government-run facilities. The share of federal prisoners nationwide held in private prisons has surged from just 3 percent in the late 90's to more than 20 percent today. The biggest factor fueling growth is, you guessed it, immigration detention centers.

Who are these companies? CoreCivic, also known as CCA; Management and Training Corporation, known as MTC; and the GEO Group are three of the biggest players in the private prison business. Together, they operate some 14 federal facilities nationwide, providing 27,000 beds for federal inmates, and that is growing.

That growth was under threat when the Obama administration attempted to phase out all contracts with private prisons. The big three players decided to take action, and theyspent big on the 2016 campaign. Guess how. GEO donated $1.1 million to Republican candidates and political action committees. CoreCivic spent another $1.1 million on lobbying efforts. And MTC spent nearly half a million bucks to do the same. And those efforts, they certainly paid off.

When President Trump reversed the phase out decision early in his administration, that is despite a2014 lawsuit accusing GEO of forcing immigration detainees to work for little or no pay by threatening them with solitary confinement. Sounds like slavery, doesn't it?Critics say the private business model encourages cost-cutting and even slavery to boost its bottom line profits. And guess what? It's working.

Since President Trump's election, shares for GEO have shot up 25 percent, while CoreCivic stock is 12 percent higher. MTC is not publicly traded, but its revenues are said to be robust. I want to point out some of the larger shareholders, if you want to check your 401(k), BlackRock and Vanguard, and granted, they may own them as part of an index, but they choose to do them.

==

2015 texas

hile Iowa and New Hampshire have the first presidential nominating contests, there’s also a key Republican primary fight going on right now in Texas: the money chase.

The ring-kissing is occurring in every metropolitan area in the state and in oil-rich Midland.

And the efforts are worth it for the potential candidates. In 2012, Texas ranked only behind California in presidential campaign contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Texas delivered more than $1 million to six different candidates. Texas gave the most — $36 million — to Mitt Romney's primary and general election campaigns.

But it’s a new era in Texas fundraising, now that GOP megadonors Bob Perry and Harold Simmons have passed away. There are so many millionaires and billionaires in Texas, though, that the hopefuls seeking to mine the state for cash have plenty of options.

Here’s a look at 10 Texas GOP donors and 10 bundlers — super fundraisers — who are in high demand during the money chase. This list is based on interviews with two dozen state and national operatives, Federal Election Commission records and data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. While dozens of influential Texas Republican donors and bundlers are not on this list, their impact could expand as the 2016 presidential race further takes shape.

Donors

Few developments changed politics more radically than the introduction of super PACs in 2010.

These outside groups, which are often aligned with but not allowed to coordinate with candidates, mean that Texas billionaires are no longer restricted in how much money they can spend to support a presidential contender.

Texas, with its bounty of J.R. Ewing-level rich Republicans, have given generously to such efforts.

Here are 10 donors who are reputed to be in the best position to back those efforts:

Bundlers

Some money brokers don’t need to be super-rich to play at the presidential level.

While limited in contribution size, bundled dollars are harder to round up. But some campaign operatives say they still put a premium on bundlers — the supporters who flip through Rolodexes and twist arms for direct campaign donations.

Among the key benefits for bundled dollars: Federal candidates get a lower television advertising rate than super PACs, which means the dollars go further on the airwaves.

To be sure, many of these supporters rank among the wealthiest people in the country and are as prolific in their giving as in their networking.

Here’s a look at 10 key Texas GOP bundlers.

Phil Adams

Profession: President of an insurance firm

City: Bryan/College Station

Influence

There is no more important fundraiser in Aggieland. Adams is a dual threat – a donor and a bundler. A member of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, Adams has a workaholic reputation and a zeal for throwing fundraisers around Texas A&M events.

Ramona Bass

Profession: Philanthropist

City: Fort Worth

Influence

The Basses, heirs to oil tycoon Sid Richardson’s fortune, are so mysterious that many GOP operatives have no idea what exactly they do in politics. But a few GOP insiders say the Basses are consequential. The billionaires cut checks to both parties, but also, GOP operatives say the Bass name all but guarantees local Republicans will show up to events. The key family member to win over? Ramona Bass. “It’s like daylight and dark if she gets involved,” one operative said.

Tilman Fertitta

Profession: Chairman and CEO of Landry’s Restaurants

City: Houston

Influence

This billionaire restaurateur donates to both Republicans and Democrats – including George W. Bush and former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who is married to his friend Mark Kelly. Fertitta is a prolific donor to campaigns and committees from both parties. But Texas Republicans anticipate he will be a major bundler in their presidential primary. An expert in the hospitality industry, Fertitta has a reputation as a top-notch event host.

Gaylord T. Hughey Jr.

Profession: Oil and gas attorney

City: Tyler

Influence

Want to raise money in the Piney Woods? Go through Hughey, who is known among Texas GOP operatives as “the don of East Texas.” His base is in Tyler, but Texas Republicans say that Hughey’s support probably helps deeper into East Texas.

Mickey Long

Profession: President of Westex/WLP Well Service

City: Midland

Influence

Long is the key fundraising player in the Permian Basin, according to multiple operatives. There is mixed opinion of his capacity to personally give, but his efforts were enough to be chairman of the Texas Tech Board of Regents.

John L. Nau III

Profession: President & CEO of Silver Eagle Distributors, an Anheuser-Busch distributor

City: Houston

Influence

One of the most frequently mentioned money players in the state, one Texan called Nau a “tireless networker.” Closely associated with Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, Nau is a solid donor in his own right. In 2014, he donated $750,000 to conservative outside groups.

Ross Perot Jr.

Profession: Chairman of Hillwood, a real estate developer

City: Dallas

Influence

Son of the 1990s-era third-party presidential candidate, the younger Perot is a dual threat as both a check writer and gatherer. Sources say he surrounds himself with savvy advisers who help him leverage North Dallas money – including some of his own.

Gene Powell

Profession: Real estate developer

City: San Antonio

Influence

Operatives name Powell as a gatekeeper for San Antonio’s clubby, old money world. A longtime Perry ally, Powell is a member and former chairman of the UT Board of Regents.

L.E. Simmons

Profession: Chairman of SCF Partners, an oil industry investment firm

City: Houston

Influence

In the same tier as Harlan Crow, Simmons is a top get for any political campaign. No relation to Harold Simmons, Simmons has deep ties to the Mormon donor community and was a top fundraiser for Mitt Romney.

Ray Washburne

Profession: M Crowd Restaurant Group, which owns the Mi Cocina Mexican food chain

City: Dallas

Influence

Washburne is one of the few Texans who’s already announced his 2016 alliance – he’ll be a finance chairman on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s team. Washburne is a familiar player in national politics because of his stint last cycle as the Republican National Committee’s national finance chair. And also, he is related by marriage to the Dallas Hunt family.

==

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/11/in-first-post-mccutcheon-presidential-election-more-big-donors-giving-more/

No individual has given to every single congressional and presidential candidate yet, or even every Democratic or Republican candidate. But 2016 marks the first presidential election since the Supreme Court’s decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commissionremoved caps on a donor’s total campaign giving, and — as expected — a group of wealthy individuals have busted through the old $123,200 limit on what they could give.

Before 2014, individuals faced caps both on the amount they could give to any one federal candidate and the amount they could give to all federal candidates, parties and PACs, together, in a given two-year cycle.

That changed with McCutcheon, when the Supreme Court held that the caps “intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise ‘the most fundamental First Amendment activities.’”

In the post-McCutcheon landscape, then, an individual would be able to give a $2,700 check to every candidate in every federal primary and general election in the country, plus more to PACs and party accounts, if they were so inclined. While there is not yet evidence of this happening, some donors have taken advantage of unlimited aggregate contributions to give more cash than they ever could before.

As of Oct. 16, at least 1,174 people have contributed more than $123,200 during the 2016 election cycle – in some cases, far more. (These numbers, we should note, do not include contributions made to super PACs and other outside spending groups, which were never limited by law; more on this below.) Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate, has given nearly $3.4 million, for instance, every dollar of which has gone to supporting Republicans. His wife, Miriam, has kicked in another $1.2 million. (They’ve have contributed )

On the liberal side, Newsweb Chairman Fred Eychaner contributed nearly $2.2 million to Democrats.

(The Adelsons have contributed $47.4 million when gifts to super PACs and other outside spending groups are factored in, which puts them at No. 2 on our top donors list. And at almost $35 million counting such donations, Eychaner comes in at No. 4.)

That’s not quite double the 727 people who made contributions in the 2014 cycle that would have exceeded the former limit, but it’s close. And they’re giving more, as well: The average contribution total from those shattering the old limit this cycle was $281,568, almost $100,000 more than the 2014 average.

The pre-McCutcheon rules included caps within the cap, too — for instance, gifts to candidates couldn’t total more than $48,600, and there were separate limits for donations to PACs and parties. In the 2016 cycle, Democratic Wall Street donor Donald Sussman gave at least $2,700 to no fewer than 86 candidates, almost quintupling the previous cap.

Overall, these post-McCutcheon contributions have favored the GOP: Over 53 percent of these donors so far have given more to Republicans than Democrats. Still, things are on the upswing for liberals, since just 36.9 percent of contributors favored Dems in 2014.

In fact — whether due to a calcifying partisan divide or not — a huge majority of donors give all their money to one side or the other. In 2014, 71.1 percent of donors gave only to Republicans or Democrats. This cycle, that number has climbed to almost 74.2 percent by mid-October, with 434 McCutcheon-level donors giving exclusively to Republicans and 437 to Democrats.

One effect of the no-limits landscape has been the turbocharging of joint fundraising committees — committees formed by candidates with their party and sometimes other candidates. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s Hillary Victory Fund, for instance, has seen at least 120 donors give at least $400,000, something that previously was against the law. In that case, the money is split between Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 38 state parties.

When outside spending — which was never covered by contribution limits even pre-McCutcheon — gets factored in, individual contribution totals rise dramatically. On both sides of the aisle, deep-pocketed megadonors pumped tens of millions of dollars into federal races this cycle to varying degrees of electoral success.

Tom Steyer

Steyer was the country’s top individual donor by a country mile in 2016. The San Francisco former hedge fund executive parted with more than $67 million this cycle, far outstripping fellow liberal Donald Sussman’s $40 million in gifts. Steyer gave $66 million of his total toNextGen Climate Action, the environmental super PAC he founded in 2013. NextGen focused its attention on Senate races and the presidential faceoff, making more than $22 million in independent expenditures, most of which opposed Trump. Of the six battleground Senate races Steyer and NextGen targeted, Democrats won three, in Illinois, Nevada and New Hampshire.

Sheldon Adelson

Out of a total of more than $26 million, billionaire casino mogul Adelson gave an even $10 million each this cycle to the Congressional Leadership Fund andSenate Leadership Fund, conservative super PACs that supported Republican congressional candidates. Adelson’s wife, Miriam, matched his donations to these groups, and their joint $20 million was good for more than half of the Congressional Leadership Fund’s independent expenditure total this cycle. The money may have helped, as Republicans will kick off 2017 with majorities in both houses.

Donald Sussman

Paloma Partners investment firm founder Sussman invested heavily in liberal candidates and super PACs this cycle, giving more than $40 million. Almost half of that outlay came from a single $20 million donation toPriorities USA Action, the foremost outside group backingHillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign. The super PAC’s independent expenditures added up to more than any other group’s; it poured more than $131 million into the presidential race, the lion’s share of which paid for attacks on Trump. Sussman also gave $10 million toHouse Majority PAC, which sought to support Democrats in House races. While they were unable to flip the chamber, Democrats did gain some ground – a bit of good news for liberals on their otherwise pretty bad night.

