Front Groups & Covert Funding by Koch Brothers & - Unbiased - Blogger works for them - Lee fang

David: Lee Fang is a reporter at ThinkProgress, and he's been covering every angle on the Koch brothers' involvement in Wisconsin. And Lee, it's great to talk to you. I've read two of your recent pieces, one addresses David Koch's claims that he's not directly supporting Scott Walker, the other talks about this incestuous undisclosed relationship involving a blogger who is defending Koch online. Let's start with this claim from David Koch that he's not directly supporting Scott Walker. The research I've done, which is certainly not as extensive as what you've done, shows me a number of different PACs and organizations through which money is being filtered to Scott Walker, and to me, it's almost a semantic game. Is it more than that? I mean, you tell me what's going on here. Lee Fang: Well, Koch Industries is one of the largest private companies in the world. They've got financial interests in almost every state, in almost every country. And you know, one of the ways they advance their business interests is by funding not only some of the largest blocks of lobbyists in D.C., but a huge political infrastructure. And if you want to look at what they do on climate or on labor rights or even what's going on in Wisconsin, they never do it directly. David Koch isn't there handing checks. They fund scholars, they fund, actually, free-market positions at universities, they fund astroturf front groups like Americans for Prosperity. They have a huge Koch Political Action Committee which distributes hundreds of checks all over the country to state and federal candidates. They fund think tanks on both the state level and here in D.C. So, you know, Koch can use this kind of game of semantics and say, you know, he's not "directly" involved, and "direct" is the operative word, because he's got a vast infrastructure that's constantly funneling money, in this case, to Scott Walker, whether it's bus tours that support him, which we don't know how much they cost, ads, they've already spent over $300,000 in attack ads that are attacking the protesters and supporting Walker. David: Interestingly enough, Koch Industries and Fox News both, apparently Republican Governors Association is a favorite of theirs. You know, I've been getting emails from audience members saying fine, you're pointing out all of this funding that's coming directly, indirectly from the Koch Brothers, but it's all legal. Why can't they support who they want to support? I mean, make the case that there's something here that is concerning and that is less than on the up-and-up. Fang: Well, Americans for Prosperity, if you see any of their ads, if you go to their website, if you go to any of their events, they tell you we're a grassroots group of concerned citizens that are interested in, you know, promoting, you know, prosperity for everyone. Sounds great, who can be against that? But what the group really is is a non-profit that takes advantage of the tax code, yet it really is an extension of its founder and financier, the Koch brothers, because when Americans for Prosperity goes out and tells people that if the EPA will go out and regulate the carbon dioxide that you breathe, the EPA will go out and regulate your church. I mean, this is on their documents. They go out to local communities and tell them all these really scary stories about what the EPA is going to do to you, but they never tell folks that they're being funded by an oil company that's currently battling the EPA on regulations. So they go to Tea Parties, they say all these lies, they use deceit, and then they trick these regular Americans into lobbying to the benefit of Koch Industries, because they tell folks hey, call your Congress, tell them to support the Merkowski Amendment or what have you, to gut the EPA, to basically get rid of the Clean Air Act. So it's really a surreptitious form of lobbying. Normally you think of lobbyists as those people that you hire on K-Street and you had to fill out a registration form, but they actually have a-- exploit a loophole where they fund dozens, and it's not just Americans for Prosperity, dozens of different front groups that are advancing their financial interests and doing it in a very secret and I would say unethical way. David: And you know, one of the-- I was really struck when I interviewed Wendell Potter after he put out "Deadly Spin" and he outlined really specifically for years that the same front groups that were created to lobby against national health care, public option, so on and so forth, very, very similar to, for example, those front groups that were contacting small business owners to say hey, if smoking is banned, you will lose money. And they were actually funded by tobacco companies. It's the same similar type of mechanism we're seeing here, is it not? Fang: It's exactly the same. I mean, some of the most, you could call them brilliant, but they're almost brilliantly evil, lobbyists that are active today and fighting the EPA or fighting to preserve tax cuts for the rich or fighting against net neutrality, some of these exact same guys were-- got their, you know, cut their teeth in the mid-90s working for big tobacco. One firm I'll just throw out there is called the DCI Group. Tom Synhorst and some of his colleagues were Reublican aides, and then they saw that Clinton wanted to crack down on the tobacco industry, so they started this lobbying firm that basically set up smokers' rights groups all over the country. David: [Laughs] Right. Fang: And similar Tea Party-esque rallies to attack, you know, the big government is coming after you, that was their message. And those exact same guys in the DCI group are now working for health care interests to generate opposition to health reform. They are also working for, in the past couple years, they've been working for Exxon/Mobil. They funded this group that went out and mocked Al Gore. So it's literally the same guys. It's not only the same strategy, it's literally the same people. David: Incredible. And real quick, in the last 30 seconds or so we have here, this blogger, John Hinderaker, is on the internet defending Koch, and it turns out that it's his... it's a law firm employee? Fang: [Laughs] Yeah, that's right. I mean, there's kind of been, at this blog called Power Line that used to be popular five or six years ago, they've been kind of like sycophantically blogging in defense of Koch saying oh, no, Koch is completely right, there is no global warming, Koch is an awesome company, Koch is one of the best companies ever, oh, Koch pollutes all this formaldehyde, but don't worry, that doesn't cause cancer. I mean, really kind of lapdog brown-nosing. But if you look at the blogger who's doing this, his law firm counts Koch Industries as one of their major clients. They've represented them in over half a dozen cases. I mean, it's funny, but it's sad because this leaks around to the rest of the conservative blogosphere, and then Koch Industries and their official PR shop sends out his blog posts saying, you know, here's an independent media person defending us. So it's really just kind of a feedback loop of Koch Industries propaganda. David: Well, like you said, it's basically geniusly evil. Lee Fang, a reporter over at ThinkProgress. Keep up the good work. We'd love to have you back. Lee Fang: Hey, David, thank you so much for having me. Transcript provided by Alex Wickersham and www.Subscriptorium.com. For transcripts, translations, captions, and subtitles, or for more information, visit www.Subscriptorium.com, or contact Alex at subscriptorium@gmail.com.