Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right - Chapter 9

Chapter 9 - Money Is Speech: The Long Road to Citizens United

It would take years before the faint outlines of the Koch's massive political machinations began to surface, but a decision by the Supreme Court four months earlier launched the familh's voert spending into a new, more ambitious phase. Over over thirty years, David and his brother worked quietyly to build an ideological institution aht woudl resemble and rival those of the two major political parties. This endeavor was supported by a tiny fraction of the wealthies families in America, who sould now spend thier entire fortunes influencing the country's politics.

On January 21, 2010, the Court announced its 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case, overturning a century of restrictions banning corporations and unons form spending all they waned to elect candiadates. The Court held, that so long as businesses and unions didn't just hand their money to the candiadates, which could be corrup, but instead gave it to outside groups that were supporting or opposing the candiadates and were considered to be technically independent of the campaign, itself. They could spend unlimited amounts to promote whatever candiadates they chose. The argument was settled, corporations had the same rights to free speech as citizens.

Jeffrey Toobin from the New Yorker stated "this gave rich people more or less free rein to spend as much as they want in support of their favored candidates".

Among the few remaining restraints that the majority of the Court endorsed was the long standing expectation that any spending in a political campaign should be visible to the public. Justic Kennedy predicted that with the introduction of the Internet, exposure of these donations woudl be easy to discover, and therefore the public would be aware of 'who is in whose pocket'. But that assumpstion was proven wrong. Instead we saw more and more money flooding into elections by secretive nonprofit organizations that claimed the right to conceal their donor's identities. Scaidf and Koch just paved the way to weaponizing philanthropy. As a result, the American political system became awash in unlimited, untraceable cash.

For almost four decades, a handful of tiny ultra rich activists wished to influence American politics by spending more money than laws would allow, one such family was the DeVos clan of Michigan. They'd became stalwart members of the Koch's donor network and had made a multi-billion dollar fortune from the Amway direct marketing empire. The door to door salesmen sold their products while preaching the gospel of wealth with cultlike feveor. They'd been devout members of the Dutch Reformed Church, a branch of Calvanists who were Dutch immigrants, settling around the Lake Michigan. By the 1970s' they'd become the Christian Right, crusading against abortion, homsexuality, feminish, and modern science, that conflicted with their teachings. They possessed free market economic theories rejecting government intervention and instead profused the acts of hard work that lead to success. The most extreme of these followers were the DeVos family, they were less well known outside of Michigan, despite this, they shared the same antipathy the Koch's did toward regulations and taxes.

Amway was structured to avoid federal taxes; this was achieved with the door to door option, as their salesman worked as independent contractros and not employees. This enabled the company to avoid paying Social Security contributions and other employee benefits, enhancing their bottom line. However, it resulted in numerous confrontations with the IRS and the Federal Trade Commission. During one FTC investigation, the inspector called Amway a quasi-religious socio-political organization. In 1974, after Watergate, Congress set new contribution limits and established the public financing of presidential campaigns. In 1976, the limits were struck down on independent expenditures, which opened an ever-expanding opportuntiy for big donors.

In 1982 Amway's founders were charged with tax fraud by the Canadian government, which brought the public's attention to Amway's scams on patriotism and religiousity with an expose tracing the thirteen-year long tax scam. They pleaded guilty after pursuing other antics, and in exchange the criminal charges were dropped against four of the company's top executives and in 1989, Amway paid an additional $38 million to settle a related civil suit.

DeVos was dethroned as the RNC's finance chair, and top donors were put off by his attempts to transform RNC meeting into patriotic pep rallies akin to those his salesmen attended. Despite the dethroning, the DeVos stayed top donors to the RNC, as well as sponsoring efforts to undo campaign finance laws, using their organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation and educational endeavors such as the Intercolligiate Studies Institute.

There were an ovelap of conservative and far-right participants in the Koch seminars, including Foster Freiss, a founder of a Wyoming mutual fund, Friess Associates, who'd collaborated with them since the 1996 election.

The brush with law for the Devos wasn't a deterrent but incentified them to continue on with their antics. In 1994's midterm elections Amway gave $2.5 million to the Republican Party, known as the largest soft money donation from a corporation in the US's history. In 1996, clean government groups critisized the family for skirting campaign contributions limits by donating $1.3 million to the San Diego tourist bureau, assuring their RNC Convention would indeed be held there, that year.

