Illegal Contributions to the Nader campaign? - Alterman

[dArKeR]

Today’s Nader/Traitor item, care of the Center for Public Integrity examines the hidden power of the Koch brothers, the billionaires who launched the corporate front group Citizens for a Sound Economy, and its role in financing the second Republican presidential candidate, Ralph Nader. 

CSE has found itself in hot water in recent weeks over charges it has been working illegally to get consumer activist Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot in Oregon.  On June 30, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging that groups, including Citizens for a Sound Economy, the Bush/Cheney campaign and the Nader campaign, had violated federal campaign laws through the use of prohibited in-kind contributions.  In its complaint, CREW said CSE directed employees to call members, using prepared scripts, to encourage them to sign a petition that allowed Ralph Nader to put his name on the November ballot in the presidential election.
...
Since CSE is a corporation, it is prohibited from making contributions to federal campaigns, CREW said in its complaint. The costs of creating the scripts as well as the costs of the telephone calls constitute prohibited in-kind contributions.

History Corner: U.S. Cooperation with the Nazis; more evidence declassified.

In May, hundreds of thousands of pages of FBI, CIA, and other intelligence records related to Nazi and World War II war crimes were declassified under the Nazi War Crime Disclosure Act of 1998 by the National Archives and Records Administration....

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/

[iamtechus]

1. DLC right wing funding

Interesting. The Kochs also support the DLC.

And for $25,000, 28 giant companies found their way onto the DLC's executive council, including Aetna, AT&T, American Airlines, AIG, BellSouth, Chevron, DuPont, Enron, IBM, Merck and Company, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Texaco, and Verizon Communications. Few, if any, of these corporations would be seen as leaning Democratic, of course, but here and there are some real surprises. One member of the DLC's executive council is none other than Koch Industries, the privately held, Kansas-based oil company whose namesake family members are avatars of the far right, having helped to found archconservative institutions like the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy. Not only that, but two Koch executives, Richard Fink and Robert P. Hall III, are listed as members of the board of trustees and the event committee, respectively--meaning that they gave significantly more than $25,000.

http://www.prospect.org/print-friendly/print/V12/7/dreyfuss-r.html

[blm]

2. The Fockin' KOCH BROTHERS.

They have their hand in EVERY election.

It's their specialty. That's why they just HAPPENED to buy Vermont Yankee when most people in politics knew Dean was planning to run. Lord knows what they had planned and planted for that scenario.