The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Who's been paying for Sharron Angle's campaign?

    By kgb999 on Sun, 10/31/2010 - 11:37pm |

    OK, file this one under a creepy coincidence (the vid itself, being creepy, the coincidence just being coincidental). I've been obsessing on the Nevada race somewhat of late, and got off on a tangent regarding who's been financing the Angle campaign in a discussion with another poster. By the common method of assessing "who benefits here?" he came to the conclusion, Ensign. Which at the time, didn't seem a *bad* thought.

    But. Not adding up. And then, reading this article, it dawned on me. It's the damn nuclear industry. It isn't an exaggeration to say that there are hundreds of billions of dollars potentially lost  by people not from Nevada with Yucca being shuttered. Angle is the ONLY person in the race from either party who supported Yucca. THAT'S why they dumped all the money into her for the primary instead of one of the better candidates.

    Anyhow. I had gotten all prepared to make a circumstantial case that they were likely the driving monetary force. And along comes this guy ... random Youtuber. If he's just making it up, this is exactly how I imagine it would go. Something tells me he isn't making it up.

    [Update: originally posted with part 3 embedded. Decided I liked part 2 better, and updated this paragraph to make sense in light of the change]. I posted Part 2 which gets to the crux. In Part 1, he identifies his credentials and laments his impending unemployability as a result of making this video. In Part 3, he talks about just how much these people have really poured into the campaign.

    I dunno, he certainly looks like a guy who believes he's throwing his career away ... especially in the first two parts. His description of the social dynamics leading to the information he discusses will likely ring true for anyone who's ever done conferences or contracting. IMO, it's worth a half hour of your time to watch all three parts - if for no other reason than to have a sad for a dude who snapped when he discovered just how screwed up the world really is and will probably be homeless in 6 moths. It's almost enough to forgive his mispronunciation of the state's name.

    Comments

    This is a total crock!!  If you bothered to do your homework, you would know that

    Angle's campaign is pure grassroots:   96% of her donors donated less than $200. each.

    94%  of her donors donated less than $100.  each.  

    That sure as heck isn't big corporation donations.


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 1:18am

    Could you (or somebody) please provide a link to support this. I've just tried to locate public information on Angle's campaign donations, but I couldn't find one.

    I don't know if what the man in the video alleges is true or not, but it's certainly possible, thanks to the Roberts court. If it is true, what a legacy. I watched the videos from beginning to end and the thought of even partial veracity makes my stomach hurt.


    by Orlando on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 1:34am

    You must have been a total failure in civics and government classes!

    WHAT BRIAN IS TALKING ABOUT IS INDUSTRY USING THEIR CLOUT TO SWING AN ELECTION TO SERVE THEIR FINANCIAL INTEREST INDEPENDENT OF THE POLITICAL VIEWS OF THE CANDIDATE!!!

    THE SCOTUS RULING ALLOWS ANYONE TO PRODUCE THEIR OWN POLITICAL ADS FOR WHATEVER CANDIDATE THEY WISH AND NOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE!!!

    THE MONEY HE'S TALKING ABOUT IS NOT BEING GIVEN TO ANGLE !!!

    THE MONEY THEY SPEND DOESN'T HAVE TO BE REPORTED BY ANGLE !!!

    THE MONEY SHE RAISES IS SEPARATE AND DISTINCT FROM THE MONEY BRING SPENT BY THE INDUSTRIES MENTIONED !!!

    That's the issue..an apple being compared to an orange.

    Angle is being played as a puppet and anyone who believes in her is being made a fool of. That's the intent and you just documented it's working.

    The whole intent of the three videos is to make the case the nuclear industry has determined if Reid is gone, it would be a cakewalk to overturn all the legal obstacles that have been put in place to keep Yucca Mountain Repository from being used as a nuclear storage facility...that means they're back in business sucking off the teats of the public to run the facility.

    Removing Reid guarantees it will happen so that' why there's such a massive push to get Angle elected...not for Nevada, but for the nuclear industry.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 3:01am

    Oh yeah. I knew the commenter was wrong, but I got confused as to why.


    by Orlando on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 5:15am

    I missed this a few weeks ago. Puts it pretty directly ... Angle is the linchpin on this.

    Sure does have that feeling of "oh damn" right there in the pit of your stomach that Ensign just didn't provoke, huh?


    by kgb999 on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 5:21am

    I knew Yucca was stopped dead in its' tracks over licensing issues, thanks to Reid. I didn't realize SCOTUS the green light they gave to campaign finance would be used to such extremes...to manipulate the public to support industry goals over the public good.

