Why would the esteemed Ohio University host a talk by the likes of Roger Ailes? Maybe we should ask one of the talk’s patrons, Charles Koch.

Ailes, of Fox News fame, is giving his talk today. The guy who invited him says the point was to get “perhaps the most influential newsman in America” to spark a discussion about “free speech and the media,” particularly given OU’s “first-rate school of journalism.” But Roger Ailes isn’t a newsman and doesn’t do journalism. He does political advocacy that’s (very) thinly disguised as journalism. As Eric Boehlert of Media Matters says, “places of higher learning shouldn’t help perpetuate the Fox myth while turning a blind eye to the lasting damage Ailes’s enterprise is doing to journalism and to our national discourse.”

Might this act of selling out have something to do with the fact that the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation serves as an underwriter of the George Washington Forum, which is the OU group hosting the speech? As detailed in my film Koch Brothers Exposed, Charles Koch is a billionaire industrialist and one of the leading financiers of the American Right. He is known to meddle in educational institutions, infamously attaching strings to university donations by insisting he be able to veto a school’s hiring decisions. Students and faculty at schools like Florida State University are fighting this corruption valiantly, but the encroachment on academic integrity and freedom remains a threat.

In the case of Ohio University, the full extent of Koch’s donations to the George Washington Forum isn’t known. But we do know that Koch specifically underwrote a talk the Forum hosted by John Yoo, author of the Bush torture memos (belying Charles and his brother David’s claims that their ideological activism is restricted to economic issues). We also know that through the Forum, the Charles Koch Foundation awards grants to students “interested in studying free market ideas” under an OU professor who researches conservative politics and economics. Students applying for the grant in the past have had to write an essay about a book by libertarian Henry Hazlitt. Is it just me, or does it look like Charles Koch is paying the university to spread his right-wing ideology?

Not that Koch is the only problem. Indeed, Ailes himself is a big donor to (and alum of) Ohio University. If an institution of higher learning is willing to take money from an anti-journalist like Ailes for its communications programs, it will inevitably spread his message to students, one way or another.

Today, as Ailes takes the mic at OU, those who believe in education should redouble our efforts to stop the slow erosion of academic integrity. This erosion is reflected in the influence wielded by wealthy ideologues like Charles Koch and his political bullhorn, Roger Ailes.

Co-authored by Derrick Crowe

This week, the three military contractors that do the most business with the Pentagon announced their quarterly profits for 2012. Their profits continue to grow while they push Washington, D.C. to protect their budgets at the expense of the rest of us.

Here’s the breakdown so far for this year: 

• Lockheed Martin: $668 million
• Northrop Grumman: $506 million
• Boeing: $923 million

This week’s announcement raises a fundamental question: Should people and companies be allowed to make huge profits from war? Even raising this question in today’s environment may seem trite, but we used to have different answers than those that prevail in modern-day Washington, D.C.

“I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt, May 22, 1940.

“Worse than traitors in arms are the men who pretend loyalty to the flag, feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the Nation while patriotic blood is crimsoning the plains of the South and their countrymen mouldering the dust.”  –President Abraham Lincoln. 

This last quote is particularly relevant to this week’s profit announcements. Lincoln referred to war profiteers making money by cheating the Union Army. Outrage at war profiteering during this period led to the passage of “Lincoln’s Law,” officially known as the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act is the very same law that two of the companies listed above, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, violated through price-fixing and double-billing the taxpayer, leading to their having to pay roughly $20 million in the first quarter of 2012 to settle suits brought by the U.S. government.

During Roosevelt’s time, the idea of a single contractor company making almost a billion dollars worth of profit in three months would have received short shrift. As Roosevelt’s quote above shows, the idea of people profiting from war’s “disaster” disgusted him, and during his presidency the Truman Committee relentlessly investigated and exposed war profiteers. The closest analogy in our time would be the Committee on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which found that up to $60 billion (as of September 2011) was lost to waste and fraud in military contracting in those conflicts.