Fred Eychaner

As we’ve noted, Chicago-based businessman Eychaner also splashed major cash on liberal candidates, parties and outside groups. The vast majority of his $34 million-plus in donations stemmed from three eight-figure donations to left-leaning super PACs: $11 million to Senate Majority PAC, $11 million to House Majority PAC, and $10 million to Priorities USA Action. Ultimately, these cash infusions were unable to help Democrats win control of the presidency or either house of Congress. Eychaner also gave $489,448 to 35 Democratic state parties and committees.

Robert Mercer

The very conservative co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a quant hedge fund founded by a megadonor to the other party, Mercer and his wife Diana have given just shy of $24 million this cycle. A champion of returning the U.S. to the gold standard, Mercer has helped bankroll the conservative Heritage Foundation and Breitbart.com, the right-wing news site. He was deeply committed to Sen. Ted Cruz‘s (R-Texas) 2016 presidential bid, socking $13.5 million into a super PAC supporting him; eventually he signed on to back nominee Donald Trump, converting the previously pro-Cruz vehicle into one that benefited Trump and adding another $2 million to its coffers. His daughter, Rebekah, also was deeply involved with the pro-Trump effort. In the eight days ending Nov. 4, the super PAC, Make America Number 1, paid Mercer’s voter data firm Cambridge Analytica $1.4 million.

Paul Singer

Singer, the founder of hedge fund manager Elliott Management Corp., was one of 2016’s top conservative contributors, giving more than $23 million over the course of the cycle. Like Adelson, Singer donated heavily to the Congressional and Senate Leadership Funds – $1.5 million and $4 million, respectively. The New York billionaire didn’t stop there. Singer spread his money around a number of conservative super PACs, also making multimillion-dollar contributions to theAmerican Unity PAC, Conservative Solutions PAC,Ending Spending Action Fund,Freedom Partners Action Fund and Our Principles PAC.

Complete contribution data for the 2016 cycle will be available early next year.

Categories: Congressional Elections Election Overview Presidential Presidential Election

Tags: aggregate limit, American Unity PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, conservative solutions pac, donald sussman, Donald Trump, Elliott Management, ending spending action fund, Fred Eychaner, Freedom Partners Action Fund, Hillary Clinton, House Majority PAC, McCutcheon v FEC, Miriam Adelson, newsweb, NextGen Climate Action, Our Principles PAC, paloma partners, Paul Singer, Priorities USA Action, senate leadership fund, Senate Majority Fund, Sheldon Adelson, Supreme Court, tom steyer

==

==

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/06/hard-money-still-matters-and-heres-whos-giving-it/

Yes, we live in a gilded age of campaign finance, with billionaire donors forking over tens of millions of dollars to super PACs.

But hard money — which is contributed directly to candidates’ campaigns, political parties or regular PACs and, unlike outside money, is subject to limits — still matters to those seeking office. Candidates need it for salaries, travel, rent, phone bills, producing ads, purchasing air time and other expenses that are hard to avoid, and many a campaign has foundered for lack of it (see, e.g., Rick Perry and Jeb Bush).

“Those resources that go into this pool can be used much more effectively than any outside resources,” said Michael Malbin, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

And a list of top donors of hard money looks very different than the roster of top donors overall, which is skewed by the few who give big bucks to outside spending groups. For instance, the organization that has contributed the most in this election cycle is hedge fund firm Renaissance Technologies, profiled on OpenSecrets Blogearlier this week for the huge sums its top two executives have given to super PACs.

Most of the top hard money groups are companies with well-established lobbying records, and they give chiefly through their PACs rather than through individual employees. The PACs tend to contribute to congressional races all across the country, giving the maximum allowed amount of $10,000 ($5,000 per candidate, per election) to dozens of candidates. In many of these races — most of them low profile on the national scale — hard money from individual donors and PACs to the incumbents and challengers running far outweighs contributions to outside groups, Malbin noted.

Companies are barred from giving to candidates or parties from their corporate treasuries; they may contribute to outside spending groups, though it’s rare for publicly traded corporations to do so.

Of the top 10 hard money organizations, nine lean Republican.

Leading the group is aerospace and military manufacturer Honeywell, which also held this spot in the 2014 election cycle. The company has long been involved in significant — and expensive — lobbying on a variety of issues, particularly defense and energy. Though it gives to both sides of the aisle, it typically leans right and 2016 has been no different. Of the $4.4 million in hard money that Honeywell and its employees have given this cycle, 67 percent has gone to Republicans. The majority of that has come from the company’s PAC, rather than from individual employees (who can give just $2,700 per candidate, per election), and has been handed out to scores of Republican congressional candidates across the country — many of whom have received the maximum allowed amount of $10,000 from the company. Honeywell’s PAC has also given $75,000 to both the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, along with smaller sums to similar party groups.

Behind Honeywell are communications giants AT&T and Comcast, both of which follow giving patterns that are somewhat similar to those of the aerospace company. Each organization’s donations skew right, with 61 percent of AT&T’s $3.7 million and 53 percent of Comcast’s $3.5 million going to the GOP, and in both cases the company PAC is responsible for the lion’s share of contributions. Both companies have given to scores of congressional candidates nationwide, often maxing out at $10,000 per recipient.

Healthcare group Blue Cross/Blue Shield takes the fourth spot, with 58 percent of its nearly $3.4 million going to Republican candidates and groups. Again, most of this money comes from the company’s PAC.

The trend breaks with No. 5, Goldman Sachs. Almost $3.3 million in hard money has come from the investment bank, but most of that has been given by individual employees, making it the only one of the top 10 to pull most of its contributions from employees rather than a PAC. That’s not to say Goldman’s PAC has been inactive — it has given just over $1 million — but so far this election cycle, people on the bank’s payroll have given nearly twice as much as the PAC. In total, 61 percent of the money coming from Goldman has gone to Republicans, and the PAC has contributed to dozens of congressional candidates.

A large share of the gifts from Goldman employees have gone to presidential candidates, with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) taking in the most with nearly $214,000. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) pulled in $204,000 from the company, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received $149,000 and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) got $66,000. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has been given just $751 from Goldman employees.

Clinton has received more far more than Trump from each of the top 10 hard money organizations. Five of the 10 have given nothing to Trump at all, while Clinton has received more than $100,000 from three — Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Comcast, in addition to Goldman — and more than $10,000 from six.

The only organization to lean left among the top 10 hard money donors is a labor union. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers slots in just behind Goldman with $2.8 million in total contributions, more than half of it from the union’s PAC.

Categories: Campaign finance Congressional Elections PACs Politicians & Elections

Tags: AT&T, comcast, emma baccellieri, Goldman Sachs, honeywell, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, pacs

==

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/business/they-tilt-right-but-top-chief-executives-dont-give-to-trump.html?_r=1

Together, the 200 best-compensated C.E.O.s and their spouses gave more than $6.5 million to Republican candidates and groups supporting their campaigns, but less than $1 million to Democratic candidates and groups.

Leslie H. Wexner, chief of the company that owns Victoria’s Secret, along with his wife, Abigail, were the top political donors among those included on the Equilar 200 Highest-Paid C.E.O. Rankings.

Ms. Wexner gave $1.5 million to groups that supported Ohio governor John Kasich’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination. In doing so, she was supporting the hometown candidate: L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret, is based in Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Wexner gave $500,000 to a group supporting the campaign of Jeb Bush and nearly $100,000 to national Republican committees.

The second-most-prolific political donors among the top-paid chieftains were Robert J. Hugin, the recently retired chief executive of the drug company Celgene, and his wife, Kathleen. Mr. Hugin gave $250,000 to a “super PAC” supporting New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination and nearly $200,000 to national Republican committees.

Political Donations by the C.E.O.s

The highest-paid chief executives in 2015 have donated far more to Republicans than they have to Democrats so far this year.

Total donations among the 200 C.E.O.s

to presidential candidates in 2016

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Kasich

Bush

Christie

Graham

Rubio

Fiorina

Cruz

Walker

Carson

Paul

Trump

$1,733,750

1,083,100

654,240

74,300

50,600

28,700

25,500

11,000

2,500

1,000

0

REPUBLICANS

1.

2.

3.

Clinton

O’Mally

Sanders

$56,000

10,600

0

DEMOCRATS

Donations by C.E.O.s to all candidates in 2016

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Leslie & Abigail Wexner

Robert & Kathleen Hugin

Steven & Andrea Wynn

Meg Whitman

John & Susan Hess

Rupert Murdoch

Christopher & Amy Crane

Marc & Lynne Benioff

Scott & Kimberly Sheffield

David & Lelia Farr

$2,237,880

516,000

414,400

367,500

280,500

220,800

174,600

173,400

161,100

139,200

L Brands

Celgene

Wynn Resorts

Hewlett-Packard

Hess Corporation

21st Century Fox

Exelon

Salesforce.com

Pioneer Natural Resources

Emerson Electric

Notes: Data downloaded from the Federal Election Commission on May 16, and from the Internal Revenue Service on May 2. Includes donations by the chief executives’ spouses and to groups working to get the politicians elected.

Source: Center for Responsive Politics

By The New York Times

Most of the other biggest political donors — including Stephen A. Wynn of Wynn Resorts and his wife, Andrea; John B. Hess of the Hess Corporation and his wife, Susan; Rupert Murdoch of 21st Century Fox; and Meg Whitman of Hewlett Packard Enterprise also supported Republicans by a wide margin.

Salesforce.com’s leader, Marc Benioff, was the top donor to Democrats among the high earners. Along with his wife, Lynne, he contributed $173,400, most of that to national Democratic committees.

==

The last time the Democratic and Republican parties had to stage the quadrennial spectacles that serve as their presidential nominating conventions, they got a big assist from the taxpayers: The Federal Election Commission cut checks to each of the two parties for $18.2 million to pay for construction and other basic services required for the 2012 events.

Coming from the same pot of money that also provided public grants for presidential candidates — the $3 per person voluntary income tax checkoff — the convention funding part of the system effectively outlived the rest of it. Candidates began rejecting the public funding system in the 2000 election because there was too little money and too many strings. It has so withered by now that only one White House candidate (former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat) opted to participate this cycle. Still, the parties continued to accept their convention grants, supplementing them with cash raised by the host cities for the occasions and other sources of support.

That changed just before Christmas 2014, when Congress — to almost everyone’s surprise — privatized the conventions by wiping out the grants, which would have come to about $19 million each in this cycle. Instead, each party is now allowed to set up a special convention account and collect donations of up to three times the usual limit for gifts to a national party — meaning as much as $100,200 in 2015 and another $100,200 in 2016. PACs can contribute up to $45,000 per year.

As is often the case when it comes to fundraising, Republicans have been more successful at bringing home money for their convention. Through March, the Republican National Committee raised $11.8 million through 318 of these “bonus” contributions. About half the money has come in gifts of $100,200 each. But eight individuals have maxed out already for both years of the current cycle, giving a total of $200,400 per person; that’s $1.6 million to finance national party activities this July, or more than 13 percent of the total raised through March 30 for the GOP convention.

Look for these folks in the best sky box seats in Cleveland.

