Goldman Sachs vs. Occupy Wall Street

A controversy in the banking community has arisen around the Occupy Wall Street movement. Greg Palast investigates the story behind Goldman Sachs’ recent decision to pull out of a fundraiser for the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union in New York City after it learned the event was honoring the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. The investment bank withdrew its name from the fundraiser and also canceled a $5,000 pledge. Was the $5,000 a Goldman Sachs donation or actually American taxpayer bailout money Goldman set aside for community banks?
Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to a controversy in the banking community around the Occupy Wall Street movement. Recently, the financial giant Goldman Sachs pulled out of a fundraiser for a small Lower East Side bank that caters to poor people after it learned the event was honoring the protesters at Occupy Wall Street. The investment bank withdrew its name from the fundraiser and also canceled a $5,000 pledge. But did Goldman Sachs actually use U.S. taxpayer bailout money to attack Occupy Wall Street’s not-for-profit community bank? Investigative reporter Greg Palast filed this report from Wall Street.

GREG PALAST: Downtown New York, near Wall Street, these are the towers of Goldman Sachs, the mega-bank. With over $933 billion in assets, nearly a trillion dollars, Goldman has declared war on one of the smallest banks in New York City. The story begins here at Occupy Wall Street. It all started here, with these buckets. Unexpectedly, the donation buckets were filling up with thousands of dollars in cash, and the anti-bank protesters suddenly needed a bank.

BOBBY "BAILOUT": We basically started out here just thinking we were going to a protest, and maybe some people would come out. Then, very soon, we were collecting large amounts of donations, and we were in way over our head

.

Six In The Morning

Fukushima nuclear plant could take 30 years to clean up

Removal of fuel rods and decommissioning of reactors could take decades, warns Japan's atomic commission

• Justin McCurry in Tokyo and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 31 October 2011

Experts in Japan have warned it could take more than 30 years to clean up the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

A panel set up by the country's nuclear energy commission said the severity of the accident meant it would take decades to remove melted fuel rods and decommission the plant, located 150 miles north of Tokyo.

The commission called on the facility's operator, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), to begin removing the fuel rods within 10 years. The damage to Fukushima is more difficult to repair than that sustained at Three Mile Island, where fuel removal began six years after an accident in 1979.

Work to decommission four of Fukushima's six reactors could start this year if Tepco brings the plant to a safe state known as cold shutdown.

HSBC accused of helping Egypt generals stifle dissent

ALASTAIR BEACH

 

CAIRO

 

MONDAY 31 OCTOBER 2011

Human rights groups and NGOs have accused HSBC bank of colluding in a campaign of intimidation which they say is being waged against them by Egypt’s ruling military council.

The groups, which hold Egyptian accounts with the global banking giant, say that over the past two months HSBC has contacted them requesting documents and information relating to their finances and work in Egypt.

One NGO worker, the director of an organisation which works to promote democracy around Egypt, said he was called last month by an HSBC bank manager who asked why the group had been receiving money from the American embassy.

Investors claim Brussels deal not enough

Kamal Ahmed, London

October 31, 2011

VETERAN investor George Soros has attacked the lack of leadership at the top of the euro zone and said the new Brussels ''deal'' to solve the debt crisis would last only between ''one day and three months''.

Mr Soros, who achieved worldwide fame when he bet against sterling remaining within the Exchange Rate Mechanism in the 1990s, said the reduction in Greek debt was insufficient to stop an economic decline in Greece that would lead to greater social unrest.

In Niger Delta, one rebel leader faces a choice: computer engineering or fighting

As leaders of Nigerian militias promise to restart their war against the government in the oil-rich Niger Delta region, one young commander weighs life as a rebel vs. life as a computer engineer.

By David Francis, Correspondent

Blessing Dumo, a 30-year-old commander in the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force, belies the stereotype of a Niger Delta militant.

Mr. Dumo looks, talks, and acts like any university student trying to find his way in the world. He speaks with enthusiasm about his computer science studies. He also expresses frustration at being unable to find a job, especially as he prepares to marry a woman named Virginia.