    Think of this as a 3-ring circus act with Ensign looking to salvage his political reputation for 2012, the nuclear industry working hard to convince the public to reject specific political candidates for office that would hinder their efforts in creating a nuclear waste dump where the people in the area don't want it and finally one last act yet to be announced/discovered.

    All 3 circus acts directed at removing Reid from office for specific reasons that we have no knowledge of.

    I just wonder what's going on in ring 3 that we can't see being played out in front of us at the moment.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 4:03pm

    Seems McCain has a dog in the Nevada Senate race too.  Here's an article from The Sun. 

    http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/nov/01/mccain-thinking-yucca-visit/

    "Reid is the only obstacle between McCain and his energy platform, which relies on construction of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain"...so there is evidence and fact to support your POV.

    Mine is pure speculation based more on the the possibility Ensign stands to gain more respect and forgiveness for his past sins if Angle were to replace Reid. That's still a possibility if...that's a big IF...someone feels its' necessary for Ensign to remain a Senator in 2012.

    This election cycle is beginning to look as if the voting public is nothing more than sacrificial pawns on a very large playing field beyond the borders of each individual state.


    by Beetlejuice on Tue, 11/02/2010 - 4:36pm

    If you bothered to look at the video, it doesn't discuss funds donated directly to Angle. You think these guys would be stupid enough to give that crazy woman access to so much money?

    The stuff you are talking about is that direct mail scam where she spent something like $7 million dollars to collect a $14 million total donations. Yeah. Those guys are known for fleecing granies. That wasn't corporate money. What's your point? It also wasn't enough to account for the massive media buys going on right now.


    by kgb999 on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 4:40am

    This is a great tape.

    It just encompasses everything I have come to believe after decades of watching the eternal campaign.

    What your dissenter is saying is pure garbage.

    First, the coporations expect full support through donations from their employees. The pigs are not as straight forward about it as this McDonald's manager, but there is nothing subtle about their tactics either.

    Secondly, these 'think tanks' are fully funded by the oligarchy and come up with these strategems.

    Thirdly, there are so many corporate fronts running ads all over Nevada that it would be difficult to add it all up.

    And to prove the point made in the video, a worse candidate could hardly be found than the person of Angle. She IS AN IDIOT..besides being a fundementalist fascist prick.

    The corps know that as long as they get their candidate into the repub caucus, alls the better for them.

    The bets are already in and the price tag was something like 2.2 billion dollars nation wide.


    by Richard Day on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 4:10am

    The video seems straightforward enough and certainly believable, but the man doesn't have any proof, which makes it either incredibly sad that he is risking his career or suspect in that his motives may not be as pure as we would like them to be.

    I'm not saying he's not spot on. I'm saying without proof, his accusations aren't going anywhere and if his motives are pure he's just trashed his career for nothing--compelling cases don't get tried in courts with no evidence to back them up.

    Still, the Citizens United decision is, in my opinion, one of the worst ever. And if, as I'll admit is not even a little bit of a stretch, corporations are willing to back candidates of any ideology as long as they help the corporations, they're not only doing possibly permanent damage to the country, they're not thinking too strategically for the long term. Ideologically-based, intellectually challenged elected officials will run roughshod over pretty much everything.


    by Orlando on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 5:14am

    The conferences he refers to appear to be real. I was a little tongue-in-cheek about it, but I agree he is likely risking his career for negligible impact. In this case, there isn't anything to try in the courts though. What he's describing is perfectly legal. That's the point. They don't have to worry about courts - or even hiding it really, except as a political ploy. As such, it's more a question of if his story is believable as an example of what the new political landscape really looks like. His narrative certainly matches the visible impact that we are seeing in terms of unknown dollars flooding into this specific race.

    And I don't know if you noticed, but there isn't a whole hell of a lot of strategic thinking going in to much of anything right now. You would figure, strategically speaking, everyone would be hesitant to write a bad mortgage and then write 100 insurance policies on that bad mortgage  ... and then bet on those insurance policies. But that seems to be the current basis for our entire economy.

    If someone can get themselves a ten million dollar bonus, you think they give a damn what happens after that? Someone who makes $100K per year would have to work for a century to earn that ... and most people don't make even $50k. Things are not going well in Freemarket town.