And yet, despite this historical lack of patience for war profiteering, and despite the current record showing gross misconduct and waste, the U.S. government keeps shoveling taxpayer money at these huge corporations. Could it be that the $5 million in campaign donations and $32 million in lobbying dollars so far this election cycle from the military contractors keep Congress intentionally ignorant of the problem? 

President George Washington knew a few things about war profiteers, and he didn’t mince words:

“There is such a thirst for gain [among military suppliers]…that it is enough to make one curse their own Species, for possessing so little virtue and patriotism.”

As long as we continue to allow the profit motive to play a role in America’s war, virtue and patriotism–to say nothing of peace–will continue to be in short supply.

Help unmask the war profiteers by sharing our latest video with your friends. Then, follow Robert Greenwald on Twitter. 

Co-authored by Jesse Lava

Charles and David Koch appear to be pushing their right-wing ideology to the bitter end. And it’s time for Americans to stop helping them.

The Koch brothers are major backers of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate front group that drafts “model legislation” for state legislators. The Kochs have given ALEC at least $1 million—not counting a $500,000 loan—and their company, Koch Industries, has been a select member of the group’s board for nearly two decades. ALEC has recently come under fire for advancing bills modeled on Florida’s now-infamous “Stand Your Ground” law, and it has long been criticized for writing legislation that would undermine public schools, immunize corporations that harm people’s health, and impose onerous voter ID restrictions on the young, the old, the poor, and minorities.

Corporations including Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Kraft, PepsiCo, Mars, and Intuit have all bailed on ALEC over the last two weeks, knowing that continuing to associate with the group would be toxic. This exodus is a testament to the strength of progressive groups like Color of Change and the Center for Media and Democracy, which have been working to expose what ALEC does. But the Kochs are doubling down. Their government affairs chief Philip Ellender says progressives’ complaints about ALEC are intended “not only to intimidate, but to silence supporters of free-market principles.” Of course, ALEC is already largely silent in that it keeps its proceedings and model bills a secret—presumably because the corporations backing them want to have plausible deniability about their involvement.

Either way, the Kochs are staying put. That’s their right, but Americans have a right of their own: to boycott Koch products. Every dollar that we spend on goods made by Koch Industries is another dollar the brothers have at their disposal to support right-wing, corporate fronts like ALEC. The time has come for Americans to vote with their pocketbooks and stop supporting the Koch brothers’ agenda.

Everyone willing to participate in a boycott should sign this pledge form, which says we’ll stop buying what Koch sells until Koch withdraws its membership in ALEC. The more people go public, the more this initiative will snowball. And if enough Americans of conscience avoid the Kochs, it just might put a dent in their bottom line.

What products need to be avoided? Koch Industries makes myriad consumer goods, and there’s no space here to name them all. But the best place to start is their household paper products:

• Toilet paper: Angel Soft, Quilted Northern, Soft ‘n’ Gentle
• Towels, napkins, plates, cups: Brawny, Dixie, Sparkle, Mardi Gras, Vanity Fair, Zee

These brands—made largely by Georgia Pacific, a Koch subsidiary—are easily recognizable and avoidable. Anyone can bring this short list to the store and find another company to buy from.

Of course, ALEC is just one vehicle by which the Kochs are damaging American democracy; even if Koch Industries withdraws from it, we’ll still have a lot of work to do. But we have to start somewhere. Boycotting these products will allow Americans to take one important step toward reclaiming our democracy.

The point is that Americans have great power as consumers—a power that today is going largely untapped. If corporations engage in egregious behavior and politicians won’t stop them, we have to take matters into our own hands. There is no one who better symbolizes corporate greed than the Koch brothers, and those of us who envision a fairer, more ethical world can put our money elsewhere if we wish.