By that time, Richard DeVos Sr. had purchased the the Orlando's Magic NBA team, and passed on the management of Amway's business to his son, Dick. The younger DeVos shared his father's political and religious views, but he was a pragmatist when it came to business, and chose to move Amway's free-market company to China, and by 2006 one-third of Amways' revenue was generated in China's communist state. And then the growth of the family took place as Dick's married Betsy Prince, from the Prince auto manufacturing corporation, and her imfamous brother's Blackwater mercenary army.

Betsy eventualy became the chairwoman of Michigan's Republican Pary, being politically ambitious, she along with her family devoted themselves to working at ground zero at eradicating restraints on political spending. The family filed continuous challenges to various campaign finance laws, using non-profit organizations such as the James Madison Center for Free Speech, of which Betsy became a founding member.

Conservatives cast thier oppostion to campaign finance resrictions as a principaled defense of free speech, but McConnell, one of the cause's biggest champions, revealed a more partisan motive - 'a spending edge is the only thing that gives a Republican a chance to compete", as he ran for office in a predominantly Democratic area. He felt the three main points to assure your political party has clout - $, $, $.

The James Madison Center aimed to assure this dream would become a reality, by taking the battle(s) to court. There were more powerful families and organizations involved with the DeVos family's efforts, such as the Christian Coalition and the National Rifle Assocaition (NRA). But the driving force was a native to Terre Haute, Indiana, a lawyer named Jamess Bopp Jr. who became the general counsel to the anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee, and the James Madison Center. In fact, one was the other. By design, it was a non-profit undertaking lawsuits up, with the condition that members such as the DeVos family could take tax-deductions for subsidizing the long-term pursuit(s).

In 1997, DeVos defended the unlimited contributions, known as soft money, regarding the 'issue' ads versus a campaign ad, which allowed these ads to be funded by corportations (PACs) using a single or multiple sources. She educated us explaining that she knew a little something aobut soft money, as her family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the National Republican Party.

We are buying influence - we expect a return on our investment. Through our donations we expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditionaal American virtues.

A good and honest government, with Republican policies .

On the other side of the moon, we find 'other' big donors fighting the campaign finance restrictions, such as liberal Democrats like George Soros. He was so against G.W. Bush's reelection, he spent over $27 million thorough 527 organizations.

The DeVoses' believe they received a return on their investment when CItizen's United was passed, relagating that it was Jim Bopp's brainchild, and he is a well known litigation machine, telling the New York Times "he manufactured cases to present certain questions to the Supreme Court, in an sequential order to achieve the exact outcome he so disired. "We had a 10-year plan to take all this down, and if we do it right, I think we can dismantle the entire regulatory regime, entitled campaign finance law."

Case by case, wealthy donors used campaign donations as tax-deductibles similar to charity donations. Bopp succeeded in using liberal language of civil rights and free speech against their own practices. His group, Institute for Justice had received start-up funds from Charles Koch, which they used to assert the Right had it's own counter-rights similar to the Left. Corporations had a right to free speech.

Bradley Smith, an anti-regulatory lawyer who co-founded the Center for Competitve Politics was a proponent of zero public disclosure of political spending, and refused to disclose his funders, however the IRS records report in 2009, his center enjoyed support from several conservative foundations, including the Bradley Foundation.

In the view of the defenders of Citizens United, it wasn't a blatant slap to liberal views of how political spending should be followed but isntead it only clarified those areas not clearly defined (black n white). When the Supreme Court gave Citizen's United a green light, they sent a strong message to the wealthy and thier operatives, when it came to raising and spending money, the leash around their throats had been removed. They could now donate to their heart's content, with no legal consequences.

In June 2009 donations reached a high of $900 million versus the $13 million sought prior to Citizens United. In 2010, President Obama denounced the Court's decision in his State of the Union speech, stating this 'bad' piece of legislation reversed a century of law that he believed will open the flood gates for special interests, including foreign corportations, to spend without limit in our elections".

The consequences of Citizens United are 'it shifted the balance of power' from parties built on broad concensus to individuals who were wealthy. It empowered a few over the many - big/dark money was unshackled and used to slowly pry away the integrity of our elections, and our government.