Who are they? Not exactly new players in the realm of money-in-politics — the majority already have shelled out millions in the 2016 cycle alone to the party, its candidates and super PACs supporting them, and have been strong backers of the GOP for years:

• Joseph W. Craft III – A Kentuckian, Craft is president and CEO of Alliance Resources, the sixth-largest U.S. coal producer in 2014. He and his wife have donated more than $3.2 million to Republican and conservative groups so far this cycle.
• **Paul and Alejandra Foster** – Foster is chairman of Western Refining, a large independent oil refiner. He and his wife have given $1.9 million so far in the 2016 cycle alone to party committees, candidates and conservative outside spending groups.
• Diane M. Hendricks – She owns Hendricks Holding company and is chairperson of ABC Supply, a roofing supply company. Hendricks, who’s worth about $5 billion according to Forbes, has contributed more than $3 million to Republican party committees, candidates and conservative spending groups in 2015 and 2016. Hendricks was refunded $4 million of the $5 million she gave to the super PAC supporting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker‘s presidential run. She has also given $2 million to the Koch brothers’ Freedom Partners Action Fund.
• Charles Joyce – The president and CEO of New York-based Otis Eastern Service LLC, a large maker of oil and gas pipeline, Joyce has been extremely active with state and federal Republican party committees. So far this cycle, he and his wife, Lorraine, have dished out more than $800,000 to Republican candidates and the party.
• Thomas H. Russell – An Oklahoman who made his name in natural gas processing equipment and technology, Russell has contributed about $500,000 to Republican candidates and organizations so far in the 2016 cycle
• Warren Stephens – The CEO of Stephens Inc., a financial services firm in Little Rock, Ark., Stephens has donated more than $5 million to Republican causes in the past 15 months — including super PACs backing failed presidential candidates Walker, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. The biggest recipient of his largesse has been the anti-Donald Trump Our Principles PAC, to which Stephens has given $2 million.
• Elizabeth Uihlein – President of family-owned Uline, Inc., a major producer of packaging and shipping materials, she and her husband Richard (who himself has given $100,200 for the Republican convention thus far), can take credit for more than $8 million in outlays to conservative and Republican organizations this cycle alone. That includes millions to the pro-Walker Unintimidated PAC, as well as Keep the Promise, which supports Sen. Ted Cruz‘s bid for the White House, and Club for Growth Action.

For its part, the Democratic National Committee has reported raising only $3.5 million in these special donations. It lists 165 contributions to the convention account, with only seven coming in at $100,000 or more. Thus far, only Henry and Marsha Laufer have given the maximum in both 2015 and 2016.

Laufer is on the board of Renaissance Technologies, a N.Y. hedge fund; previously he was the firm’s research director. The couple has contributed more than $2.5 million to Democratic organizations thus far in the 2016 cycle. James Simons, Renaissance’s founder, is one of three others who have given $100,000 or more to the Democratic convention effort; the others are David Trone, the co-founder of Total Wine & More who was a Maryland congressional candidate until losing in the primary this week, and longtime Democratic donor Fred Eychaner, a Chicago publisher and radio station owner. So far, at least, Renaissance Technologies would seem to have qualified for naming rights to the Democratic convention this summer in Philadelphia.

The new convention accounts represent just one more example of the dramatic increase in concentration of federal campaign funding among a very small group of donors. In 2012, the grants to the two parties represented ‘contributions’ from more than twelve million U.S. taxpayers who voluntarily participated in the funding program. This year so far, fewer than 500 people have accounted for the direct party funding of these efforts, and while much more will be received before the gavels fall in Cleveland and Philadelphia, the concentration of funding is unlikely to change significantly.

Separately, the host cities are raising funds to pay for convention expenses. Donations to these accounts are unlimited and there are no restrictions on sources so corporations, unions and other institutions will be important donors. These funds will not be publicly disclosed until months after the convention is concluded, but the *Washington Post* has reportedthat the DNC has commitments totaling more than $40 million and the RNC has pledges of $56 million thus far for these groups.

We’re hearing these days about donor fatigue, and it’s no wonder. This handful of people, who wouldn’t even make up a majority of delegates to either of the conventions we’re preparing for, are financing much of the outside spending that has become so important in this presidential race, increasingly along with the normal activities of the two parties and now the basic costs for the conventions.

Categories: Campaign finance Political Parties Politicians & Elections Presidential Election

Tags: alejandra foster, Bob Biersack, charles joyce, Club for Growth Action, david trone, democratic convention, diane hendricks, Elizabeth uihlein, Fred Eychaner, henry laufer, James Simons, Jeb Bush, joseph craft, keep the promise, Marco Rubio, Marsha Laufer, Our Principles PAC, paul foster, Renaissance Technologies, republican convention, Richard Uihlein, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, thomas russell, unintimidated pac, WArren Stephens

==

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/us/politics/wealthy-families-presidential-candidates.html#donors-list

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12/24/2015

158 families

From Fracking to Finance, a Torrent of Campaign Cash ­ The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/us/politics/wealthy­families­presidential­candidates.html#donors­list 1/4

http://nyti.ms/1LxppVZ

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and NICHOLAS CONFESSORE OCT. 10, 2015

A look at some of the business, personal and ideological ties that bind

megadonors in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The Frackers

The great American energy boom of the last decade has produced a wave

of new billionaires and multimillionaires. Now they are throwing tens of

millions of dollars into the presidential campaign, with the biggest checks

going almost exclusively to Republicans and their “super PACs.” The top

donors includeTrevor Rees­Jones, who left a law practice in Dallas and turned

$4,000 in savings into an energy empire as the head of Chief Oil and Gas; Dan

and Farris Wilks, abortion opponents whose trucking and equipment business

struck gold in the fracking boom; and Karen Buchwald Wright, the head of

Ariel Corporation, an Ohio manufacturer of gas compressors.

Old Oil

Established Texas oil families are deeply involved in the campaign, too.

Descendants of the late gambler and oil speculator H.L. Hunt – once thought

to be the richest man in America – account for at least $2.3 million in

donations in this presidential campaign. Mr. Hunt’s fortune, feuds and

multiple marriages are the stuff of legend: In the late 1970s, two of his sons

reputedly tried to corner the silver market, and some say the Hunts inspired

the classic television series “Dallas.” At least three of his descendants have

followed his path in Republican politics in the 2016 campaign. Among them is

Ray Lee Hunt, the sole surviving Hunt heir with enough wealth to make the

Forbes list of billionaires. (Mr. Hunt is No. 92 in the United States.) The family

business, Hunt Oil, remains among the largest privately held oil companies in

the country. Mr. Hunt and his wife have put more than $2 million behind Mr.

Bush.

Hedge Fund Partners, Political Opposites

They may disagree on politics, but they earned fortunes together. The

hedge fund investor George Soros, who earned $1 billion in a bet against the

British pound in 1992, is a prominent liberal donor and philanthropist who

has given $1 million to a super PAC backing Hillary Rodham Clinton. His

partner on that trade was Stanley F. Druckenmiller, who would become a

prominent hedge fund manager in his own right, and is now close to Gov.

Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican. Mr. Druckenmiller is a strong

advocate of reduced spending on entitlement programs, which he has called

“current seniors stealing from future seniors.” He has put a total of more than

$300,000 behind Mr. Christie, Jeb Bush and Gov. John R. Kasich of Ohio.

Mystery Money

Some of the largest donations came from donors whose backgrounds and

occupations were difficult to determine from public records. A man named

Chen Shu Te gave $500,000 to Right to Rise USA, a super PAC backing Mr.

12/24/2015 From Fracking to Finance, a Torrent of Campaign Cash ­ The New York Times

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Bush, which told the Federal Election Commission that Mr. Chen lives in Hong

Kong. But public records reveal almost nothing about him, or even if he is an

American citizen. (Green card holders may contribute, but other foreign

nationals may not.) Hundreds of thousands of dollars in other contributions

came from limited liability corporations whose ownership is unclear. Among

them is TH Holdings L.L.C., which shares a New York City office suite with

Neuberger Berman, an investment management firm headed by a cousin of

Mr. Bush’s. More than a dozen of the firm’s other employees or executives

have given to Mr. Bush’s campaign or the super PAC, but under their own

names.

Dallas Royalty

The Preston Hollow neighborhood, home to former President George W.

Bush and other leading Dallas Republicans, accounts for nearly $13 million of

the money flowing to the presidential candidates and their super PACs. Much

of it went to help Jeb Bush, who has leveraged his family and political

connections in both Florida, where he was governor, and Texas, where his

brother George held the same office. But some of the neighborhood’s biggest

donors backed Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who has since dropped out of the

race. The Dallas pipeline owner Kelcy Warren gave a super PAC supporting

Mr. Perry’s committee $6 million, while another neighbor, Darwin Deason,

pitched in $5 million.

The Moneyed Left

Many of the biggest donors to Mrs. Clinton’s super PAC have ties to the

Democracy Alliance, a club that has strived to build a “progressive

infrastructure” of left­leaning think tanks, activist groups and grassroots

organizations. They include Mr. Soros, a founding member of the alliance; a

fellow hedge fund investor, S. Donald Sussman; and Stephen M. Silberstein, a

San Francisco­area programmer who made his fortune developing library

12/24/2015 From Fracking to Finance, a Torrent of Campaign Cash ­ The New York Times

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computer systems. Mrs. Clinton is also backed by Amy Goldman Fowler, a

philanthropist and heiress to a New York real estate fortune, and Patricia A.

Stryker, one member of an influential group of Colorado progressive donors

known as “the Gang of Four.”

The Top Early Donors in the Presidential Race

Wilks Family

$15.0 million

The Wilks family of Texas — brothers Farris and Dan and their spouses, Jo Ann and Staci — earned billions in the fracking boom.

Mercer Family

11.3 million

Robert Mercer, a Wall Street hedge fund magnate, and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer.

Toby Neugebauer

10.0 million

Co-founder of a private equity firm and son of Representative Randy Neugebauer, Republican of Texas.

Kelcy Warren

6.0 million

Dallas billionaire and chief executive of an energy company.

Ricketts Family

5.1 million

Joe Ricketts founded the online brokerage TD Ameritrade and is the patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs.

Deason Family

5.0 million

Darwin Deason is a Dallas-based billionaire who made his fortune by selling a data processing company to Xerox.

Diane Hendricks

5.0 million

Co-founder of a Wisconsin-based roofing company.

Norman Braman

5.0 million

Billionaire auto dealer in Florida, and a longtime patron of Marco Rubio.

Fernandez Family

3.1 million

Miguel "Mike" Fernandez built a series of health care services firms and now runs a private equity company.

Ronald M. Cameron

3.0 million

Chief executive of the agribusiness giant Mountaire.

Larry Ellison

3.0 million

Former chief executive of Oracle Corporation.

Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein

2.7 million

Owners of a Wisconsin packaging supply company, Mr. Uihlein also is descended from a founder of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co.

Benjamin León

2.5 million

Health care executive and owner of Besilu stables.

Hunt Family

2.3 million

Heirs to the late oil billionaire H. L. Hunt.

Jeffrey S. Yass

2.3 million

Executive of the Susquehanna International Group, an investment company.

Richard D. and Nancy Kinder

2.0 million

Mr. Kinder is executive chairman of a Houston pipeline company; Mrs. Kinder is president of the Kinder Foundation

Rooney Family

2.0 million

Family of Francis Rooney, a longtime supporter of the Bush family and owner of Manhattan Construction Group.

Saban Family

2.0 million

The billionaire media investor Haim Saban and his wife, Cheryl, a philanthropist.

McNair Family

2.0 million

Family of Robert C. McNair, owner of the Houston Texans in the N.F.L.

Ansary Family

2.0 million

Hushang Ansary, a Houston businessman and former Iranian ambassador to the United States, and his wife, Shahla.

Rees-Jones Family

2.0 million

The oil billionaire Trevor D. Rees-Jones and his wife, Jan.

Cohen Family

2.0 million

The hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen and his wife, Alexandra.

Perlmutter Family

2.0 million

Isaac Perlmutter is chief executive of Marvel Entertainment.

Donald J. Trump

1.8 million

Presidential candidate, second-generation real estate developer and entertainer.

Len Blavatnik

1.8 million

A Russian-born American citizen who is the richest man in Britain, according to Forbes.

Perenchio Family

1.7 million

A. Jerrold Perenchio, former chairman of Univision, and his wife, Margaret.

Bernard Marcus

1.6 million

Co-founder of Home Depot.

William E. Oberndorf

1.5 million

Founding partner of SPO Partners, an investment firm.

Helen Schwab

1.5 million

Wife of Charles R. Schwab, the brokerage company founder.

Scott Banister

1.3 million

Technology entrepreneur and investor.

Buchwald Wright Family

1.2 million

Karen Buchwald Wright, chief executive of an Ohio natural gas-compressor manufacturing company, and her husband, Tom Rastin.

Thomas H. Lee

1.2 million

Private equity and leveraged-buyout pioneer.