Co-authored by Jesse Lava

Everyone seems to be investigating Charles and David Koch lately, with exposés of their corrupt political behavior popping up in places like the New Yorker, AlterNet, ThinkProgress, and Brave New Foundation’s film Koch Brothers Exposed. Naturally, the billionaire brothers don’t like the attention, so they’re responding to it by smearing the activists and journalists. In their panic, they have now taken out Google ads attacking me and plastered an ominous image of my eyes on their website, like so:

They made me look like Emperor Palpatine. But who’s really representing the Dark Side here? The truth is that the billionaire brothers bankrolling the conservative movement are using their wealth in a way that should be terrifying to anyone who thinks democracy is about more than pulling a lever every two years and letting rich folks take care of the rest.

Accordingly, here are 10 facts that every American should know about who the Kochs are and what they’re doing to our country.

1. Koch Industries, which the brothers own, is one of the top ten polluters in the United States — which perhaps explains why the Kochs have given $60 million to climate denial groups between 1997 and 2010.

2. The Kochs are the oil and gas industry’s biggest donors to the congressional committee with oversight of the hazardous Keystone XL oil pipeline. They and their employees gave more than $300,000 to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2010 alone.

3. From 1998-2008, Koch-controlled foundations gave more than $196 million to organizations that favor polices that would financially enrich the two brothers. In addition, Koch Industries spent $50 million on lobbying and some $8 million in PAC contributions.

4. The Koch fortune has its origins in engineering contracts with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union.

5. The Kochs are suing to take over the Cato Institute, which has accused the Kochs of attempting to destroy the group’s identity as an independent, libertarian think and align it more closely with a partisan agenda.

6. A Huffington Post source who was at a three-day retreat of conservative billionaires said the Koch brothers pledged to donate $60 million to defeat President Obama in 2012 and produce pledges of $40 million more from others at the retreat.

7. Since 2000, the Kochs have collected almost $100 million in government contracts, mostly from the Department of Defense.

8. Koch Industries has an annual production capacity of 2.2 billion pounds of the carcinogen formaldehyde. The company has worked to keep it from being classified as a carcinogen even though David Koch is a prostate cancer survivor.

9. The Koch brothers’ combined fortune of roughly $50 billion is exceeded only by that of Bill Gates in the United States.

10. The Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs accused Koch Oil of scheming to steal $31 million of crude oil from Native Americans. Although the company claimed it was accidental, a former executive in this operation said Charles Koch had known about it and had responded to the overages by saying, “I want my fair share, and that’s all of it.”

That last quote — “I want my fair share, and that’s all of it” — encapsulates the unbridled greed driving the Kochs’ political activism and business dealings. Democracy cannot thrive with so much power being in the hands of men like this. If we care about democracy, we have to work to take it back.

With my new film Koch Brothers Exposed set for release, the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are doing everything they can do hide their behavior. First they got their lawyer to fire off a menacing letter that all but threatened news organizations that dare to cover the film’s content. Now they’re insisting — get this — that there’s nothing to debate anyway.

That’s right. In response to my offer to a debate or public discussion, the Koch brothers, hiding behind their attorney, wrote, “We are confused about what there is to debate.”

Perhaps the Kochs have not seen what my team and journalists such as Lee Fang, Addie Stan, and Jane Mayer have uncovered. What we’ve found is that Charles and David Koch are using their vast fortune to buy the political and legal process. They are corrupting democracy in ways that are harming the 99% while serving their own economic interests.

One area of excessive influence is energy policy. The Kochs, who own Koch Industries, are one of the top 10 polluters in the nation, which means they have a strong interest in eliminating or preventing environmental regulations. The Kochs have given over $500,000 to members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee, which proposes environmental regulations and is supposed to hold polluters accountable. Indeed, as our film reveals, the Kochs are the oil and gas industry’s single biggest donor to that committee. Is it any wonder that Congress won’t pass bills to curb climate change or tackle other environmental problems?