     


    by kgb999 on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 5:48am

    Like you said, this has the ring of truth. And, as usual, by following the money we can see who expects to benefit and how they expect to play with the toy they are buying. By seeing who wants to make it impossible to follow the money we come to the same people, or at least the group they belong to.
     I hope a strong effort is made to disallow the secret donations/investments and if it is we can see more evidence of who is benefitting from the secret and ethically corrupt money and how strong a tool it is by seeing who fights changing the status quo.

    I'm glad you found this, thanks for passing it on.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 8:34am

    My name is Brian Murphy and I am the original poster of the video.  You can choose to believe me or not, but I do have actual verifiable evidence on several of my points that I have forwarded to several media outlets.  There is no way that I can verify if jack sheehan at bechtel or dieidre lee at flour or northrop ACTUALLY had a conversation with sharron angles campaign where the quid pro quo was offered, but i can tell you that is what I was told.  The conversation took place while discussing a different topic related to CBRNE defense and the topic drifted to politics and the yucca mountain contract.  I can tell you that the people I have known at bechtel and northrop i have known for years and have never known them to lie to me, nor can i come up with a reason as to why they would lie to me about this.  They seemed proud at how clever they had been and how happy they were about this new change SCOTUS made because of the benefits they would reap.  While what they said they did might not sit well with many, in the world of big business and the type of money they are looking at, it is understandable why they would be happy.  Plus, the context was around trying to get other firms (one which i was representing) to work with them on yucca.  It is a HUGE risk for companies right now to spend time, money and resources pursuing an opportunity that might never stand a chance due to being block legislatively, so if bechtecl and northrop can give assurances that "that legisilative block is about to go away"  then those companies are much more inclined to take the risk with them....that is why that conversation took place.

    as to the grassroots and other funding...you are confusing DIRECT contributions to the campaign with funding for ads, media buys, get out the vote efforts and a million other ways a political campaign can be influenced.  rembember, their stated objective was NOT TO HELP SHARRON WIN, but to make voters in nevada scared, blame harry reid, and get him fired.  with that objective in mind, where do you think their money went? most of it did NOT go directly to sharron from my understanding.  

    And for the record, not just anyone can walk onto the base at ft lenoard wood mo, not anyone can just attend events where technologies used to defend the us against CBRNE is discussed.  there is a pretty good record of who was there and who was where....all verifiable.  I have offered to relate my story and provide my evidence to anyone who asks.

    I have no dog in this race, i am not a harry reid supporter or a sharron angle supporter.  I am an american who believes in democracy.  I beleive that voters should be told the truth, and know whos telling it to them and why.  If the voters of nevada truly know everything and still pick sharron so be it.  But when i learned that the plan was to scare navada voters in order to make more money without any regard for what is best for them...it pissed me off.  Hell yucca mountain might be great for nevada, i truly do not know, but i do know that nevada voters are being lied to about it and im willing to go on record saying it


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 1:27pm

    how come no one made a big deal when Obama (democrat) raised hundreds of millions dollars when he ran for president ? did anyone ask where all this $$ was coming from ? 

    Harry Reid has 2 or 3 kids that are lobbyists in DC -- this guy's been skimming off govt cheese & badmouthing his country/troops long enough, it will be so nice to see him get the boot.


    by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 4:17pm

    Yes. Everyone asked where Obama's money was coming from. And more important, they got an answer. It's called campaign disclosure. The laws just changed to allow what we are dicussing to be possible. It doesn't have a thing to do with money donated directly to candidates, it's about allowing corporations to spend an unlimited amount of money to purchase races in secret through these shadowy political orginizations with patriotic sounding names.

    Based on the campaign disclosures, we can see that Goldman Sachs loves them some Obama. Not that the GOP has chosen to criticize this - because they ALSO took a bundle from GS. See, we know about it THIS time because that election was carried out under the old laws - or at least you COULD know about it if you wanted to educate yourself.

    Next time, they will be spending twice as much money to elect Obama and you won't even be able to prove who it was - or criticize Obama for the donors helping his canadicy. The only thing you are going to see will be whatever small donations are made directly to the campaigns. Yet hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent on Obama's behalf ... and on behalf of his rival. Hell, they can even pump in money from out of the country now with what the Chamber of Commerce just pulled. We the people will have no clue who is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy our elections. You don't think republicans are going to be the only ones who will play this game, do you? They just gave Obama permission to pour as much money as he wants into his reelection - even collected from foreign governments if he launders it right - and you'll never be able to prove it. The new environment isn't good for either conservatives or liberals.