Robert A. Day

1.1 million

Grandson of the founder of Superior Oil and a longtime Bush family fund-raiser.

George Macricostas

1.1 million

Nevada-based businessman and technology entrepreneur.

Gregory W. Wendt

1.1 million

Equity portfolio manager.

Julian Robertson

1.1 million

Founder of Tiger Management, a hedge fund.

Charles B. Johnson

1.0 million

Financier and part-owner of the San Francisco Giants baseball franchise.

Soros Family

1.0 million

Family of George Soros, billionaire philanthropist and hedge fund investor.

Gary Chouest

1.0 million

President of Louisiana shipping company.

James L. Robo

1.0 million

Mr. Robo gave $2,700; NextEra Energy, where he is chairman and chief executive, made corporate contributions of more than $1 million.

Katzenberg Family

1.0 million

Family of Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation.

Thomas F. Stephenson

1.0 million

Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

Paul Fireman

1.0 million

Reebok founder and owner of a Nevada ranch.

Johnson Family

1.0 million

Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets, and his mother, Betty.

Al Hoffman Jr.

1.0 million

Retired Florida developer who served as ambassador to Portugal under President George W. Bush.

Brad Freeman

1.0 million

Chairman of a California private equity firm.

Abrams-McGrath Family

1.0 million

The film director J.J. Abrams and his wife, Katie McGrath.

Leslie H. Wexner

1.0 million

Chairman and chief executive of L Brands (formerly Limited).

Stephen M. Silberstein

1.0 million

Co-founder of a company that develops data systems for libraries.

Steven Spielberg

1.0 million

Film director and co-principal of DreamWorks.

Herbert M. Sandler

1.0 million

Founder, with his late wife, Marion, of Golden West Financial, the giant California savings and loan bought by the Wachovia Corporation in 2006.

Ronald O. Perelman

1.0 million

Billionaire businessman and art collector.

Raul Rodriguez

1.0 million

Founder of a home medical equipment company.

Louis Moore Bacon

1.0 million

Founder of the hedge fund Moore Capital Management.

S. Donald Sussman

1.0 million

Founder of Paloma Partners, a hedge fund in Greenwich, Conn.

Jay Schottenstein

1.0 million

President of the real estate company Schottenstein Management.

Christopher Cline

1.0 million

Billionaire coal mogul.

Bush Family

827,220

The Republican candidate Jeb Bush and family, including two ex-presidents, his father, George, and his brother George W.

David E. Shaw

802,700

Computer scientist and hedge fund founder.

Willis J. Johnson

800,000

Founder of Copart, a vehicle auction website.

Douglas L. Foshee

765,400

Chairman and chief executive of Sallyport Investments; former chief executive of El Paso Corp.

Buchan Family

755,400

Duke Buchan III, founder of the hedge fund Hunter Global Investors, and his wife, Hannah.

Patricia A. Stryker

755,300

Heir to medical supply company fortune.

Daniel Gilbert

750,000

Founder of Quicken Loans.

Duchossois Family

710,600

The horse racing magnate Richard L. Duchossois and his children.

Kvamme Family

700,000

Venture capital executives.

Lawrence F. DeGeorge

600,000

Financial advisory executive.

Troutt Family

570,800

Kenny A. Troutt, founder of a long-distance phone company, and his wife, Lisa.

Muneer Satter

560,400

Chicago investor and former Goldman Sachs executive.

Stern Family

552,800

Marc Stern is chairman of the TCW Group, a Los Angeles-based asset management firm.

Simons Family

533,100

Family of James H. Simons, founder of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies.

Fayez Sarofim

529,563

Founder of Houston investment firm.

Morton S. Bouchard

525,000

President and chief executive of an oil barge company.

Jackson Family

552,000

Owners of Jackson Healthcare LLC.

Herschend Family

513,672

Family that owns Herschend Family Entertainment, a theme park operator.

Peter and Julianna Holt

510,000

Principal owners of the N.B.A.'s San Antonio Spurs.

Leone Family

505,400

Doug Leone is partner in the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

Roberto Mignone

505,000

Founder of Bridger Management, a hedge fund.

Daniel Loeb

502,700

Hedge fund manager and activist investor.

John L. Nau

502,700

Chief executive of Silver Eagle Distributors.

S. Javaid Anwar

500,000

Pakistan-born founder of a West Texas energy company.

Howard E. Cox Jr.

500,000

Partner at Greylock, a venture capital firm.

Philip H. Geier Jr.

500,000

Former chairman and chief executive at the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Joseph Plumeri

500,000

Former chief executive of the insurance broker Willis Group Holdings.

Rex A. Sinquefield

500,000

An early pioneer of index funds, now retired and active in Missouri politics.

James A. Rubright

500,000

Retired chairman and chief executive of Rock-Tenn Company, a manufacturer of consumer packaging.

John P. McConnell

500,000

Chairman and chief executive of a steel company.

Micky Arison

500,000

Chairman of the cruise operator Carnival Corporation and owner of pro basketball's Miami Heat.

Bruce S. Sherman

500,000

Co-founder of Private Capital Management.

Ted E. Schlein

500,000

Senior partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Peter Karmanos

500,000

Co-founder of Compuware.

Robert D. Walter

500,000

Founder of Cardinal Health.

Chen Shu Te

499,137

A retiree living in Hong Kong -- but public records reveal little else about him.

The Goldman Family

455,400

John D. Goldman, a San Francisco insurance executive, is a son of the late philanthropist Richard N. Goldman.

Fox Family

450,000

Founders of Harbour Group, a St. Louis-based investment firm, and longtime Bush family allies.

R. William Becker

450,000

Owner of Peace River Citrus Products.

Manoj Bhargava

400,000

Founder of 5-hour Energy drinks.

Ezratti Family

400,000

Family of Itzhak Ezratti, president of G.L. Homes of Florida.

Galvin Family

370,400

Heirs to the Motorola fortune.

Lincoln Chafee

364,356

Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Jenkins Family

362,700

Family behind the grocery retailing chain Publix Super Markets.

Buckley Family

361,000

Walter W. Buckley, founder of a Bethlehem, Pa., investment management firm, and his wife, Marjorie.

William C. Edwards

350,000

Venture capital executive.

Kojaian Family

321,223

Family behind Kojaian Management Corp., a real estate investment firm based in Michigan.

Stephen M. Lessing

315,263

Partner for Aqueduct Capital Group and former George W. Bush fund-raiser.

Feingold Family

313,900

Owners of a dental benefits company.

Fanjul Family

313,500

Florida sugar barons, led by four brothers born in Cuba.

Stanley F. Druckenmiller

313,376

Investor and hedge fund manager.

John W. Childs

310,800

Florida-based founder of a Massachusetts-based private equity firm.

Lee Roy Mitchell

308,500

Chairman of Cinemark, a chain of movie theaters.

Siegel Family

305,500

Media investors.

Kenneth C. Griffin

305,000

Hedge fund manager ranked as the richest man in Illinois.

Kohler Family

305,000

Heirs to Kohler manufacturing fortune.

John C. Cushman III

302,700

Chairman of Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate firm.

Manuel Moroun

300,000

Detroit businessman and owner of the Ambassador International Bridge, the only privately-owned border crossing between the U.S. and Canada.

Victor F. Ganzi

280,000

President and chairman of the board of the P.G.A. Tour.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

278,821

Candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

C. Boyden Gray

277,700

Washington lawyer and conservative activist.

Linda McMahon

276,400

Former professional wrestling executive, who spent close to $100 million on two failed Senate bids in Connecticut.

Thomas Patrick

275,000

Chairman of asset management firm.

Byron Trott

265,179

Former Goldman Sachs banker.

Tichenor Family

264,831

Children of the late McHenry Tichenor Sr., a media mogul and pioneer of Spanish-language radio.

David B. Miller

262,700

Co-founder of a private equity firm that focuses on the oil and gas industry.

G. Brint Ryan

260,000

Chief executive of tax services firm.

Abessinio Family

260,000

Owners of Roch Capital, a Pennsylvania-based investment firm.

Thomas F. Petway III

259,700

Insurance executive.

Alexander Navab

258,272

Executive at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the New York-based private equity firm.

James C. Flores

255,400

Oil executive.

Brandon T. Steele

255,400

Financial services executive.

Marc Nathanson

255,400

Founder of Falcon Cable.

James Pugh

255,400

Chairman and chief executive of Epoch Residential, a luxury construction company.

Scott T. Ford

255,200

Arkansas commodity executive.

Thomas L. Corr

255,000

Head of a petroleum distributor.

John M. Angelo

255,000

Co-founded an investment firm.

Amy P. Goldman

252,700

The daughter of the late Sol Goldman, a wealthy New York real estate investor, Ms. Goldman has written three books about growing heirloom fruits and vegetables.

Robert Tuttle

252,700

Beverly Hills car dealer.

Jeffery Hildebrand

252,700

Founder of oil and natural gas exploration and production company.

John A. Gunn

252,700

Chairman emeritus of Dodge & Cox.

Jonathon Jacobson

252,700

Hedge fund founder.

Kenneth M. Garschina

252,700

Founder of a New York hedge fund and longtime backer of Rand Paul.

Glenn Creamer

252,700

Private equity investor.

Roger C. Altman

252,700

Investment banker who served as deputy secretary of Treasury during the Clinton administration.

Robert J. Bishop

251,500

Hedge fund founder.

Kenneth G. Langone

250,000

A founder of Home Depot and longtime supporter of Chris Christie.

David Tepper

250,000

One of the highest-earning hedge fund founders in the country, specializing in distressed assets.

Tracy W. Krohn

250,000

Auto racing enthusiast and founder of W&T Offshore, and independent oil and natural gas company.

Richard T. Farmer

250,000

Founder of Cintas Corp.

Barrett A. Toan

250,000

Former chief executive of a mail-order pharmacy company.

Dicke Family

250,000

Owners of Crown Equipment Corp.

Roger Penske

250,000

Founder and chairman of Penske Corp.

McMahon Family

250,000

Owners of Miller & Long Real Estate in Bethesda, Md.

Fred Cunningham II

250,000

Investor.

George M. Rapier

250,000

Chairman and chief executive of WellMed Medical Management.

Wolfe Family

250,000

Former owners of The Columbus Dispatch.

Art E. Favre

250,000

Founder of Performance Contractors.

The Lipsky Family

250,000

New Jersey hospital owners.

Robert E. Murray

250,000

Republican activist and chief executive of an Ohio coal mining company.

Ben Nash

250,000

Co-founder of PCS Wireless.

Sources: F.E.C. and I.R.S. filings; voter registrations; property assessment and deed records; corporate filings.

Graphics and additional research by Wilson Andrews, Kitty Bennett, Jeremy Bowers, Sarah Cohen, Amanda Cox, Chase Davis, Alicia DeSantis, Ken Schwencke, Derek Watkins and Karen Yourish

Karen Yourish and Sarah Cohen contributed to this report.

2015 The New York Times

==

By Ben Adler   GRIST

It’s nice to read all those stories about Bernie Sanders’ army of small donors, isn’t it? Growing even faster than the group that supported the record-breaking 2008 Obama campaign, this scruffy band of schoolteachers, nurses, and unionized blue-collar workers is going to take our country back and pass progressive legislation on everything from health insurance to climate change — right?

Well, not if the super-rich have any say. And they’ve got a lot. The big change since Obama’s 2008 election is that the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court ruled in 2010 in Citizens United v FEC that Congress cannot limit spending by rich individuals or corporations on political action committees. Hence, the rise of super PACs, which direct millions of dollars — in many cases from just one deep-pocketed donor — on behalf of a party or candidate.

The New York Times combed through Federal Election Commission reports for the presidential race through June 30 and looked at every donor who gave more than $250,000 — 158 families in total. Altogether, that group and the corporations they control gave more than $176 million. Add in the 200 families that gave between $100,000 and $250,000, and those 358 families have given well more than half of all the campaign funds thus far.

