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What does $23 million in donations to public television get you? A lot more than a tote bag, according to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. A New York public television outlet, WNET, went to great lengths to placate conservative industrialist David Koch as PBS aired an Alex Gibney documentary on income inequality that focused on the conservative billionaire. The president of WNET called Koch and offered to let him film a roundtable discussion that would air after the documentary, among other conciliatory gestures. The controversy reportedly also prompted PBS to back off another Koch-focused documentary in the pipeline. All the placation didn’t work: Koch resigned from his position on WNET’s board and reportedly canceled a large donation. Also, according to Koch’s doorman, Koch’s philanthropy doesn’t extend to tips. “We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch,” he says in the Gibney film. “Fifty-dollar check for Christmas, too—yeah, I mean, a check! At least you could give us cash.”

Jane Mayer:

Shortly before “Park Avenue” aired, Melissa Cohlmia, the chief spokesperson for Koch Industries, sent WNET a two-paragraph statement criticizing the film as “disappointing and divisive.” Cohlmia acknowledges, however, that neither she nor Koch had watched it. WNET aired the statement, unedited, immediately after the film. Cohlmia said that she based the critique on the trailer.

The weekend before “Park Avenue” aired, Gibney said, it was clear that “something weird had happened.” Shapiro called him at home. “He was very upset,” Gibney said. “They were thinking of pulling the program.” Gibney was told that the most pressing problem was Charles Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York. Schumer’s staff had called WNET, arguing that “Park Avenue” falsely accused the Senator of supporting tax loopholes for hedge-fund managers. Gibney double-checked his research and stood by his interpretation. Nevertheless, Shapiro told him that he planned to allow Schumer to add a response after the broadcast. But, Gibney noted, “Shapiro told me nothing about the Kochs.”

Gibney gives credit to Shapiro and WNET for airing his film uncensored. He is disappointed, though, that the station gave Koch and Schumer the last word. “They tried to undercut the credibility of the film, and I had no opportunity to defend it,” he said. Moreover, WNET replaced the introduction to “Park Avenue,” which was delivered by the actor Stanley Tucci, with one calling the film “controversial” and “provocative.” Gibney noted that he had asked to interview the Kochs while making “Park Avenue,” but they had refused. Cohlmia initially denied this, but after Gibney’s office provided me with the relevant e-mails she acknowledged that she had been contacted.

Shapiro emphasized that, by showing the Gibney film, he had made “the right call.” Still, spokespeople at WNET and PBS conceded that the decision to run the rebuttals was unprecedented. Indeed, it was like appending Letters to the Editor to a front-page article. Gibney asked me, “Why is WNET offering Mr. Koch special favors? And why did the station allow Koch to offer a critique of a film he hadn’t even seen? Money. Money talks.” He added that the Kochs’ willingness to issue a disclaimer without seeing the film “does not give me much confidence about how they might run the Tribune’s newspapers.”

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The Los Angeles Times now reports that one man, Eric J. Rosol, has been charged with conspiracy and an attack on a "protected" computer at Koch Industries, which caused damage.

Officials said Eric J. Rosol, 37, of Black Creek, Wis., participated in an Anonymous-organized shutdown of Koch websites www.kochind.com and www.quiltednorthern.com on Feb. 27 and 28 in 2011.

Rosol is the first and only defendant charged in the attack, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office told the Los Angeles Times.

The Koch site shutdown came during the height of pro-union protests in Wisconsin's state capital that winter, when the Koch brothers came under criticism for backing the state's union cutbacks. Under the hashtag #OpWisconsin, Anonymous members issued a statement accusing the Kochs of "political manipulation" and said, "We are actively seeking vulnerabilities."

Here is the full text of the indictment. Page 3 sums up Rosol's sins this way: "'Kochind.com' website crashed and was unavailable for legitimate traffic." Page 4 goes on to allege that Rosol "executed the LOIC program on his computer and transmitted from his computer information and various codes and commands, to a 'protected' computer at Koch Industries, the transmission of which damaged the Koch Industries computer by impairing its integrity and availability of data, programs, system and information."

I realize that it's all the rage right now for the government to try and lock up every member of Anonymous no matter who they are or what they actually did, but this indictment reeks of overreach. Reeks.

First of all, the attack on those servers was a "distributed denial of service attack". That means that more than one person participated, yet the indictment singles out one person, and according to the US Attorney's office, no others are targeted for similar indictment. Second, as the LA Times article points out, a DDoS attack is more like a sit-in than a break-in.

The first reports of an attack on Koch-related websites seemed to sound like Anonymous was targeting Americans for Prosperity. But in affidavit excerpts published by The Smoking Gun, it appears there were calls to target quiltednorthern.com and kochind.com, and it is these calls upon which the indictment is based.

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This episode of the show reports on the Guitarmy March to New York from Philly and OWS Week correspondent Paul Talbot's violent arrest. OWS Week also covers events over in LA, the Chalk Walk event which was stormed by LAPD with many arrests and rubber bullet injuries. Also on this edition of the show we report on Fort Manning's continued demonstrations with Lee Camp's comic relief input, and Mitt Romney got it at Koch's plush beach house.

[Via]

On Sunday, July 8th, over 200 protestors crashed the Koch Brothers' $50,000 a ticket fundraising party for their candidate, Mitt Romney. Since the Kochs are giving over a billion dollars to buy Mitt Romney the presidency, should we be worried about who Romney would represent if he takes office? Hmmmmmm.