In fact, the Kochs frequently have secret summits where they host wealthy right-wing donors as well as federal policymakers to talk strategy and fundraising. Participants have included U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Those two justices recently increased the Kochs’ power by voting in the Citizens United case to allow unlimited corporate money into politics. And just last week, the justices heard a case challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — a bill that the Koch-founded and -financed group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) has been pushing to overturn. Should our system permit such a conflict of interest enabling the Kochs to wield influence that virtually no other citizen can match?

This influence also extends to the state level. The Kochs have given at least $1 million to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that writes pro-corporate laws that are often passed nearly verbatim in state legislatures across the country. Among these laws are onerous voter ID restrictions (to reduce the number of votes from the young, the elderly, the poor, and people of color) and various bills that undermine workers, consumers, and the environment.

Moreover, the Kochs have been propping up Wisconsin’s anti-union governor Scott Walker, who recently rammed a bill through his state legislature to gut the rights of public sector unions. AFP ran attack ads and organized a bus tour to stymie the union members opposing Walker’s power grab. Although the Kochs’ lawyer tries to distance his clients from all of that unpleasantness, he cannot take back what David Koch recently told a reporter: “We’re helping [Scott Walker], as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years…We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

Why won’t the Kochs debate these things? What are they hiding from? The fact is they have an undue, indeed corrupting, influence on our democracy, and they don’t want anyone to notice. After all, true democracy isn’t just a process where the rabble get to enter a voting booth every couple of years while the rich guys fund the candidates, think tanks, media campaigns, and on-the-ground organizations that set the parameters of public debate. Democracy is supposed to be a vibrant, participatory process where every citizen can have an impact on how the country is governed and narrow interests can’t commandeer the process for themselves.

Surely, that’s something worth debating.

This week as I premiered my new film, Koch Brothers Exposed — the result of a year-long investigation on how two billionaires are using their wealth to corrupt democracy — Koch Industries has launched an attack on the film and me. The Kochs intimidate, they menace; they have a letter from their lawyer borderline threatening the media if it reports what’s in the film — and they always try to change the subject so their behavior can stay in the shadows: not only are they unwilling to accept my offer of a debate or interview, they also refuse to testify about their interest in the Keystone XL pipeline and may have to be dragged kicking and screaming into revealing their secret contributions to groups doing election work. This time, the Kochs are using a technique I point out in the film: attacking to avoid dealing with the facts. They are dodging and distorting the truth to avoid confronting our findings on cancer, voting rights, civil rights, and more.

How? Let me count (some of) the ways:

1) Cancer. People are dying of cancer near the Kochs’ Georgia Pacific plant in Crossett, Arkansas, and the Kochs refuse to answer the relevant question: What are they going to do about it? On Penn Road in Crossett, right near the mill, residents powerfully show how nine out of 11 homes have suffered from cancer. A USA Today study said Crossett’s school district is in the top 1% in the nation for cancer. Meanwhile, the Kochs’ facility releases significant amounts of formaldehyde — a known carcinogen — and there’s no other chemical plant in town. The Kochs are among the country’s top 10 polluters and lobbied hard to keep formaldehyde from being labeled a carcinogen. For a company where one of the owners (David Koch) and the communications director (Melissa Cohlmia) are cancer survivors, this is tragic and infuriating. It reflects a warped sense of humanity where greed trumps all.

2) Voting rights. The Kochs have given over $1 million to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that’s trying to pass severe voter ID restrictions in states across the country. These bills disenfranchise the poor, the elderly, the young, people of color — in short, people who are likely to oppose a 1% agenda. The Kochs won’t explain why anyone should believe that ALEC’s pro-corporate, anti-99% agenda is somehow detached from its billionaire funders. Onerous voting restrictions are already impacting people’s ability to vote in the 2012 election.