Of the 158 mega-donors, the most common industry in which they have made their money is finance and the second biggest is energy, mostly oil and gas. The donors are disproportionately old, white, and male, concentrated in a handful of very rich, non-diverse neighborhoods. Most importantly, their politics are not representative of the country at all: 138 of the 158, or 87 percent, are Republicans. Contrary to the popular image of moderate pro-business Park Avenue bankers, some of these donors hail from the GOP’s anti-government right wing. “More than a dozen donors or members of their families have been involved with the twice-yearly seminars hosted by the Kochs,” the Times notes. What they and the establishment donors have in common: They are investing in their own financial self-interest. Donating a few million dollars to a candidate who goes on to win and cuts a billionaire oil magnate’s taxes, or stymies regulations of his industry, will more than pay for itself.

If you’ve been wondering why public opinion in favor of higher taxes on the rich, increased Social Security benefits, or tighter regulation of carbon pollution doesn’t lead to passage of those policies, this is a big reason.

Here are some key quotes from the Times:

The donor families’ wealth reflects, in part, the vast growth of the financial-services sector and the boom in oil and gas, which have helped transform the American economy in recent decades. They are also the beneficiaries of political and economic forces that are driving widening inequality: As the share of national wealth and income going to the middle class has shrunk, these families are among those whose share has grown. …

In energy, some were latter-day wildcatters, early to capitalize on the new drilling technologies and high energy prices that made it economical to exploit shale formations in North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. Others made fortunes supplying those wildcatters with pipelines, trucks and equipment for “fracking.” …

The giving, more broadly, reflects the political stakes this year for the families and businesses that have moved most aggressively to take advantage of Citizens United, particularly in the energy and finance industries. …

While the shale boom has generated new fortunes, it has also produced a glut of oil that is now driving down prices. Most in the industry favor lifting the 40-year-old ban on exporting oil, which would give domestic producers access to new customers overseas, and approval of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Fortunes made through fracking and other types of oil and gas extraction are being deployed in politics to advance the industry’s interests, such as stymieing stronger fracking regulations, approving Keystone XL, and lifting the crude oil export ban. These are policies that do not serve the public interest by any measure.

If you didn’t already believe that we need a constitutional amendment reversing Citizens United, you should now.

==

jim h 8/15

   Once upon a time in our Good Ol' US-of-A, presidential contenders and their political parties had to raise the funds needed to make the race. How quaint.

        But for the 2016 run, this quaint way of selecting our candidates is no longer the case, thanks to the Supreme Court's malicious meddling in the democratic process in its reckless Citizens United decision. In that decision, the five members of the Corporate Cabal decreed that "non-candidate" campaigns can take unlimited sums of money directly from corporations. Therefore a very few wealthy powers can pour money into these murky political operations and gain unwarranted plutocratic power over the election process.

        And looking at the fundraising numbers, those wealthy powers have definitely taken charge of the electoral game. These very special interests, who have their own presidential agendas, now put up the vast majority of funds and run their own private campaigns to elect someone who will do their bidding.

        So far, of over $400 million raised to back candidates of either party in next year's race, half of the money has come from a pool of only about 400 people -- and two-thirds of their cash went not to candidates directly but to corporate-run super PACs. To get a get a grasp at what this looks like, take a peek at the super PACs supporting Ted Cruz. Of the $37 million they have raised, $36 million was pumped in by only three interests -- a New York hedge fund manager, a corporate plunderer living in Puerto Rico and the owners of a franking operation who've pocketed billions from the explosive use of this destructive drilling technology.

        So while Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Scott Walker and gang are the candidates, the driving forces in this election have names like Robert Mercer, Norman Braman, Diane Hendricks, Dan and Farris Wilks, Toby Neugebauer and Miguel Fernandez.

        Who are these people? They are part of a small but powerful coterie of multimillionaire corporate executives and billionaires who fund secretive presidential super PACs that can determine who gets nominated. These elephantine funders play politics like some superrich, heavy-betting gamblers play roulette -- putting enormous piles of chips on a name in hopes of getting lucky, then cashing in for governmental favors.

        Let's take a look at the funders:

        --Robert Mercer, chief of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, has already put more than $11 million into Ted Cruz's SuperPAC.

        --Norman Braman, former owner of the Philadelphia Eagle's football team, has $5 million down on Marco Rubio

        --Diane Hendricks, the billionaire owner of a roofing outfit and a staunch anti-worker activist, is betting $5 million on Scott Walker, as are the Koch Brothers.

        --Mike Fernandez, a billionaire investor in health-care corporations, has backed Jeb Bush with $3 million.

        --Ronald Cameron, an Arkansas poultry baron, is into Mike Huckabee for $3 million.

        These shadowy super PACs amount to exclusive political casinos, with only a handful of million-dollar-plus players dominating each one (including the one behind Hillary Clinton's campaign). These few people are not merely "big donors" -- they are owners, with full access to their candidate and an owner's prerogative to shape the candidate's policies and messages.

        But one of these new players assures us that they're not buying candidates for corporate and personal gain, but "primarily (for) a love economic freedom."

        Sure, sweetheart -- all you want is the "economic freedom" to pollute, defraud, exploit, rob and otherwise harm anything and anyone standing between you and another dollar in profit. The problem with the GOP presidential debates is that the wrong people are on stage. These treacherous few donors are using their bags of cash to pervert American democracy into rank plutocracy. Why not put them on stage and make each one answer pointed questions about what special favors they're trying to buy?

==

Follow the money.  October 23, PBS Frontline's Climate of Doubtgave viewers an hour's coverage of the tactics of climate anti-science, its advocates and a quick look into the funding behind it. Read on to follow the money deeper into the funny finances, all free of tax.

Last February,Fake Science, Fakexperts, Funny Finances, Free Of Tax explored some of those issues in detail. More information has been unearthed since, especially on DONORS TRUST, which Robert Brulle discussed with Frontline. Charles Koch and others useDONORS TRUST to anonymize their funding of policy/advocacy groups.  The attached revision exposes more detail of the $311 million given through DONORSbetween 2002-2010, managed by Whitney Ball.

1. Heartland Institute's Fakeducation from fakexperts is now integrated (Appendix Y.3).

2. Heartland Financials (H.1)  is augmented with data from the February Heartland Exposed documents.  It was known that much of Heartland Institute's funding came viaDONORS, and that there was one large donor, speculated by some to be reclusive Chicago businessman Barre Seid.  The combination of IRS Form 990s, February documents, and other information proves his identity, as the numbers simply do not work otherwise. (H.1.4-1).  More detail on donations (H.1.5) shows explicit funding of climate anti-science activities whose tax-free status seems dubious.

3. DONORS TRUST (and DONORS CAPITAL FUND)  have been studied in more detail.  Robert Brulle found another Charles Koch fund, Knowledge and Progress, which seems to give money only to DONORS.  Added to the others he controls (Charles Koch and Claude Lambe), money can flow through three separate funds. Then some of it goes through DONORS TRUST and DONORS CAPITAL FUND, which anonymize it, as Whitney Ball actually writes the checks. Some “Kochtopus” tentacles are difficult to see.

Some of this tax-advantaged money lands at George Mason University, including itsMercatus Center or even better Institute for Humane Studies … Chaired by Charles Koch.  SeeFunding and A.5-A.6 in the report there.

DONORS' grants have been analyzed in detail (I.4).  Of ~500 “charities” examined 2002-2010, the Top 40 (I.4.2-1) got 66% of the total, and of that $205M, all but $43M went to policy organizations, such as the American Enterprise Institute ($17M) Heartland Institute ($14M), or Americans for Prosperity Foundation ($11M). About 75% of the $311M given over those 9 years went to policy groups, all tax-free, with real donors anonymized. They must like this, as 2007-2010 accounted for $265M, following a big expansion in 2007.

Finally, in “Whitney Ball, her brother and her father” (I.5) some strange history is explored.  Barre Seid funds and Chairs the Chicago Freedom Trust,  C/O John Ball (Whitney's brother), located in Salt Lake City.  Trustees include Whitney Ball and Adam Myerson, who Chairs DONORS CAPITAL FUND.  In tracking all this, I also found discussion of their father, a lawyer whose repeated financial manipulations lost him the right to practice law in West Virginia.

Next week, Frontline runs   “Dark Money” Group Central to Citizens United May Have Misled IRS, also connected with attacks on climate scientists via the American Tradition Institute, David Schnare, Chris Horner. Once again, tax-free 501(c)(3) status seems to be abused for the sake of anti-science attacks.

Keep following the money.

UPDATE 10/26/12:people have asked to see the spreadsheet behind Figure I.4.2, which showed the top 80 recipients of funds from DONORS.  The 480-recipient  version is now attached.  Besides TRUST+CAPITAL totals shown already, it has TRUST and CAPITALseparately, although people may want to HIDE columns.  It is interesting to SORT by state and guess where the actual donors live, i.e., small donations to local charities may be hints, whereas many donations to the numerous VA + DC groups likely originate elsewhere.

UPDATE 02/11/13: Researchers at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education have just revealed crucial related history, as described here in Study Confirms Tea Party Was Created by Big Tobacco and Billionairesand TEA Party: Tobacco Everywhere Always.

Although Fakery 2's section 0.6 included Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, I did not include Citizens for a Sound Economy in Figure F.4, since it no longer existed after 2004. The CTCRE researchers found at least $5.3M tobacco funding for CSE over 1991-2002, making it the largest recipient, way ahead of Washington Legal Foundation ($1.5M) or Americans for Tax Reform ($1.4M), i.e., Grover Norquist.

UPDATE 06/23/13: the spreadsheet was updated for a more convenient format.

==

Rapid Rise in Super PACs Dominated by Single Donors

http://www.propublica.org/article/rapid-rise-in-super-pacs-dominated-by-single-donors

Super PACS that get nearly all of their money from one donor quadrupled their share of overall fund-raising in 2014.

he wealthiest Americans can fly on their own jets, live in gated compounds and watch movies in their own theaters.

More of them also are walling off their political contributions from other big and small players.

A growing number of political committees known as super PACs have become instruments of single donors, according to a ProPublica analysis of federal records. During the 2014 election cycle, $113 million – 16 percent of money raised by all super PACs – went to committees dominated by one donor. That was quadruple their 2012 share.

The rise of single-donor groups is a new example of how changes in campaign finance law are giving outsized influence to a handful of funders.

The trend may continue into 2016. Last week, National Review reported that Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination would be boosted not by one anointed super PAC but four, each controlled by a single donor or donor family.

The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling helped usher in the era of super PACs. Unlike traditional political action committees, the independent groups can accept donations of any dollar size as long as they don’t coordinate with the campaign of any candidate. Previously, much of the focus in big-money fundraising was on “bundlers” -- volunteers who tap friends and associates for maximum individual contributions of $5,400 to a candidate, then deliver big lump sums directly to the campaigns. Former president George W. Bush awarded his most prolific bundlers special titles such as “Ranger” and “Pioneer.”

While bundling intensified the impact of wealthy donors on campaigns, the dollar limits and the need to join with others diluted the influence of any one person. With a super PAC, a donor can single-handedly push a narrower agenda. Last year, National Journal profiled one such donor – a California vineyard owner who helped start the trend by launching his own super PAC and becoming a power player in a Senate race across the country.

Beyond the single-donor groups, big donations are dominant across all kinds of super PACs, according to the analysis. Six-figure contributions from individuals or organizations accounted for almost 50 percent of all super PAC money raised during the last two cycles.

“We are anointing an aristocracy that’s getting a stronger and stronger grip on democracy,” said Miles Rapoport, president of Common Cause, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce the influence of money on politics.

ProPublica’s analysis identified 59 super PACs that received at least 80 percent of their funding from one individual during the 2014 cycle. They raised a total of $113 million, compared with the $33 million raised by the 34 such groups that existed in 2012.