Dumo, who joined the militancy when he was 21, also talks about the joy of firing Kalashnikovs at Italian oil workers, the utility of kidnapping as a moneymaking venture, and his desire to wipe Muslim militant group Boko Haram off the map. He says he would like to leave the militant life behind after college but won't be able to if he has no job prospects

Witches in Philippines' Siquijor province are old hat

Sorcery is a fact of life on the island, where ancient traditions have mingled with aspects of Catholicism.

By Benjamin Haas, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Siquijor, Philippines— 

At the end of a dirt road deep in the mountains, Consolacion Acay hobbled onto her porch and picked up her tools of the trade: a glass cup, a bamboo straw, a stone the size of an apricot pit and a bottle of potion. Then she began casting spells to heal her client.

"I found this stone while I was swimming near waterfalls in the middle of the island," the unassuming 86-year-old said later. "That night I had a dream that taught me how to use the stone to heal people, and I've been doing it ever since."

US seeks aid from Pakistan in peace effort

Obama administration revamps approach with Islamabad's spy agency

By Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger

WASHINGTON — Just a month after accusing Pakistan’s spy agency of secretly supporting the Haqqani terrorist network, which has mounted attacks on Americans, the Obama administration is now relying on the same intelligence service to help organize and kick-start reconciliation talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan.

The revamped approach, which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called “Fight, Talk, Build” during a high-level United States delegation’s visit to Kabul and Islamabad this month, combines continued American air and ground strikes against the Haqqani network and the Taliban with an insistence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency get them to the negotiating table.

But some elements of the ISI see little advantage in forcing those negotiations, because they see the insurgents as perhaps their best bet for maintaining influence in Afghanistan as the United States reduces its presence there.

The Other 99%

While those involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement have clear grievousness concerning the rebirth of what American's once called the Gilded  Age or, perhaps more succinctly the oligarchy have  once again obtained  control of the financial and political power base.  Yes, people in the major industrialized nations are suffering thanks to the maleficence of the 1% but there is another group of people who have suffered for generations thanks to that very one percent the 99% so despise.  

India held its first Formula One race today. Who benefited from that race was it India's majority or its one percent?       

Labourers who have built the circuit for Formula One's inaugural Indian Grand Prix this weekend are living in destitution at their workplace, without shelter, sanitation or, they claim, the pay they were promised.
Within sight of the undulating roof of the grandstand at the £130m Buddh International Circuit in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, 13-year-old Raj Kumari, who has carried stones to make approach roads, is living with her parents in a tent made of salvaged plastic sheets.
"Working here and living here is difficult," she said.
The Guardian found nearly 50 labourers and their young children on Friday at the makeshift camp where they have been living for the last two months. The dozen or so shelters are only a few hundred metres from the main gates. Almost all are illiterate migrant workers from poor rural communities in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

In Pakistan Bonded Slavery continues passed down generation to generation even though laws exist banning this type of indentured servitude the problem lives on because Pakistan's political establishment so beholden to the financial elite are incapable of stopping it.

The most widely recognized export product from Pakistan using child labor is carpets. In a meeting with an official of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Pakistan Secretary of Labor maintained that carpet weaving is the only major export industry employing children. The U.S. State Department Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1993 concurs.⁷In 1993, the Provincial Labor Departments compiled statistics on child labor in nine industries.⁸ The study found that in carpet industries, 2,463 children under 14 years of age were found, and another 4,246 were between 14 and 17 years old. A 1992 UNICEF-Punjab report asserted that according to conservative estimates, one million out of 1.5 million workers in the carpet industry in Pakistan were children.⁹ A separate 1992 UNICEF/Government of Pakistan study reported that 90 percent of the one million workers in the carpet industry are children, many of whom began working in the industry before 10 years of age.¹⁰The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan found that weaving thrives in self-contained homesteads, where labor is cheap and readily available. The Pakistan Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PCMEA) describes the Pakistani carpet industry as follows:
The Pakistan carpet industry is primarily a cottage-based industry employing around 1.5 million people, with heavy concentration in Punjab and Sind provinces. Of this an estimated 8 percent are children of which the major portion is comprised of family unit labor. Only 10 percent of the looms are in factories of 10-30 looms each, while 90% of the weaving is based in village homes where the amount of work done is by choice of the family unit and beyond the manufacturers and contractors control.¹¹