3) Re-segregation. Americans for Prosperity (AFP), which is Koch-founded and Koch-financed (they refuse to say how much but we know it’s at least $5 million), pushed “reforms” in North Carolina that would destroy a school district’s model of racial integration and ensure students go to school mainly with people of their own race. We call out this “re-segregation” in Koch Brothers Exposed. The Kochs, of course, try to hide from their connection — hoping we ignore not only their involvement in the founding and financing of AFP, but also the fact that David Koch has served as chair of the group’s supposedly nonpolitical arm, the AFP Foundation. Their dissembling doesn’t pass the laugh test–particularly when they’ve refused to open the books to show where their funding is coming from.

4) Worker rights. The Kochs have been undermining labor rights, helping anti-union Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and supporting groups that want to boost employer power against employees. They also have pushed the interests of large corporations over Main Street. The Koch brothers try pathetically to attack me on that front, going back eight years to my film Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price and saying a locally-owned hardware store I profiled as an example of how Wal-Mart shuts down small businesses had actually closed before the retail giant opened. Um, as the store owners said in the film, the reason it closed early was problems involving financing and reduced appraisals in light of Wal-Mart’s impending arrival. This is yet another example of distorting the facts and is ultimately a distraction.

Why are the Kochs flailing so desperately in the face of our findings? Because they can’t give straightforward, convincing rebuttals to the claims we lodge against them in the film. My organization, Brave New Foundation, doesn’t have billions of dollars at its disposal to fight back, but this time time, the Kochs aren’t getting the last word. The smears and name-calling (I’m malicious, I’m a liar, blah blah blah) may not be pleasant but won’t stop the film from being shared by 25 groups partnering with us and thousands of people online.

The Koch brothers epitomize the corruption of democracy that’s going on in our country, with a handful of people at the top expanding their wealth on the backs of the 99%. Americans shouldn’t fall for their attempt to change the subject.

By Robert Greenwald and Jesse Lava

Do all roads lead to Koch?

Conservative activists will rally at the Supreme Court tomorrow to encourage the overturn of the Affordable Care Act. The “Hands Off My Health Care” protest—which will feature the likes of Rep. Michelle Bachmann and Sens. Jim DeMint and Rand Paul—is being organized by Americans for Prosperity, a right-wing group financed by industrialists Charles and David Koch. The billionaire brothers provided the seed money to get this organization off the ground and have donated at least $5 million overall (possibly a lot more) to its operations. David Koch still serves as the group’s chairman.

These facts belie the image that Americans for Prosperity would like to present as a humble grassroots organization. The stories we see today about regular Americans coming to D.C. to protest evil health reform are directly attributable to the corporate interests that the Koch brothers represent.

Yet the Kochs’ impact on the current court battle doesn’t end there. Group after group participating in the lawsuit to destroy the Affordable Care Act is a beneficiary of the Koch brothers’ largess—reflecting the outsized influence that these guys wield in our political debate. Indeed, one wonders whether this effort would be happening at all if not for these two billionaires with a direct interest in avoiding government regulation.

One of the most important groups in this case is the National Federation of Independent Business, which is bringing one of the lawsuits now before the Supreme Court. This group has received $88,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which is controlled by none other than Charles Koch.

Several organizations that have filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court have received substantial donations from the Koch family as well. These groups include:

• Competitive Enterprise Institute: $666,420
• Pacific Research Institute: $270,000
• Texas Public Policy Foundation: $74,500
• Freedom Works: $5 million
• Cato Institute: approximately $30 million.
• Family Research Council: brief co-authored by attorney Nelson Lund, a professor at George Mason University, which has received $29,604,354.
• Galen Institute: “partner organization” of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation; extent of donations unknown.
• Landmark Legal Foundation: $5000

In addition, a Court-appointed attorney used a study by the Rand Corporation to show the impact of the individual mandate in the health care bill—even though Rand has received $100,000 from none other than the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.

Given this set of facts, the sheer reach of the Koch brothers in the movement to overturn health care reform is staggering. They have seeded and cultivated the very network of organizations that’s now threatening to undo the most significant progressive reform in a generation. As shown in Brave New Foundation’s new film, Koch Brothers Exposed, Charles and David Koch are, in effect, holding up the conservative sky.