Donors who launch their own PACs are seeking more control over how their money is spent. And many have complained about the commissions that fundraising consultantstake off the top of their donations to outside groups. But the move carries risks if the patron is new to the arena.

...In one cautionary tale, a reclusive 89-year-old Texas oilman with no political experience launched Vote2ReduceDebt, one of the nation’s highest-spending conservative super PACs. A ProPublica investigation found that much of the donor’s millions went to entities run by the group’s consultants or their close associates. The super PAC imploded as principals traded allegations including self-dealing, faked campaign events and a plot to siphon the PAC’s money to a reality TV show....

20142012

Top Single-Donor PACs in 2014

Super PAC Largest Donor Contributions Lean $ raised from largest donor % raised from largest donor

NextGen Climate Action Committee Thomas Steyer Democrat $66,900,000 86%

Independence USA PAC Michael Bloomberg Democrat $17,431,931 100%

Vote 2 Reduce Debt (V2RD) Kenneth Davis Jr. Republican $2,892,526 97%

Values Are Vital Ronald Firman Republican $2,148,300 80%

CE Action Committee Thomas Steyer Democrat $1,825,000 92%

Liberty Principles PAC Inc* Richard Uihlein Republican $1,780,000 100%

Americans For Progressive Action Thomas Jordan Republican $1,700,000 100%

Americans For Common Sense (AFCS) Angelo Tsakopoulos Republican $1,347,000 98%

American Principles Fund Sean Fieler Republican $1,138,724 84%

CounterPAC Jim Greer Republican $852,123 91%

Americas PAC Richard Uihlein Republican $670,000 89%

New Hampshire Priorities Peter Taul Republican $562,000 88%

American Alliance Sheldon Adelson Republican $500,000 86%

Our America Fund Richard Uihlein Republican $500,000 97%

Character Counts Political Action Committee Gary Davis Republican $445,000 100%

Space PAC Martine Rothblatt Democrat $425,000 99%

Kansans For Responsible Government Willis Hartman Republican $285,100 97%

Protect The Harvest Political Action Committee Forrest Lucas Democrat $250,000 94%

US Jobs Council Robert Mercer Republican $200,000 91%

Spirit Of Democracy America Charles Munger Jr. Republican $149,375 82%

==

2010 top 10

http://www.hightowerlowdown.org/node/2603#financial

Go back to the list of industries

==

hmmn

http://www.campaignmoney.com/

==

left needs to step up

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/6-reasons-why-green-funders-need-to-get-off-the-fence/

hvy hitters  http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

indiv 50K plus  http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/indivs.php

==

Their presents were buried in the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending plan to keep the government open – on page 1599 of the 1603-page bill! Included were provisions that:

• added new party committees that can collect contributions, and 
• tripled the amount of money each one of them could receive from each donor. 

==

http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topindivs.php

8/14

In preparation for the fall election season, OpenSecrets.org is releasing our overhauled top contributors lists. These lists will provide users with an easy way to see the organizations and individuals donating the most money to federal campaigns and committees. We have long provided this information, but in the past it could be confusing or misleading. For example, organizations that only donated to outside spending groups could show up as “on the fence” because they didn’t donate to Republicans or Democrats, when in actuality these organizations heavily favored conservative or liberal political causes. Now, the true tilt of a donor will be displayed, allowing users to easily identify the partisan preferences of an organization or individual.

The most comprehensive list is our new Top Overall Federal Contributors list. Here, you can see the top donors to nearly every type of federal entity – campaigns, parties, federally-focused 527s, super PACs and Carey committees are all included in these totals. These numbers include direct giving from the organization’s employees as well as its PAC, if it has one. What’s missing is the money that we can’t see: Donations todark money groups are never disclosed and therefore organizations that choose to spend their money in the shadows will not appear as prominently on the list as we might expect.

One of the first things you may notice about the 2014 list is that of the top 20 organizations, only two favor Republicans. The rest, with the exception of one “on the fence” trade association, all strongly prefer liberal policies and Democratic candidates. ActBlue, long a major player in directing small contributions to Democrats, tops the list of organizations. In addition, 11 of the top 20 organizations are unions. This is a pronounced shift from 2012.  In that election cycle, seven of the top 20 organizations favored conservatives.

On the Top Individuals list, the story is different. Although the top three overall donors are Democrats, six of the top 10 and 11 of the top 20 heavily favor Republicans.

The Top Overall Donors list can be greatly influenced by unlimited donations to 527 organizations and outside groups, so we provide the option for users to see those organizations and individuals which donate the most hard money. These totals include individual contributions made by employees of these companies to candidates and parties, as well as limited contributions made by the company’s own PAC. In this case, a different pattern emerges. Not only do the organizations tend to be less polarized in their partisan preferences, but many of the organizations favor Republicans. Eight of the top 20 organizations fall “on the fence,” equally supporting Democratic and Republican candidates and parties.

The giving patterns of the top hard money donors are wildly different from those of thetop outside money donors. Among the top 50 outside money donors not a single organization gives equally to both sides of the ideological spectrum — nearly every organization supports liberals or conservatives with 100% of their money. As is the case with the top overall donors, the top outside money donors are dominated by liberal organizations, a pronounced contrast from the 2012 cycle. In 2012, four of the top five outside money donors favored conservative outside groups; this cycle, all five top donors are liberals.

The one place where conservative organizations are out-giving liberal ones is in the newly important area of joint fundraising committees. These committees are designed as an easy way for a donor to write a single check and have that money distributed to a variety of campaigns and party committees. This cycle, 18 of the top 20 organization donors to joint fundraising committees favor Republicans. Among individuals, a whopping 100 percent of the top 10 and 90 percent of the top 50 donors are Republicans.

It’s still early — by fundraising standards — in the 2014 cycle, so check back as we move closer to November 4th to keep tabs on the organizations and individuals trying to influence your vote.

Categories: 527s Campaign finance Congressional Elections Outside Money

Tags: Top Donorsjhnjhnjhnjhnjhnio0

==

brulle 2013:

donor trust 14%

scaife 7%, bradley 5 plus 1% ed, koch 5, howard charitable fdn 4, john w pope 4, searle 4, templeton, dunn's fdn for the adv of rt thinking 2, smith richardson 2, vanguard 2, ...annenberg

http://www.followthemoney.org/

The New Politics of Judicial Elections, 2011-12: How New Waves of Special Interest Spending Raised the Stakes for Fair Courts

This collaborative report analyzes the prominent role of special interest money in state supreme court elections. In 2011-12, many of these races “seemed alarmingly indistinguishable from ordinary political campaigns—featuring everything from Super PACs and mudslinging attack ads to millions of dollars of candidate fundraising and independent spending.”

new tool anomaly tracker:

http://www.opensecrets.org/resources/learn/anomalies.php?type=D

Lawmakers receiving twice as much in contributions from their top donor as their next highest donor

==

Top 25 super PAC donors for 2012 election cycle

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/12/20/11970/top-25-super-pac-donors-2012-election-cycle

==

http://news.muckety.com/2013/03/24/thought-promoters-funders-of-major-conservative-think-tanks/41751?rLink

==

funders of climate skep (esp attacks on sci:)

Extracts from Ofcom Complaint, by Category

Unsubstantiated Allegations of

Corruption Against Scientific

Funding Bodies

http://www.ofcomswindlecomplaint.net/Misreprestn_Views/FundingBodies.htm#ISA

The information in the table below was obtained from the websites that it cites and links to throughout. The authors of this complaint carried out this research with the help of many others, whose contributions are acknowledged in section 1.13, page 12 [of the full complaint].

lessig tedtalk: http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html

Mystery donors poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2012 elections via nonprofits and shell corporations, despite widespread public support for disclosure and decades of legal precedent supporting the public���s right to know the sources of election-related spending. A new report from the U.S. PIRG Education Fund and the Center for Media and Democracy found that contributions from phony for-profit corporations accounted for nearly 17 percent of all business donations to Super PACs.

Read more

==

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/14-who-are-the-top-1-percent-and-how-do-they-earn-a-living/

Most working people receive a401(k)or similar retirement account as part of how they’re paid. Many corporations, which are funded by these investments, are funneling money into Super PACs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and shady political front groups.

Don’t let your family’s nest egg become a political weapon for the corporate agenda.

Fight back: Join Public Citizen and Daily Kos in urging your senators to support the Shareholder Protection Act.

The Shareholder Protection Act would require CEOs of publicly traded corporations to get shareholders’ permission before spending corporate money on political campaigns. The law would also require corporations to keep 401(k) investors informed about how their money is being spent.

http://billmoyers.com/spotlight/money-politics/

http://www.motherjones.com/authors/andy-kroll

Tracking Dark Money

Unlike super PACs, tax-exempt nonprofits like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS or Americans for Prosperity don’t have to reveal their donors. These “social welfare” organizations are not considered PACs, so disclosure rules don’t apply to them. But that doesn’t mean journalists are just leaving them be. For continuous news and insight, we recommend following these reporters and watchdog organizations on Twitter: @MotherJones, @AndrewKroll, @iWatch, @FredWertheimer and @sunfoundation.

Five Best Tools for Following the Money

June 15, 2012

“Data” is the buzzword of the 2012 election. Making sense of campaign finance data is crucial to understanding what will happen in the coming weeks and months, as well as the underlying forces that influence those events. But you don’t have to be a journalist — or have a computer science degree — to dig in. Below are five tools that enable anyone to learn about the money fueling this election.

A Guide to Political Donations

If you’re not a multimillionaire, you might be unfamiliar with all the rules regarding political donations. The New York Times created this helpful interactive tool that illustrates options for citizens and corporations wishing to donate as little as $25 or as much as $10 million.

Super PAC Tallies

OpenSecrets.org, from the Center for Responsive Politics,  is a great source for super PAC data. The site updates on a daily basis. As of today, there are 597 registered super political action committees that have reported receipts of $221,019,352. They’re “super” because there are no restrictions on how much a person or corporation can donate. However, super PACs are required to report all contributions on a quarterly basis. OpenSecrets has crunched all the filings into this user-friendly spreadsheet. Which PAC has raised the most money so far? Restore Our Future at $56,512,634.

Follow the Unlimited Money

This tool, produced by The Sunlight Foundation, allows you to see where all that money is being spent, and whether it is being directed in a positive or negative way. For example, Restore Our Future spent 85 percent of the $46,540,814.97 it has outlayed since the beginning of 2011 in ads critical of other candidates. The Sunlight Foundation processes the raw reports as they are submitted to the Federal Elections Commission. They even include copies of the original PDFs you can review yourself.

The 2012 Money Race: Compare the Candidates

Produced by The New York Times,this interactive tool, enables you to see how much money the candidates’ campaigns have received, how much cash they have on hand and how they compare to one another. At the end of March, President Obama’s campaign had over 10 times the amount of money on hand as Governor Romney’s campaign. Color-coded maps show that President Obama does particularly well raising money on the coasts, and both candidates doing well in urban areas.

Maplight: Revealing Money’s Influence on Politics

Money flows into Washington every day, some of it directed towards the passage or stoppage of legislation or other Congressional activity. Maplight’s easy-to-use search engine lets you see who’s spent what in support or opposition to specific legislation. For example, spending against the Senate DISCLOSE Act has heated up in the past few weeks. Opponents have outspent supporters of the bill by a 3 to 1 margin: $74.5 to $24 million. The list of those contributors includes groups one might expect, such as the U.S. Chamber of Congress and the Heritage Foundation, but also includes groups that are surprising (the ACLU) and somewhat baffling (Society of American Florists, American Bakers Association).

 graphic.