 The question is who speaks for them?  Perhaps no one as the world and the media focus only on the demands of those involved in the Occupy Wall street movement. Remember the other 99% they are suffering like everyone else.

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Protesters, police clash in Denver, face off in Nashville
Incidents come amid a week of police crackdowns around the country

msnbc.com news services
DENVER — The simmering tension near the Colorado Capitol escalated dramatically Saturday with more than a dozen arrests and authorities firing rounds of pellets filled with pepper spray at supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The clash came as Occupy Wall Street protesters and state officials in Tennessee squared off for a third consecutive night, even though a local judge has refused to jail demonstrators who have been arrested. In Denver, officers in riot gear moved late in the day into a park where protesters were attempting to establish an encampment, hauling off demonstrators just hours after a standoff at the Capitol steps degenerated into a fight that ended in a cloud of Mace and pepper spray.

Syria's Assad warns of 'earthquake' if west intervenes
Bashar al-Assad warns against intervention in Syria, saying it is different in every respect from Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen

Reuters guardian.co.uk, Sunday 30 October 2011
Western powers risk causing an "earthquake" across the Middle East if they intervene in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad said, after protesters called for foreign protection from a crackdown in which 3,000 people have been killed. Assad's warning came ahead of Syrian government talks on Sunday with the Arab League aimed at starting a dialogue between the government and opposition and ending violence which has escalated across Syria in recent days.

Spain's town hall meltdown
Cuts are now biting deep into civic life. One council has even bet its budget on the lottery

Alasdair Fotheringham Sunday, 30 October 2011
If Carmen Martinez Gomez, a nurse, wants to see the effects of the dramatic spending cuts Spain is currently enduring, all she has to do is glance down from her seventh-floor balcony at the building work below on the Metro, Granada's first underground line. It is less than 10 miles long, but the Metro has already been five years in the making. And with its workers unpaid since January, its inauguration has just been put back again, reports said last week, until 2013. "It feels as if it's never going to be finished," Ms Martinez says. "The whole of Camino de Ronda" – three miles long and one of Granada's main arterial streets – "looks as if a bomb hit it. Shops are going out of business because there's virtually no through traffic, and for the elderly and disabled it's very difficult to cross the road. The project has split the city in two."

Al-Shabaab target Mogadishu AU military base
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA - Oct 30 2011
Both sides however gave conflicting reports on the operation. The African Union peacekeeping force in Mogadishu (Amisom) issued a statement saying AU troops had "beaten off an attack by al-Qaeda linked terrorists on one of their positions in the outskirts of the city. "During the failed attack, the suicide bombers blew themselves, but the extremists were unable to take control of the Amisom position." The statement did not indicate the number of casualties.

Can Super Mario Save the Day for Europe?
By LANDON THOMAS Jr. and JACK EWING
MARIO DRAGHI was working the room as only Mario Draghi can. The occasion was a gala at the Old Opera House here in honor of Jean-Claude Trichet, the most powerful central banker in Europe. But in some ways, the evening belonged as much to Mr. Draghi, the Italian who will succeed Mr. Trichet on Tuesday as the president of the European Central Bank in the midst of an economic maelstrom that threatens to tear apart the euro, if not Europe itself. European leaders took a step toward resolving the crisis last Thursday, with an agreement from banks to take a 50 percent loss on the face value of their Greek debt. Far from heralding an end to the problems, however, the plan ushered in a crucial new phrase in the battle to avert financial disaster.

