K.Francis: Big oil and gas behind county commissioner attacks - Nov. 17, 2017

There was a Durango Herald opinion piece that needs to be shared in this collection since it touches on SaveLaPlataCounty.com's pretense of being independent of American For Prosperity and the Koch network of stealth organizations masquerading as local groups.  I thank Ken for his permission to repost his Durango Herald column.

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Francis: Big oil and gas behind county commissioner attacks

Ken Francis  |  Nov. 17, 2017  |  Durango Herald  |  https://durangoherald.com/articles/195280

I read with interest Matt Dempsey’s column (Herald, Oct. 28) attacking La Plata County Commissioner Gwen Lachelt and misconstruing as an apology her well-reasoned explanation of her nonprofit work (Herald, Oct. 14).

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Note: Matt Dempsey is another example of the convoluted connections between SaveLaPlataCounty.com and the Koch machine - check out his bio at the end of this article.

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Dempsey, the opinion editor of Western Energy Alliance’s “Western Wire,” condemns Lachelt’s dual role as public official and executive director of the nonprofit Western Leaders Network.

Masquerading as the ethics police, Dempsey demands the network disclose the source of its funding. As a nonprofit organization, the organization is legally required by the IRS to annually and publicly disclose its funding.

Yet Dempsey’s moral code does not seem to apply to Western Energy Alliance. For example, the Alliance invited a rather unique Washington political consultant, Richard Berman, to speak at its 2014 annual meeting. Berman’s signature move is to launch smear campaigns against his clients’ opponents – such as environmentalists – through nonprofit front groups that are insulated from having to disclose donors.

Koch Shadow Network Funding Dangerous Candidates - H.Nations - 2016

Paul Weyrich, "father" of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, 
Moral Majority and various other groups (1980)

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With that preamble I'll dive right into this short video of Farron Cousins interviewing attorney Howard Nations.  Below the fold I have notes from the talk along with additional reading sources that offer further support of the claims being made, along with offering important background.  

The Koch Shadow Network Is Funding 
Dangerous Candidates All Over The Country - 

The Ring of Fire  -  Jul 7, 2016  |  14:10 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdEqMjFgRhk

The Koch brothers announced months ago that they were going to spend close to one billion dollars in this year’s elections.  We know that they aren’t giving this money to Donald Trump, so where is it going?  

http://www.TROFIRE.com

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00:53 -   ... Rove and Edelson were tweeted to death by donald trump.  But the Koch

 brothers are still very much alive and well and working their magic.  The Koch brothers are omnipresent but they’re under the radar.  

When you see that do-nothing House of Representatives that's the Koch brothers.  When you see legislative races, State Attorney General races, Congressional races, that's the Koch brothers.  They are still the most powerful single force in the Republican Party. and they manage that as well as anything else through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which carries out the Koch brothers legislative agenda. 

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WHO IS ALEC?

https://www.alecexposed.org

Overwhelming evidence, Koch Network, GOP Extremism - 2016

Both of these authors and their work have been mentioned in these pages already.  Here I’ve copied and pasted their References for this study simply because I found them impressive and I figured they're a good indication of the amount of evidence that has been accumulated and that supports the claims made.  Quite the collection, check it out.  I've placed their abstract at the end of the references.

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The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism

Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez

September 2016, Volume 14, Issue 3 pp. 681-699

Published online: 31 August 2016

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/the-koch-network-and-republican-party-extremism/035F3D872B0CE930AF02D7706DF46EEE

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References

Allen Mike and Vandehei Jim. 2013. “The Koch Brothers’ Secret Bank.” Politico, September 11. Google Scholar

Allen Mike and Vogel Kenneth P.. 2014. “Inside the Koch Data Mine.” Politico, December 8. Google Scholar

Americans for Prosperity. 2013. “Americans for Prosperity 2012 Annual Report.” Arlington, VA: Americans for Prosperity. Google Scholar

Making Sense of the Koch Network - Skocpol - 2016

In working through another short video, I'm again overwhelmed at the amount of frightening information out there.  Information that tells us plenty about Koch, et al. and their long term intentions.  Keep in mind, they are a couple decades into this hostile takeover effort. Historically, we truly are in the final innings of their political assault.  

With those dudes way ahead, along with their increasingly unfair advantages, along with their absolutist's ruthlessness to drive this thing home.  Our healthy Democracy's future demands an invigorated, enlightened, and engaged electorate like never before.

We Democrats and our Party of Complacency continue avoiding this evidence at our own peril.  Of course, I'm easy to dismiss, who am I but a bystander?  That's why I'm sharing all those articles and such.  Because they clearly add up - and they rationally explain why I live with this increasing sense of terror towards our future and what's happening in my own country.  Here I will be reposting, with permission, Theda Skocpol's Scholars Strategy Network's summary of the Koch Network and I encourage you to check out their website.

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Making Sense of the Koch Network

Theda Skocpol, Harvard University, www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org

In recent years, two multibillionaire brothers, David and Charles Koch, have become major players on the political right, inspiring journalists and public interest researchers to comb through publicly recorded donations to depict a vast Koch network – as, for example, in the widely distributed “Maze of Money” chart created by OpenSecrets for the 2012 election cycle. In the current legal environment donations are often secret, so this approach necessarily misses money flows. Ironically, it also includes too many groups, ranging from longstanding conservative giants that get modest Koch donations to short-term fronts set up to write checks for attack ads.

An Evolving Political Strategy