This action was a collaboration between MoveOn.org, Occupy Huntington, Occupy the Hamptons, Occupy Wall Street, the Long Island Progressive Coalition, United NY, the Strong Economy for All Coalition, and Art Not War.com.....thanks to all 200 activists who braved the hot sun!

David Koch is hosting a fundraiser for millionaire Mitt Romney at his Hamptons estate Sunday evening. You could have come over to Koch's house today to meet Mitt Romney, assuming you had a spare $50,000 lying around. How do the elite afford those $50,000 tickets? Tax rates for the super-elite, the top .01%, have fallen in half since Mitt Romney’s father ran for president; or to put it differently, after tax income for this group has doubled due to policy alone. And bear in mind that the US economy flourished just fine under those 60-70 tax rates.

Not only have taxes on people such as Mitt Romney plummeted since 1960, they've risen flor nearly every income group except for the poor and very poor. The Bush tax cuts were especially generous to the uberwealthy, which isn't really a surprise.

Via the sparrow project:

At 4pm on July 8th, 2012 a diverse coalition of activists and occupiers from across New York will descend upon a fundraiser for presidential candidate Mitt Romney at the Southhampton home of billionaire David Koch. Citing the ever-growing and pervasive influence of Koch Industries’ money on our electoral system, organizers from Occupy Wall Street, The Long Island Progressive Coalition, Greenpeace, Move to Amend [Brookhaven], ALIGN NY, Art Not War, Strong For All, MoveOn.org, United New York, Occupy Storefront and Occupy Huntington, Long Island, have announced that they will take action to non-violently disrupt the fundraiser at David Koch’s shorefront estate located at 880 Meadow Lane in Southhampton.

While Romney plans on attending 3 fundraisers that day in the Hamptons the demonstrators have made it clear that the Koch Estate will remain their only target. The coalition of activists initially assembled by the End Corporatism Affinity Group of Occupy Wall Street will be taking a non-partisan stance, uniting around a unified message that corporate money is exponentially diluting and subverting our democratic process (a phenomenon not limited to one single party.) To the demonstrators, David and Charles Koch embody everything that is wrong with money in politics.

“The Long Island Progressive Coalition is busy coordinating a network of Long Island groups who won’t stand by while their backyard is used for Koch and Romney to fund a regressive political agenda,” says Lisa Tyson, director to the Long Island Progressive Coalition.

In 2011 Charles and David Koch announced their intentions to raise and spend $200,000,000 on whomever would run against President Obama. Also, in 2011 while on a retreat for supporters of Koch Industries and their political arm, American’s for Prosperity, Charles Koch was secretly recorded while addressing the group. “This is the mother of all wars we’ve got over the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country …if you want to kick in a billion, believe me,” says Koch “we’ll have especial seminar just for you.”

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Is a Koch Industries factory getting away with murder? While the brothers wage war against safety precautions, every day their factory is dumping millions of gallons of wastewater into streams that flow near a small rural town in Arkansas.

Today, Wed. Feb. 29th, Occupiers in New York, Oakland, Mexico City, and over 80 other cities will take part in a coordinated National Day of Action to Shut Down the Corporations. Occupations have been preparing a variety of decentralized actions in response to Occupy Portland's call to target the American Legislative Exchange Council:

We specifically call on people to target corporations that are members of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The biggest corporations in America, like ExxonMobil, Bank of America, BP, Monsanto, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart use ALEC to buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves only the interests of corporations and not people. They then duplicate and spread this corporate legislation in Washington, D.C. and in state legislatures across the country. The anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin and the racist bill SB 1070 in Arizona are two recent and destructive examples of what corporations use ALEC to do.

In New York, demonstrations will begin at the Koch Industries building and the Pulitzer Fountain at 9 a.m., a march from Tudor City to Bryant Park at 10 a.m., and a Bank of America "Teach-In" with Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi at 11 a.m. in Bryant Park. At noon, occupiers will attempt to "shut down Bank of America branches, ending at B of A tower," which is right across the street from the park. More details are here and here.

#F29 specifically targets the American Legislative Exchange Council, a 501c3 group that includes legislators and corporations as members so that they can draft legislation together that advances "the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty." The following video about ALEC will answer all your questions.

Feb 29th: Shut Down ALEC from Kontra on Vimeo.

You can also RSVP for the Occupy Wall St/NYC Facebook event. For national coverage, follow @F29PDX on Twitter.

Earlier this month, MSNBC's Chris Hayes obtained a secret memo written by a lobbying firm, Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association. The author of that memo is set to co-host a fundraiser on behalf of Mitt Romney.

Via:

CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.

According to the memo, if Democrats embrace OWS, “This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street. … It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

The memo also suggests that Democratic victories in 2012 should not be the ABA’s biggest concern. “… (T)he bigger concern,” the memo says, “should be that Republicans will no longer defend Wall Street companies.”

Politico reported Monday that Sam Geduldig of Clark, Lytle, Geduldig & Cranford will be one of many co-hosts of a Young Professionals for Mitt Romney fundraiser next month. Geduldig previously was a top adviser to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

Think Progress reports that "This year, Geduldig has lobbied on behalf of various finance industry clients, including the ABA, Financial Services Roundtable, Financial Services Forum, MasterCard, American Insurance Association, and Koch Industries (which engages in significant commodities trading activities)."