Thailand floods: Bangkok flood defenses are holding
Thailand's prime minister expressed cautious optimism Saturday that the flood threat to Bangkok may be receding. But flooding from high tides may still pose a problem for a city just six feet above sea level.

By Jason Szep and Apornrath Phoonphongphiphat, Reuter
Receding floodwaters north of Bangkok have reduced the threat to the Thai capital, the prime minister said on Saturday, but high tides in the Gulf of Thailand will still test the city's flood defenses. "If things go on like this, we expect floodwater in Bangkok to recede within the first week of November," Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said on national television. Bangkok's main waterway, the Chao Phraya River, overflowed its banks in some areas on Saturday during high tides in the Gulf of Thailand, about 20 km (12 miles) to the south. The high tides will last until Monday

The Guardian: Leading The Journalistic Pack

The Guardian is not Britain's largest newspaper - there are 10 in the UK with a bigger circulation - nor is the paper turning a profit. The company that runs it reportedly lost $50m last year. But the Guardian has been at the centre of two of the biggest news stories of the past 18 months.

We break format this week to bring you a one-on-one interview with the newspaper's editor, Alan Rusbridger. We spoke to him about the phone hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News International and how it not only revealed the underhanded tactics employed by the now defunct News of the World, but also the influence News International wielded over British politicians, police and possibly other news organisations. We also spoke to Rusbridger about his publication's unique collaboration with the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, its front man Julian Assange and why that relationship came to an acrimonious end. And finally we got the editor's views on the future of journalism in the digital age and his resemblance to a bespectacled magician who also managed to overcome the odds.

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian (founded 1821), is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format. Currently edited by Alan Rusbridger, it has grown from a nineteenth century local paper to a national paper associated with a complex organisational structure and international multimedia presence with sister papers The Observer (British Sunday paper) and The Guardian Weekly, as well as a large web presence.
The Guardian in paper form had a certified average daily circulation of 232,566 in September 2011, behind The Daily Telegraph and The Times, but ahead of The Independent.^[3] According to its editor, The Guardian has the second largest online readership of any English-language newspaper in the world, after the New York Times.^[4]Founded in 1821, the paper identifies with centre-left liberalism and its readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion. The paper is also influential in design and publishing arena, sponsoring many awards in these areas.
The Guardian has changed format and design over the years moving from broadsheet to Berliner, and has become an international media organisation with affiliations to other national papers with similar aims. The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, contains articles from The Guardian and its sister Sunday paper The Observer, as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post and articles translated from Le Monde. Other projects include GuardianFilm, the current editorial director of which is Maggie O'Kane.

For the last six years pundits have been reading the long obituary of the newspaper pronouncing them irrelevant and out of date yet if it wasn't for  newspapers how the world have known about the torture which took place at   Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Warrantless searches in the United States thanks 
to James Risen and the Hew York Times,  Extraordinary rendition  which swept up the innocent and sent them to places like Syria, Egypt and Thailand to be tortured and how many other stories which have shed light on the wrong doings of governments thanks to the investigative journalism of newspapers.

Six In The Morning

Gaddafi's son says he is innocent

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi has told the International Criminal Court he is innocent of alleged crimes against humanity

• Reuters
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 October 2011

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the fugitive son of Libya's toppled late leader, told the International Criminal Court he is innocent of alleged crimes against humanity, the court prosecutor said on Saturday.

The court, based in The Hague, has said it made informal contact with Saif al-Islam, the son of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and is seeking to arrest him and bring him to trial on the charges stemming from Libya's civil war.

The International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said the contacts were through intermediaries, and Saif al-Islam maintained he is innocent and wants to understand what could happen to him if cleared of charges.

China holds Europe to ransom over £62bn bailout deal

Beijing plays down expectations of immediate cash 

injection

Clifford Coonan

Saturday, 29 October 2011

Eurozone leaders were left sweating last night after China played down expectations that it would quickly make a much-needed cash injection to the EU bailout fund.

