Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Cleta Mitchell is one of the attorneys suing the IRS on behalf of tax-exempt “conservative” groups – the word “conservative” having become a euphemism for corporate money masquerading as free speech. Her baggage is endemic to the real problem.
The billionaire Koch brothers, majority owners of the big oil, chemicals and paper company, Koch Industries, fund the “conservative” tax- exempt group, Americans for Prosperity, which then morphs into an octopus of other “conservative” tax-exempt groups.
The Cato Institute, a so-called conservative tax-exempt organization spewing out public policy research with a pro big business agenda, was secretly owned by Charles Koch for 35 years and by David Koch for 20 years, along with a few other men. The secret of billionaires owning a conservative tax-exempt organization, subsidized by you and me, while it pushes a corporate agenda, became public in the spring of last year. We covered it extensively at Wall Street On Parade.
In 2010, we exposed how a secretive nonprofit group with Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over it bankrolled the tax-exempt Clarion Fund. The nonprofit then used the funds to distribute 28 million DVDs of a race-baiting, Muslim hate film titled “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West.” Seven weeks before the Presidential election of 2008, the 28 millions DVDs were inserted into approximately 100 newspapers and magazines in the U.S., including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, and St. Petersburg Times along with a direct mail campaign.
Cleta Mitchell’s ties to the Kochs and the corporate masquerade are broad and deep as well. Just eight days after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas voted in favor of the Citizens United decision on January 21, 2010 – a decision which allowed almost unlimited corporate funding of the nation’s elections – Cleta Mitchell, a partner of the law firm Foley & Lardner, filed an application with the IRS for a tax-exempt organization called Liberty Central, another tea party group. Justice Thomas’ wife, Virginia Thomas, was its President and CEO.
As we reported last month:
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