So this week as we watch the rallies and press conferences and legal wrangling—not to mention the media pundits lavishing attention to the hubbub—let’s remember that this spectacle is not the result of some organic, grassroots outpouring of opposition to the idea that all Americans should have health insurance. It’s rooted in concentrated wealth belonging to men aiming to bend our democracy to their will.

Co-authored by Derrick Crowe

The news just keeps getting worse in Afghanistan for the United States. Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan project has warned for years that the premises of a counterinsurgency there were unrealistic and unworkable, and the ability of a handful of bad actors to completely seize control of the narrative with atrocious actions validates our warnings. The “hearts and minds” effort has completely melted down over the past few weeks, illustrating once again that this war isn’t making us safer and it’s not worth the costs.

Yesterday, the Taliban suspended talks with the U.S. in Qatar due to the U.S.’s failure to follow through on releasing five Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay. They also balked at the U.S.’s demand that the Taliban engage with the Karzai government, calling such a move “pointless.” Karzai, for his part, is now demanding that U.S. troops get out — now — of Afghan rural areas and stay on their bases, likely in response to the butchering of 16 civilians by a U.S. military member in Kandahar.

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill bad news, either:

“I’m really shocked, these are two pieces of very bad news,” said one senior western diplomat in Kabul. “It’s probably the bleakest day of my time here in Afghanistan.”

What you are seeing is the latest of any number of indicators over the last few months that the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is in total collapse.

Two years into the escalated war effort, the rate of attacks initiated by insurgents continues to grow, up 14 percent in 2011 over 2010. And, when you consider that the prior year had already seen a 65 percent increase, it’s clear that the promises of increased security and reduced civilian and military casualties fed to the American people by the Pentagon were just so much garbage propaganda. Lest we forget, Adm. Mike Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress in December 2009, prior to the latest escalation, that the new strategy “must — and will — improve security for the Afghan people and limit both future civilian and military casualties.”

Since then, almost 1,000 additional U.S. troops have been killed, 10,680 have been wounded, and countless Afghans have been killed, maimed or driven from their homes by the conflict. Our government has charged us $2 billion a week for this fiasco, right in the middle of an absolutely vicious jobs crisis. Mission accomplished? Hardly. Despite the continued lies from the Pentagon, the war effort is continuing to fail to bring security to Afghanistan or stop the march of the Taliban.

This context makes the most recent litany of disasters that much more alarming:

• January 2012: a video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead insurgents–a clear violation of U.S. military and international law–sparks widespread outrage.
• February 20: U.S. forces burn copies of the Koran near a detention center in Parwan.
• Massive protests break out across Afghanistan resulting in several deaths, including the execution-style killing of two American servicemembers inside a heavily guarded Afghan ministry building, likely by one of their Afghan colleagues.
• March 11: A U.S. soldier goes on a rampage in Kandahar, killing 16 civilians before surrendering at his base.
• Today, Karzai demanded the immediate removal of U.S. troops from rural areas as the Taliban cut off talks with the U.S.

The Associated Press analyzed Karzai’s demand to remove U.S. troops from rural Afghanistan thus:

“…It would essentially mean the end of the strategy of trying to win hearts and minds by working with and protecting the local populations.”

Come off it, people. We haven’t even won over the hearts and minds of the security forces we’re paying and training, much less the Afghan street, and the events of the last months make even saying the phrase, “hearts and minds” into a cynical joke. Protecting the population, by the way, requires you to actually reduce the total number of civilians being killed, maimed and displaced by the conflict. It’s not happening.

And by the way, Karzai’s not the only one who wants U.S. troops out of rural Afghanistan ASAP. A majority of Americans say they want U.S. troops out ASAP, and 60 percent say the war hasn’t been worth fighting.

The war for hearts and minds is over. It’s lost in Afghanistan, and it’s lost at home. The president and Congress should do us all a favor and stop letting people get killed for it, and get our people out of there.