Rank	Contributor	Total Contributions	To Dems	To Repubs	To Other	[Partisan Tilt](http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topindivs.php#legend)
1	Perry, Robert J. & Doylene Perry Homes Houston, TX	$2,020,800	0%	1%	99%
2	Allan Soros, Jonathan T. & Jennifer Soros Fund Management New York, NY	$1,041,500	3%	0%	97%
3	Parker, Sean Entrepreneur New York, NY	$270,800	8%	0%	92%
4	Schweitzer, Edmund O III & Beatriz Schweitzer Engineering Labs Pullman, WA	$255,200	0%	100%	0%
5	Bommer, Scott A. & Donya A. Sab Capital Management New York, NY	$253,600	4%	96%	0%
6	Abrams, Jeffrey J. & McGrath, Kathleen First Tuesday Media Encino, CA	$248,800	59%	0%	40%
7	Satter, Muneer & Hertel, Kristen Goldman Sachs Winnetka, IL	$242,600	0%	100%	0%
8	Nau, John L. III & Barbara Silver Eagle Distributors Houston, TX	$242,500	0%	46%	54%
9	Cutts, Matthew & Cynthia Google Inc Los Altos, CA	$205,000	0%	0%	100%
10	Fischer, David T. Sr. & Jennifer Suburban Collection Troy, MI	$204,800	0%	98%	2%
11	Connell, Grover & Patricia Connell Co Westfield, NJ	$202,100	100%	0%	0%

http://maplight.org/

http://source2012.tumblr.com/

consider the source

Most independent political ads for the 2012 election fueled by secret donors

According to a new analysis by the Washington Post’s Dan Eggen, about 90% of the $31.2 million spent on outside political ads aimed at the 2012 general election so far came from groups that don’t have to disclose their donors. The graphic above gives a breakdown of the biggest spenders.

As we reported last week, Karl Rove’s Crossroads political machine raised $76.8 million of the $123 million it brought in through the end of last year via its non-disclosing nonprofit arm. We also took a look at how conservative super PAC FreedomWorks for America has received more than half of its $3.5 million from its 501(c)(4), which also doesn’t have to reveal its donors. 

All this suggests that we���ll be seeing a lot more political spending from these deep-pocketed nonprofits as we draw closer to election day.

hightower:

LIST http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/?funderID=7

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:nD9sk-SnzUAJ:www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/RightWingFunding.xls+armstrong+foundation+right+wing+funder&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institutes-2009-climate-conference-new-york-funding-history-sponsors

http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/149011/5_rightwing_scumbags_bankrolling_dangerous_and_plain_weird_conservative_causes?page=entire

the left:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/

people: http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/people/ 200 screens?!

eg Abramoff, Jack   1997-2004   -   19   The Maldon Institute; National

Center for Public Policy Research; Toward Tradition

Meese supports eg

http://mediamattersaction.org/transparency/organization/Landmark_Legal_Foundation

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2010's Top 10 Money and Politics Stories

Submitted by Adam Smith and ... on Thu, 12/23/2010 - 12:50

Whether it was apologizing to BP, the Fair Elections Now Act passing out of a U.S. House committee, or the Supreme Court declaring that corporations were people when it comes to spending money in elections, 2010 was a big year for news about money in the political process. Here's our top ten list. Leave your suggestions in the comments.

1. In Citizens United, SCOTUS Gives Special Interests Free Rein, and Senate Republicans Roadblock Disclosure

Perhaps no other event changed the landscape when it came to political money than the Roberts Court’s long-awaited January decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission that gave corporations the same ability as individuals to spend money to directly influence elections. The sweeping language of both sides of the narrow five-to-four decision, the condemnatory response from the political and reform communities – including the unique denunciation by the President at the State of the Union – set the stage for the decision’s impact. Front groups, largely on the right, set up shop by the spring to add to the financial firepower already assembled by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others. The nearly $300 million in traceable independent, non-party spending set a new record for a midterm election. Despite opinion polls showing overwhelming opposition to the decision, the Mitch McConnell-led Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked the DISCLOSE Act from passage, and reaped the benefits of large amounts of secret money (see #4) in the election campaign.

2. Fair Elections Now Act Advances

In 2010, the Fair Elections Now Act, legislation that would allow candidates to run for office by relying on small donations from people back home, passed out of a House Committee and, according to supporters, had the votes to win a vote on the floor. A coalition of nearly 300 national and state organizations, led by Public Campaign and Common Cause, grew support in Congress from 56 House co-sponsors in the 110th Congress to 165 in the 111th. Efforts included a multi-million dollar paid media, grassroots, and lobbying campaign that led to a dramatic increase in support for the legislation. Everyone from political donors in New York City to grassroots supporters in Louisiana were calling Congress to tell them that it’s time to change our big money system. Election Day polling showed that 75 percent of voters see the money spent this year as a “real threat” to democracy and 64 percent support Fair Elections. Congress must take note--support for reform isn’t going away.

3. Tom DeLay: The Hammer Gets Nailed

It took five years, but disgraced former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) was finally convicted by a jury of his peers, for conspiracy and money laundering connected to the funneling of corporate money into state elections in Texas. That DeLay’s conviction was front-paged across the country four-and-a-half years after he resigned from Congress was a testament to how synonymous with corruption and scandal his name had become. DeLay, though, had already paid mightily in the political arena. His fall from grace was the result of his own hubris and a concerted, multi-faceted 2004-2006 campaign spearheaded by Public Campaign Action Fund to force his resignation, make it clear to our elected officials that we’re watching, and underscore that the American people will hold corrupt politicians accountable for their actions. The DeLay story will hang over the new leadership like a bad stench: his sentencing hearing is scheduled for early January, just when the new Congress is sworn in. As everyone knows, the pay-to-play system he benefitted from remains firmly in place.

4. Super PACs, the Chamber of Commerce, and Secret Money

The predictions regarding the impact of Citizens United ranged from ��Armageddon” to “tsunami” to ���avalanche.” Whatever biblical or meteorological metaphor you use, the outside money spent on the 2010 elections shaped who got elected and, quite possibly, what they’ll do as Members of Congress. A significant portion of the $293 million in reported spending was from undisclosed sources, leading to coverage of secret and foreign money. In the end, the big bets by cash-flush front groups, including those run by Karl Rove, expanded the number of districts deemed competitive, spread Democratic party and candidate resources thin, and set the political narrative of a Republican resurgence. Whether we will ever know the source of the secret donations is somewhat beside the point – the Congress these big money front groups helped to elect will be more pro-Wall Street, more pro-Big Oil, and more pro-insurance company than the last. You can guess where the money came from.

5. Sen. Russ Feingold’s Loss

Sen. Russ Feingold’s (D-Wisc.) three-term tenure in the U.S. Senate as a champion of campaign finance reform came to an end at the hands of a multi-millionaire, Tea Party-backed, self-funded candidate named Ron Johnson. It’s a bitter irony that outside groups spent nearly $2.4 million to benefit Johnson, including three-quarters of a million dollars in attack ads by the U.S. Chamber. (Feingold has demanded for years that outside groups not spend money on his behalf.) But in the end, the outside campaign proved so decisive that Sen.-elect Johnson paid a “thank you” visit to his new bosses over at the Chamber in December. Feingold’s record on reform, though battered by the courts, will live on as an example of a long-standing elected official who served until the end by doing what he believed was right for his constituents and the nation. That type of courage and commitment to principles will be missed in Congress.

6. Quotes that Warmed the Hearts of Special Interests Everywhere

Perhaps one of the most striking examples of money in politics this year was the extent to which some lawmakers blatantly stated their fealty to big corporate interests. “I apologize,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) to the CEO of BP during a televised hearing on the Gulf Coast oil calamity. Barton has received $1.5 million from oil and gas interests during his time in Congress. Then there was incoming House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) who told Wall Street donors that they must have “buyer’s remorse” for funding Democrats and then seeing the party forge ahead with Wall Street reform. Was the message that Republicans will stay bought? Lastly, just this month, incoming House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) acknowledged what many Americans have come to believe: Washington���s work is to “serve the banks.” Bachus has been rewarded for that “service” so far, with $2.8 million in Big Bank contributions.

7. House Spending and Fundraising Reaches $1 Billion

On October 26, Public Campaign Action Fund’s Campaign Money Watchpredicted that the battle for the U.S. House would reach $1 billion for the first time in history���and we were right. 2010 spending equals a 30 percent increase from 2008, a dramatic difference from a presidential election to a midterm election. These record-shattering totals showed that all the focus on outside spending missed the larger issue—this spending was also fueling candidates’ own need to raise money. And the more time these candidates have to spend raising money, the less time they have to talk with voters and address our nation’s challenges.

8. Self-funders Spend Big To Lose (Mostly)

The 2010 election cycle saw a big new wave of ultra-rich self-funders willing to spend their significant fortunes for elected office. Former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman spent more than $160 million in her unsuccessful bid for California Governor and wrestling executive Linda McMahon spent $50 million to lose the Connecticut Senate race. Candidates spent more than $4.5 million of their own money to lose Senate races in West Virginia and California, and the governor���s race in Connecticut. The truth is, money can buy you airtime and media attention—but it can’t fix a flawed candidate. While there are always exceptions, self-funders historically don’t fare well at the ballot box. As the cost of running for office continues to rise, however, party insiders will look even more at those able to fund their own races further making our elections about money over ideas.

9. Two “Clean Elections” Governors Elected

This might have been the year of outside special interests and outsized campaign fundraising at the federal level, but Arizona and Connecticut showed that there is another way. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) and Connecticut Governor-elect Dan Malloy (D) became the second and third governors elected under Fair Elections-style public financing systems. Gov. Brewer, who used the system in previous runs for statewide office, replaced another Clean Elections governor in 2009, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Gov.-elect Malloy, who beat the wealthy self-funding Republican Tom Foley, is the first Fair Elections-funded governor elected in Connecticut. Brewer and Malloy are just two of the hundreds of Clean Elections candidates elected in states across the country in 2010.

10. Advocates Beat Back Repeal of Arizona Clean Elections

For years, the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry has worked with its allies in the state legislature on efforts to repeal the voter-approved Clean Elections system. With the Courts throwing the stability of the system into question last year (see honorable mention below), repeal looked imminent, but state advocates like the Arizona Advocacy Network and national partners like Public Campaign led an all out assault on Clean Elections foes and staved off repeal—a big win for everyday Arizonans in a year where big money special interests seemed to get all the victories.

Honorable MentionsThere was a lot of news this year and we can���t fit everything in, but these stories below are worthy of a few sentences.

Arizona and Connecticut “Triggered” Matching Funds.While advocates may have staved off repeal in the legislature, opponents of small donor-driven elections are also trying their hand in the Court. Clean Elections matching funds that allow a publicly-financed candidate to keep pace with well-financed opponents and battle back against outside money attacks are currently on hold in Arizona and Connecticut pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision expected in June 2011.

Kevin Spacey Nominated for Casino Jack.Nothing crystallized for the American people the problem of our political system like the Jack Abramoff scandal and now they can live through it all again. Kevin Spacey stars as Jack Abramoff in Casino Jack, a feature film opening across the country this month. Spacey recently received a Golden Globe Best Actor nomination for his portrayal of the corrupt former lobbyist.

Wall Street Reform. A mother lode of campaign contributions comes from is the financial sector. That made the wrangling over the outlines – and the details – of this year’s Wall Street reform bill a special interest goldmine for lawmakers who a) sided with the industry, or b) softened the bill’s biggest punches.

Ethics.While tangentially related to campaign money, the ethics trial and conviction of Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) and still-pending trial of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) show the importance of a robust and powerful ethics process in the U.S. House. Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who faced a year of bad press over his affair with a staffer, was recently let off the hook by the Federal Elections Commission and the Department of Justice, but still faces investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee.

What did we miss? What was your favorite (or worst) money in politics story of 2010?