The chief executive of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), Klaus Regling, was in Beijing yesterday with the hope of coaxing a speedy investment from the world's second-largest economy. But, despite hopes that the opportunity to take a leading role in managing global finances would prove a powerful incentive for Beijing, European observers were prepared for the Chinese to exact a heavy price in return for providing up to €70bn (£62bn) to the fund.

The Second Gilded Age

Has America Become an Oligarchy?

By Thomas Schulz

The Occupy Wall Street movement is just one example of the sudden outbreak of tension between America's super-rich and the "other 99 percent." Experts now say the US has entered a second Gilded Age, but one in which hedge fund managers have replaced oil barons -- and are killing the American dream.

At first, the outraged members of the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York were mainly met with ridicule. They didn't seem to stand a chance and were judged incapable of going up against their adversaries, Wall Street's bankers and financial managers, either intellectually or in terms of economic knowledge.

"We are the 99 percent," is the continuing chant of the protestors, who are now in their seventh week of marching through the streets of Manhattan. And, surprisingly, they have hit upon the crux of America's problems with precisely this sentence. Indeed, they have given shape to a development in the country that has been growing more acute for decades, one that numerous academics and experts have tried to analyze elsewhere in lengthy books and essays. It's a development so profound and revolutionary that it has shaken the world's most powerful nation to its core.

Palestinian bid to join UN agency puts US in a dilemma over funding

Steven Erlanger

October 29, 2011

PARIS: The Palestinian bid for full membership in UNESCO - the

 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation 

- has put Washington and the organisation in an urgent dilemma.

United States legislation dating back more than 15 years 

mandates a complete cut-off of US financing to any UN agency 

that accepts the Palestinians as a full member.

UNESCO depends on the US for 22 per cent of its budget, about 

$US70 million ($66 million) a year.

Egyptian activists try to bridge digital divide

A group of Egyptian activists are struggling to translate their online influence into real political action by taking the "tweets to the streets."

By Lauren E. Bohn, Correspondent

With one hand gripping the steering wheel and the other his Blackberry, IT entrepreneur Hassan Hamed accelerated up a steep unpaved road leading into one of Cairo’s sprawling, unplanned slum areas known as ashwa'iyat, Arabic for “random.” Before he unloaded stacks of “Don’t sell your vote” flyers from his trunk, he dispatched a note to his 6,743 followers on Twitter: “Getting ready to hit the streets for another #tweetshare3 round in Ezbet Khairallah.” His colleague, journalism student Salma Hegab shot back to her 12,280 followers, “Ahem, I’m here, I’m waiting!”

Telling the Story of 41 Years on the Run

By RAPHAEL MINDER and JAMES BARRON

Published: October 28, 2011

CASAS NOVAS, Portugal — George Wright, the fugitive murderer who was captured in Portugal last month, 39 years after hijacking a jetliner and demanding a $1 million ransom, said he figured authorities in the United States had given up the chase long ago. But, he said, he never stopped worrying that they would come knocking.

“Knowing the Americans, I always feared that they had their antennas up,” he said in a two-hour interview in this village outside Lisbon where he was arrested last month. Sitting at his kitchen table, he wore sweat pants, plastic sandals and the ankle bracelet ordered by a Portuguese judge who moved him from a Lisbon jail to house arrest while he fights extradition to the United States.

The Koch Brothers

One of the most difficult things to understand about American politics and its political campaigns is that money is considered speech which means that any person or group with enough money are able to influence elections..
Buckley v. Valeo: The Supreme Court of the United States upheld a federal law which set limits on campaign contributions, but ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech, and struck down portions of the law. The court also ruled candidates can give unlimited amounts of money to their own campaigns.