Brave New Foundation’s War Costs campaign is continuing the work of our Rethink Afghanistan campaign. Please join us to stay updated on the latest news in the fight to end this war.

Follow Robert Greenwald and Derrick Crowe on Twitter.

Co-Authored by Jesse Lava

The drumbeat for war in Iran is getting louder, but opposition is coming from a seemingly unlikely source: the Cato Institute. This libertarian think tank generally sides with the Right, but it has long shown an independent streak, sometimes bucking conservative orthodoxy on civil liberties, the war on drugs, and U.S. militarism.

Will that change if Charles and David Koch succeed in their efforts to take over Cato?

The group is locked in a legal battle with the billionaire brothers, who have filed a lawsuit to appoint two-thirds of Cato’s board of directors. Today, Cato chairman Bob Levy has released a letter accusing the Kochs of trying to steer the group in a more partisan direction and compromise its independence. As detailed in Brave New Foundation’s upcoming film Koch Brothers Exposed, the Kochs are indeed notoriously partisan, funding Republican politicians in each election cycle and now allegedly promising to devote more than $200 million to defeating President Obama in 2012. Although they have long been financial backers of Cato–the group was originally named the Charles Koch Foundation–this move would put the organization entirely under their control.

That’s scary. For now, several thinkers at Cato are opposing the rush to war with Iran and refusing to shy away from criticizing Republicans. Senior fellow Doug Bandow writes, “The consequences of any war with Iran would be extraordinary. Probably far worse than resulted from the invasion of Iraq.” He assails Republican presidential candidates for their “reflexive war-mongering against Iran” because “every additional threat to attack Iran only more clearly demonstrates to Tehran the necessity of developing nuclear weapons.”

Malou Innocent, another foreign policy expert at Cato, says America should “ignore the hawks on Iran,” including those at the more reliably right-wing American Enterprise Institute. She is also calling for a quick end to the “waste of money, effort, and, most importantly, lives” resulting from the war in Afghanistan.

Independent voices like those at Cato serve a critical function in the national debate on war and peace. They show that peace is not simply the domain of progressives; it’s something that Americans of any political stripe can get behind. Without such voices, progressives can more easily be marginalized and ignored.

So what happens when partisans like the Koch brothers get their hands on an institution that exhibits flashes of independence? In Cato’s case, we can expect that independence to evaporate. They have already tried to pack the board with people like self-proclaimed neoconservative John Hinderaker, who once wrote, “It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.” Does anyone think guys like that are going to preserve any hint of independence at Cato?

As Alex Pareene writes at Slate, “Cato is mostly antiwar, decidedly anti-drug war, and sponsors a lot of good work on civil liberties. That … is basically what the Kochs don’t like about them, because white papers on decriminalization don’t help Republicans get elected.”

Little by little, our democracy is coming under the thumb of those who have more and more. The Koch brothers aren’t the only big shots commandeering the public debate, but they do represent the worst of this frightening trend. That’s why fights like the one between Cato and the Kochs should matter to progressives: the nation’s most urgent public policy decisions, including ones involving war and peace, may hang in the balance.

I invite you to join the conversation on our Koch Brothers Exposed page on Facebook and follow me on Twitter.

Co-Authored by Jesse Lava

As of this writing, 49 sponsors have pulled out of the Rush Limbaugh show after his repeated demeaning remarks about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. But of course, this isn’t the first time Rush has slandered women. Or the second. Or the fifth. Or the tenth. He makes a career out of enflaming misogynistic (not to mention xenophobic, racist, and classist) passions.

So with today being International Women’s Day, we at Brave New Foundation are celebrating Rush Limbaugh with a mash-up of some of his greatest hits on women:

Anyone who wants to contact Rush’s dwindling number of sponsors to demand that they withdraw their support can find a good list here. Can each of us put another nail in the coffin of Rush’s career?