Good morning! Here’s your daily digest of money-and-politics news and the headlines of the day, compiled by BillMoyers.com’s John Light. (You can sign up to receive Morning Reads daily in your inbox!)
The dark money ATM –> According to tax filings by an organization that funnels money to the Koch brothers’ causes, the Kochs raised at least $162 million in 2013 and 2014 and distributed that money to more than 20 different groups. Though the tax filing describes their operation as advancing “business interests,” the money also went to groups supporting conservative social causes, including the NRA and opponents of gay marriage and abortion rights. Paul Blumenthal reports for The Huffington Post and Kenneth Vogel for Politico.
But wait, there’s more –> In a separate article early this morning, Kenneth Vogel writes that the Kochs’ political network “has quietly built a secretive operation that conducts surveillance and intelligence gathering on its liberal opponents, viewing it as a key strategic tool in its efforts to reshape American public life. The operation, which is little-known even within the Koch network, gathers what Koch insiders refer to as ‘competitive intelligence’ that is used to try to thwart liberal groups and activists, and to identify potential threats to the expansive network.”
Which candidates depend on Wall Street the most? –> Yahoo News has crunched the numbers. Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Lindsay Graham have each raised more than 25 percent of their funds from Wall Street donors. But, Rick Newman writes, the “hypocrisy award” may go to Ted Cruz, who took 18.6 percent of his funds from the financial industry: “Among the presidential candidates saying they’ll get tough on big banks and let troubled lenders fail, Sen. Cruz has accepted the largest percentage of money from Wall Street donors—essentially bashing the very people funding his campaign.”
Dissension over campaign finance –> Democratic legislative leaders in Connecticut are considering suspension of the state’s public financing of elections to close a budget gap, they say, but young members of the party are in revolt. Eliminating public financing would open the door to more big money influence over state elections. Daniela Altimari reports for the Hartford Courant.
United front –> “Russia and France, long at loggerheads over their approach to the war in Syria, took steps toward a united military front against Islamic State in response to the massacre in Paris and the downed plane in Egypt,” report John Follain, Henry Meyer and Gregory Viscusi at Bloomberg. AND: Russian and US forces are exchanging data for airstrikes against ISIS “amid early signs of thawing relations,” report Ewen MacAskill, Ian Black and Dan Roberts at The Guardian. AND: At The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner contemplates the implications of a US-Russia alliance against IS, remembering that we joined forces with Stalin, who led an even more repressive regime than Putin, during WWII.
Some more history –> Poll, January 20, 1939: “It has been proposed to bring to this country 10,000 refugee children from Germany — most of them Jewish — to be taken care of in American homes. Should the government permit these children to come in?” Yes: 30 percent. No: 61 percent.
French Muslims –> At The New Yorker, George Packer writes that French Muslims — a community that was divided over how to respond to the Charlie Hebdo attacks — are this time universally appalled. “There’s no debate now,” one Muslim Parisian told Packer. “The only debate is what will come next.”
About those words “radical Islam” –> Conservatives have been pushing Democrats to use the term “radical Islam” to describe the terrorist groups that America and other countries are fighting in the Middle East. But Joshua Holland argues at The Nation that we don’t use religion to refer to other radical groups, such as anti-government extremists here in the US. George Bush described us as being at “war against evil people who conduct crimes against innocent people.” Holland writes that’s one rare place where “Democrats are absolutely right to follow his lead.”
Carson doesn’t get it –> In a discussion with Trip Gabriel at The New York Times, an eccentric Ben Carson advisor (an ex-spy who was involved with Iran-Contra and “who could have stepped out of a Hollywood thriller”) decided to throw the candidate under the bus: “‘Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,’ Duane R. Clarridge, a top adviser to Mr. Carson on terrorism and national security, said… He also said Mr. Carson needed weekly conference calls briefing him on foreign policy so ‘we can make him smart.'” In response, a Carson campaign spokesman told Business Insider, “Mr. Clarridge has incomplete knowledge of the daily, not weekly briefings, that Dr. Carson receives on important national security matters from former military and State Department officials.”
Meanwhile, Bobby Jindal is out of the race.
Keeping perspective –> Jenna McLaughlin argues at The Intercept, “Despite the intelligence community’s attempts to blame NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden for the tragic attacks in Paris on Friday, the NSA’s mass surveillance programs do not have a track record — before or after Snowden — of identifying or thwarting actual large-scale terrorist plots.”
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