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• Citizens United
• Clean Elections
• Connecticut
• Fair Elections Now Act
• Jack Abramoff
• Russ Feingold
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Public Campaign Action Fund

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 Armstrong Foundation

$ 18,020,705 total assets at end of 2005

$ 781,750 grants paid

$ 1,329,886 total revenue

$ 1,059,897 total expenses

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another mystry 

Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, $100,000

Banana republicans:

p20

The Koch brothers began actively funding conservative political causes in the 1970s through the Koch Family Foundations, which consist of the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, the

Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation. Since then, they have lavished tens of millions of dollars on "free market" advocacy in and around Washington. According to their filings with the Internal Revenue Service, they gave away more than $9 million in 2001 alone, almost all of it to conservative groups such as the libertarian Cato Institute (which Charles co-founded in 1977), Citizens for a Sound Econorriv (\vhich David helped launch in 1986), the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Reason Foundation, Heritage Foundation, Landmark Legal Foundation and Young America's Foundation." r

Like the Koch brothers, another conservative billionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife-a member of the Mellon banking and oil family-also began giving heavily to conservative causes in the 1970s. According to former Wall Street Journal reporter Karen Rothmyer, Scaife was "the biggest funder of the New Right, spending millions of dollars a year to help establish the Heritage Foundation and a host of other think tanks focused on marketing conservative ideas both to Congress and to the public. Since then, he has continued to be a prodigious funder of the right. After Republicans won a majority in Congress in the 1994 elections, political science professor Thomas Ferguson commented that Scaife "had as much to do with the Gingrich revolution as Gingrich himself" 14 By 1999, the Washington Post reported that Scaife's foundations-the Sarah Mellon Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, the Allegheny Foundation and the Scaife Family Foundation-had given $340 million over a period of four decades to conservative causes and institutions." By 2002, they held more than $230 million in assets, and in that year alone the gave away more than $22 million."

Other leading conservative funders include the following:

* The Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, with assets exceeding $532 million" was founded by brothers Lynde and Harry Bradley, who made their fortunes producing electronic and radio components. Harry Bradley was an early financial supporter of the John Birch Society and a contributor to William F. Buckley's National Review." The foundation gives away more than $25 million a year to promote the deregulation of business, privatization of public education, the rollback of social welfare programs and the privatization of government services. Bradley money supports major conservative groups such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

* The John M. Olin Foundation, which grew out of a family manufacturing business in chemicals and munitions, had assets of approximately $90 million in 1998. Since the year 2000, however, it has begun spending down its endowment at a rate of about $20 million per year, with the goal of putting itself out of business by the end of the year 2005." This policy reflects the wishes of John Olin, who selected politically like-minded colleagues to manage the fund upon his death and who wanted to make sure that following their deaths, the fund would not pass into the hands of people with contrary views.

* The Adolph Coors Foundation, funded by the family that owns the Adolph Coors brewery, earned notoriety in the 1970s and 1980s for its anti-union, anti-gay, anti-minority stance. Recipients of its funding have included Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation, which has filed legal briefs opposing gay marriage, calling it "an infamous crime against nature." It also helped fund publication of Catholic priest Enrique Rueda's books, The Homosexual Network and Gays, AIDS and You, which refer ominously to "the evil nature" of homosexuality. It has also funded the Heritage Foundation, which opposes gays and lesbians serving in the military and other actions that "advance the goals of homosexual activists." Other recipients of Coors funding have included anti-feminist icon Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum and Stop ERA campaign, the John Birch Society and a variety of organizations affiliated with the religious right. In the 1990s, however, the Coors company launched an aggressive public relations campaign to repair its image with supporters of gay rights who were boycotting Coors beer. It offered money to gay and lesbian rights groups and became one of the first companies in the United States to offer marriage benefits to employees in same-sex relationships. It hired Mar-y Cheney, the openly lesbian daughter of current vice president Dick Cheney, as its "corporate relations manager for the gay and lesbian market" and signed a marketing contract with Witeck-Combs Communications, a public relations firm that specializes in niche marketing to the gay community. The Coors family also took steps to distance the Coors name from its political activities. In 1993, it established the Castle Rock Foundation with a $36.6 million endowment from the Coors Foundation .21 Under the family's direction, Castle Rock continues to pour $2 to $3 million of Coors profits each year into anti-gay and other conservative causes 2' but the company itself is officially gay-friendly.

* Other significant conservative foundations include: the Smith Richardson Foundation, financed by the Vicks VapoRub fortune, with assets of about $250 million, which gives grants totaling more than $20 million per year; the Michigan-based Earhart Foundation, which gives away about $5 million annually, including grants and fellowships to help conservative college students; and the JM Foundation and Philip M. McKenna Foundation, each of which gives away more than $1 million annually.

As conservative groups point out when their finances are scrutinized, theirs is only a tiny slice of the money that foundations give away every year in the United States. The foundations listed above give a total of approximately $110 million each year, which is only one-third of one percent of the $30.5 billion that foundations of all types-left, right, center and apolitical-gave in 2001. The assets held by conservative foundations are also tiny compared to the $24.1 billion held by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation's $9.3 billion, or the Rockefeller Foundation's $2.6 billion. The Gates Foundation gives hundreds of millions of dollars to the National Institutes of Health, the Children's Hospital Foundation, Knowledge Works Foundation, the Seattle Art Museum, Mexico's public libraries - recipients that reflect their interest in education and global health. The Ford and Rockefeller foundations concentrate on projects like economic development, human rights and eliminating hunger. Most foundations spend their money on "brick and mortar" philanthropy- hospitals, museums, universities and symphonies. Many foundations have progressive intentions that they express by funding food banks, housing for the homeless and other direct services to the poor, disabled or disadvantaged. What makes conservative foundations different is that they are remarkably unencumbered by these sorts of distractions, enabling them to focus in a disciplined way on achieving their direct political goals. Whereas other foundations mostly try to change the world by offering services, the conservative foundations have prioritized influencing ideas and policies.

Big Rich

Vanity Fair special correspondent Bryan Burrough, co-author of Barbarians at the Gate , spent 31/2 years crawling through West Texas courthouses and Austin libraries as well as massaging interviews from prickly heirs to produce his new book, The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes.

While his theme is what he calls "the Big Four"– H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison Sr., Sid Richardson and Hugh Roy Cullen – he takes interesting detours to unearth stories of Glenn McCarthy (the inspiration for the movie Giant 's Jett Rink), Fort Worth's Bass brothers and the ubiquitous John Connally.

While most Americans wrestled with the Great Depression, from 1931 onward, a band of Texas oil titans amassed fortunes that eclipsed those of the Rockefellers and Mellons and enjoyed their wealth with a hedonistic abandon that crafted a view of Texas that still holds in the remotest reaches of the globe.

��

Best friends Richardson and Murchison Sr. owned adjoining Texas coastal islands while Clint Murchison Jr. bought a tropical island in the Bahamas . They introduced a world of luxury private planes, huge ranches and tabloid-worthy gaucheries to a nation devastated by an economic collapse and sobered by World War II.

...

The Hunts, Murchisons and Cullens have all been bloodied in the past because of the founding fathers' right-wing politics, which was chum in the water for conspiracy theorists.

"But you can just dismiss the conspiracy people," advises Burrough.

Oliver Stone's take

The most persistent canard is that the night before President Kennedy was murdered, Clint Murchison Sr. called a meeting of the oil elite at his Preston Road estate with Hunt and others to plan a coup d'etat. Oliver Stone included the scene in the movie Nixon , placing the former vice president at the party with Larry Hagman playing an unnamed oil tycoon who treated Nixon like a supplicant.

The facts have not gotten in the way of the story. In reality, by 1963, Clint Sr. had turned his big estate over to his son John. "Pop was stroke-ridden at that time and it was very difficult for him to talk," says Clint Sr.'s grandson Robert Murchison. "He spent the vast majority of his time at Gladoaks [his ranch in East Texas]. And Pop and H.L. Hunt did not socialize."

"It's so outlandish, it doesn't bother us," says Robert's brother Burk Murchison.

But one thing Stone got right was the attitude with which the oillionaires viewed Richard Nixon in the 1950s.

According to Burrough, candidates Dwight Eisenhower and Nixon visited Clint Murchison's Hotel Del Charro in La Jolla, Calif., to pay their respects to Big Clint, Richardson and their rich friends.

"They spoke to Nixon like he was an office boy," the Del Charro's manager Allan Witwer is quoted as saying in The Big Rich.

...

Not all of The Big Rich is a distillation of previously told stories. Burrough is one of the first reporters to get below the topsoil of Fort Worth's secretive Sid Richardson, a lifelong bachelor with no direct heirs and no known lady friends. In 1957, Ladies Home Journal estimated him to be the wealthiest man in America. And he intended to leave every dime to the Sid Richardson Foundation, shutting out his loyal nephew and right-hand man, Perry Bass, and Perry's four sons, today's billionaire Bass brothers.

But in his autobiography, former Gov. John Connally told how he, as Richardson's personal attorney, interceded and asked that he leave money to the Basses.

"Why should I?" Richardson snapped.

In the end, he bequeathed his retreat, St. Joe Island, and $2 million each to Perry and his four sons. The rest went to the foundation.

What Burrough reveals is that Perry Bass, the dominant member of the foundation's board, then sought a ruling from the Texas attorney general that allowed him to buy back the bulk of Uncle Sid's oil production from the foundation with a loan from Chase Manhattan.

��

It was a timely purchase. In 1970, Congress passed a law outlawing that type of inside dealing with a foundation.

"I don't know if there would be a Bass fortune today if not for that transaction," says Burrough.The Big Rich

AlterNet / By Don Hazen

-

The Right-Wing Express

If you want to know how the conservative message machine was built and what progressives can do to respond, just ask Rob Stein.

February 7, 2005

ppt:

http://www.alternet.org/media/21192?page=entire

...

It Didn't Happen Overnight

The story of the conservative rise that Stein portrays begins back in the early 1970s, when there was panic among conservatives, especially in corporate boardrooms, that capitalism was under serious attack, and something drastic had to be done about it. The National Chamber of Commerce asked Lewis Powell, a former head of the American Bar Association and member of 11 corporate boards, to write a blueprint of what had to be done. The result, says Stein, is one the most prescient documents of our time. The memo lays out the framework, the goals and the ingredients for the conservative revolution that has gained momentum and power ever since. Two months after penning the memo, then-President Richard M. Nixon appointed Powell, a Democrat, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Powell told the conservatives that they needed to confront liberalism everywhere and needed a "scale of financing only available through a joint effort" focused on an array of principles including less government, lower taxes, deregulation and challenging the left agenda everywhere. The conservative right, starting with seed money from the Coors Brewing family and Richard Mellon Scaife's publishing enterprise, moved forward to implement virtually every element of the Powell memo. It is a story of how the conservatives ��� in spite of political differences, ego, and competing priorities – were able to cooperate and develop a methodology that drives their issues and values relentlessly.

Starting with just a handful or groups, including the Heritage Foundation, in the early '70s, the conservatives built a new generation of organizations – think tanks, media monitors, legal groups, networking organizations, all driven by the same over-arching values of free enterprise, individual freedoms and limited government.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) is a patient politician. At age 38, he walked a thousand miles around the state of Tennessee to win support, door to door, for his successful campaign to become the state's governor. Now, at 71, Alexander is facing another grueling slog: building political consensus around issues like energy and climate change at a time of seemingly intractable congressional gridlock.

The senator recently announced plans to forfeit his role as Republican Conference chair, the No. 3 leadership position in the Senate, so he'll be free to reach across the aisle and work toward bipartisan solutions. "[S]ome of us have to be willing to try to get results that include coalitions," he said. That's a rare sentiment at a time when the Tea Party is pushing Republican politics toward right-wing intransigence.

Alexander has bucked the party line on issues like climate change (he believes it's human-caused), cleantech R&D (he wants to plow big money into electric cars and solar), mountaintop-removal coal mining (he opposes it), and a carbon tax (he's at least willing to consider it, even if he's not yet endorsing it). Still, this self-described "very Republican Republican" is right in line with the GOP in his love for nuclear power and offshore drilling. He sets himself apart from both parties with his deep-seated aversion to wind power.

I spoke with the renegade senator by phone last week about his vision for America's energy future and the role he wants to play in shaping it.

Top 5 Industries, 2005-2010, Campaign Cmte