How Dark Money Flows Through the Koch Network

http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/koch

by ams1 • 12 years ago

4 4 12 years ago

projects.propublica.org

God forbid anybody gives to republican or libertarian causes, right?

OpenSecrets.org tallied the top donors in federal elections between 1989 and 2014. Koch Industries -- privately owned by the Evil Koch Bros -- is on the list, to be sure, but doesn't appear until the 59th slot, with $18 million in donations, 90 percent of which went to Republicans.

So who occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are ... wait for it ... unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most of it going to Democrats.

These are familiar names: AFSCME ($60.6 million), NEA ($53.5 million), IBEW ($44.4 million), UAW ($41.6 million), Carpenters & Joiners ($39.2 million) and SEIU ($38.3 million).

In other words, the six biggest union donors in American politics gave 15 times more to mostly Democrats than the Evil Koch Bros.

Three of the remaining four slots in the top 10 were taken by AT&T ($56.4 million), National Association of Realtors ($51.2 million) and Goldman Sachs ($44.8 million).

So, if money is the measure of evil in American politics and the Evil Koch Bros only come in 59th, who is really the most evil donor ever?

Turns out it's the left-wing group, Act Blue, with just short of $100 million in contributions during its lifetime, which only started in 2004, 15 years after the Evil Koch Bros in the OpenSecrets.org compilation.

hindsightbias• 12 years ago

Truth To Power! Always putting the G in Glibertarian.

Uhm, perhaps if you did some research (I know, it's hard), you'd discover that ActBlue is a crowdsourcing front end that involves hundreds of thousands or millions of donors.

Koch Industries, two billionaire bros.

Exactly the same thing. I'm sure you'll have some glib response!

LeeHunter• 12 years ago

Not to mention that the Koch bros really only have two items on their agenda. No taxes for rich people and no environmental regulation.

How Dark Money Flows Through the Koch Network

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