Intrigue. Power Plays. High-stakes showdown to control a quasi-credible Political Advocacy front group.
What more could a Billionaire Libertarian dynasty want than their own rightwing media sock-puppet think-tank, ready to blast out their every billionaire whine and whim?
Cato Institute and Koch Brothers Reach Agreement
by Eric Lichtblau, NYTimes -- June 25, 2012
A rift between the Cato Institute and two of its leaders, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, ended Monday with an agreement to revamp the research group’s leadership in a way that Cato officials said should maintain its political independence.
As part of the agreement, the Koch brothers will drop two lawsuits they had brought to gain greater control over the institute’s board. In exchange, the Cato Institute said that its longtime chief executive, Ed Crane, who had been at odds with Charles G. Koch, would retire.
[...]
Charles Koch helped found Cato in 1977, and his family has donated more than $30 million to it over the years. But he and Mr. Crane had a bitter falling-out over management and philosophical differences, and the Kochs had been angling for Mr. Crane’s removal for years.
In March, the Kochs, who held two of the four founding “shareholder” seats on Cato’s board, brought their lawsuits to gain control of the seat of another shareholder who died.
[...]
J.R. Ewing has got nothing over these guys.
But what was that great Liberation "rift" all about?
Profits, power, or petty partisan politics? Anyone care to hazard a guess?
Cato Institute Is Caught in a Rift Over Its Direction
by Eric Lichtblau, NYTimes -- Mar 6, 2012
[...]
The rift has its roots, Cato officials said, in a long-simmering feud over efforts by Mr. Koch and his brother David Koch to install their own people on the institute’s 16-member board and to establish a more direct pipeline between Cato and the family’s Republican political outlets, including groups that Democrats complain have mounted a multimillion-dollar assault on President Obama. Tensions reached a new level with a lawsuit filed last week by the Kochs against Cato over its governing structure.
The one Koch-financed group mentioned by name at the meeting was Americans for Prosperity, which played a major role in the Republicans’ 2010 takeover of the House and is now preparing for the November election. Structured as a nonprofit, the group does not have to disclose its donors. It has backed Tea Party groups, organized rallies and paid for negative advertisements, drawing criticism from campaign finance watchdogs and Democrats over the flow of secret money to political causes.
[...]
The dispute goes deeper than mere seats on a board, Cato administrators argued.
“This is an effort by the Kochs to turn the Cato Institute into some sort of auxiliary for the G.O.P.,” said Edward H. Crane, who is president of Cato and co-founded it with Charles Koch. “What he is doing now is detrimental to Cato, it’s detrimental to Koch Industries, it’s detrimental to the libertarian movement.”
As if the Kochs actually
care about Movements ...
or Liberty.
It's not like this Koch take-over of the Cato Talking-Point Factory will be without consequence.
Not if Citizens United continues to allow "non-profit" Super-PACs to accept non-profit super-donations -- anonymously.
Not if the past is any prolog to what will be in the works this Election season with Americans for Prosperity [ie. Koch's latest alter-ego], given American Future Fund's prior super-house-cleaning results.
With the Cato Institute now firmly under the direction of Koch Brothers' grand ambitions, there's no telling exactly what they and their new standard bearer [ie. Koch's gopher], will ultimately end up capturing?
The Kochs are not known for sitting on their laurels, now are they?
Just ask Edward Crane about that one. Ultimate power, ultimately knows no bounds.
[Image Source: playsational.com -- Sock Puppets]
A front group needs space to breath, you know. They're so cute!