Facts

In 1974, over the veto of President Gerald R. Ford, the Congress passed significant amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, creating the first comprehensive effort by the federal government to regulate campaign contributions and spending. The key parts of the amended law did the following limited contributions to candidates for federal office (2 USC §441a) required the disclosure of political contributions (2 USC §434), provided for the public financing of presidential elections (IRC Subtitle H), limited expenditures by candidates and associated committees, except for presidential candidates who accepted public funding (formerly 18 U.S.C. §608(c) (1)(C-F)), limited independent expenditures to $1000 (formerly 18 U.S.C. §608e), limited candidate expenditures from personal funds (formerly 18 U.S.C. §608a), created and fixed the method of appointing members to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) (formerly 2 U.S.C. §437c(a) (1)(A-C)). A lawsuit was filed in the District Court for the D.C., on January 2, 1975, by Senator James L. Buckley of New York, former Senator, 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and others. The suit was filed against Francis R. Valeo, the Secretary of the Senate and ex officio member of the FEC who represented the U.S. federal government. The court denied plaintiffs' request for declaratory and injunctive relief. Plaintiffs then appealed to the Court of Appeals. The petitioners sought for the district court to overturn the key provisions outlined above. They argued that the legislation was in violation of the 1st and 5th Amendment rights to freedom of expression and due process, respectively.

Decision

In a lengthy per curiam decision issued on January 30, 1976, the Court sustained the Act's limits on individual contributions, as well as the disclosure and reporting provisions and the public financing scheme. However, the limitations on campaign expenditures, on independent expenditures by individuals and groups, and on expenditures by a candidate from personal funds were struck down. The Court also held that the method for appointments to the Federal Election Commission was an unconstitutional violation of Separation of Powers. The scheme by which the eight members of the commission were chosen was that the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives were ex officio members of the Commission without a right to vote, two members would be appointed by the President pro tempore of the Senate upon recommendations of the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, two would be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives upon recommendations of the majority and minority leaders of the House, and two would be appointed by the President. The six voting members would then need to be confirmed by the majority of both Houses of Congress. In addition there was a requirement that each of the three appointing authorities was forbidden to choose both of their appointees from the same political party. The Supreme Court opined that these powers could properly be exercised by an "Officer of the United States" (validly appointed under Article II, Section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution) but held that the Commissioners could not exercise this significant authority because they were not "appointed". Id. at 137.

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Opinion of the Court

The majority opinion,[19] authored by Justice Kennedy, found that 2 U.S.C. § 441(b)'s prohibition of all independent expenditures by corporations and unions was invalid and could not be applied to spending such as that in Hillary: The Movie. Kennedy wrote: "If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." He also noted that since there was no way to distinguish between media and other corporations, these restrictions would allow Congress to suppress political speech in newspapers, books, television and blogs.[2] The Court overruled Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which had previously held that a Michigan campaign finance act that prohibited corporations from using treasury money to support or oppose candidates in elections did not violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court also overruled the part of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission that upheld BCRA's extension of the Federal Election Campaign Act's restrictions on independent corporate expenditures to include "electioneering communications". The Court found that BCRA §§201 and 311 (provisions requiring disclosure of the funder) were valid as applied to the ads for Clinton and to the movie itself.[19]

With the Citizens United decision it allowed for unlimited funds to funneled into campaigns without having to disclose where the contributions came from. Two people; brothers actually Charles and David Koch realized an opportunity. They were given licence to advance their extreme conservative agenda.

COVERT OPERATIONS

On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small

The Kochs founded and provide millions to Americans for Prosperity, a political organisation that builds grassroots support for conservative causes and candidates. Americans for Prosperity, which has 33 state chapters and claims to have about two million members, has close ties to Tea Party groups and played a key role in opposing Obama's health care initiative. This year, Americans for Prosperity spent at least half a million dollars supporting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's efforts to cut social spending and roll back collective bargaining rights for public employee unions. The legislation passed by Walker makes it more difficult for unions, which are major backers of Democratic candidates, to secure funds for political purposes. Americans for Prosperity is also very active in a battle against unions in Ohio, another important 2012 presidential state. Its president, Tim Phillips, says that the organisation is winning in Wisconsin and around the country "because on the policies of economic freedom, we're right". He refused to tell People & Power reporter Bob Abeshouse how much the organisation is spending to combat the unions.