    We'll just have to disagree on Reid. I have a business based in Nevada, Reid brings a lot to the table which promotes businesses in the state and has a proven track record of doing so effectively. Angle has a proven history of screwing up everything she puts her fingers on. She's proven herself to be incompetent at the state level time and time again. If the GOP really wanted to replace Harry Reid, they should have gotten serious - not listened to a bunch of screaming idiots who don't have any real skin in Nevada's economy.

     


    by kgb999 on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 5:33pm

    actually the issue of harry rieds kids has been WAY disclosed and looked into and investigated from everyone from the right wing to the media (both sides), the congressional ethics committee and others and NO improper behavior was even alleged.  he puts much stronger leashes on his kids then the law or the ethics comity require so that there is not even the appearance of impropriety.....again all of this too was disclosed.

    that is MUCH different then sharron angles people secretly meeting with corporations promising votes behind closed doors for an undisclosed amount of support from undisclosed sources.  if you can't see the difference i truly can not help you.


    by brian murphy (not verified) on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 5:56pm

    Did any of the folks you spoke with actually say their people had discuessed the issue with Angle directly? What you describe them talking about didn't necessarily require looking into her any more deeply than "which one supports what we want to get done?".

     


    by kgb999 on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 6:46pm

    what was told to me ...or rather what was said in the discussion that i was a part of was that senior people from at least bechtel and northrop had a conversation with sharron angles people...by people it they meant someoen who is working with her now and will be part of her staff if elected.  I doubt they talked to her directly.  its possible but they did not say "we spoke with sharron directly".  my understanding is that bechtel and northrop had let sharron know that they were "considering making a substantial investment into the defeat of harry reid if they could be assured that his replacement would be willing to help open up yucca mountain" the response that sharron's people gave was "if sharron is elected I am quite sure that her views and actions regarding the yucca mountain issue will be much more in line with your interest"

    that is what i was told and heard, so you can make your own decision as to what that meant and who would be in a position to speak for sharron regarding policy.


    by brian murphy (not verified) on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 7:05pm

    Hey. Thanks for putting up a comment. And for making the video.

    Sadly, the flip side to all this is that the media also gets corrupted .... all that money the various corporations poured into this race went directly to the same media organizations you are hoping might highlight what they are doing. Hell, half of 'em are owned by people who will ultimately make a ton of money if these machinations are successful (GE, I'm looking at you!). I think we'd be hard pressed to find a 4th estate less motivated to look into something.

    Just for the record, the waste dump is terrible for Nevada. Not only does the state not make a penny from the thing, each time one of those casks passes it's like getting an X-Ray (if X-rays were generated by high level nuclear waste ... not sure all radiation is created equal if you know what I mean). An insane percentage of the nation's waste was slated to drive (@ 35 mph) right through the busiest interchange in Las Vegas (slams St. Louis/Chicago too - because McCain managed to route it around Arizona). So ... they decided that JUST FOR LAS VEGAS safe exposure rates for radiation could be increased 5x and would be just fine.

    These guys have been pouring money into every coffer they can find in an attempt to warp every step of this process for the last 25 years. Good science was purchased back in the mid-90's (thanks, Slick Willy).  We've known these fuckers don't give a damn if what they do kills every person in Southern Nevada for quite some time ... as long as it kills us slow enough so we can't prove it was them ... they just want those billions. Tark and Lowden tried to split the difference and pitched doing a "reprocessing" facility at the location, Angle wanted the dump. Hence they wanted Angle.

    And also, for the record, Angle would be worse for Nevada than getting the waste dump .... and the waste dump would happen to boot. Talk about insult to injury!

    Take heart. It really looks as if Nevada has withstood onslaught.

    Again, thanks for the video.


    by kgb999 on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 6:20pm

    UPDATE it appears the press is FINALLY starting to pick up this story....they did not mention me, or my videos by name, nor did they discuss some of the connections or allegations that I have made BUT there is a long article talking about the connection of the companies i named, yucca, karl rove, american crossroads and sharron angle.  check it out   
    http://desertbeacon.blogspot.com/2010/11/speculation-pro-yucca-dump-buzz...


    by brian murphy (not verified) on Mon, 11/01/2010 - 7:54pm